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Title: Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life by Katherine Duncan-Jones ISBN: 1-903436-26-5 Publisher: Arden Shakespeare Pub. Date: 22 March, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Provocative and informative
Comment: The reviewer who dismissed this book as "fiction" was totally wrong. This is a highly original book, which shows us that the implications of the familiar evidence for Shakespeare's life have never been fully understood until now. The author is not afraid to challenge many of our most entrenched assumptions about Shakespeare -- not least the hope that he must have been "a nice person". Duncan-Jones uses her brilliant knowledge of original documents and sources to demonstrate that there is a great deal of evidence that Shakespeare behaved pretty badly in relation to the poor and towards his daughters, and that he wangled his way to getting a coat of arms. It's a refreshing picture, which hasn't been presented in ANY previous biography; perhaps it's no coincidence that this is the first Shakespeare biography written by a woman. But this is by no means simply a hatchet job. Duncan-Jones' account of Shakespeare's social climbing is balanced by some wonderfully sensitive accounts of the plays; she shows her capacity both for sharp psychological insight, and for appreciative literary criticism. Anyone interested in Shakespeare (and who isn't?) needs to buy this book.
Rating: 1
Summary: Yawn
Comment: As with Duncan-Jones's biography of Sidney, her strength is her imagination. A book, like so many other 'Shakespeare biographries', that belongs on the 'fiction' shelf.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Arden Shakespeare graced by a provocative new biography
Comment: Recent years have given us several fine new works on Shakespeare, among them Harold Bloom's prickly but masterful "The Invention of the Human" and Park Honan's well-researched, sober "Shakespeare - A Life". To these we must now add Katherine Duncan-Jones' "Ungentle Shakespeare". Where Bloom illuminates the works and marvels at the scope of Shakespeare's mind, and Honan relates the life based on the "facts", with as little speculation as possible, Ms. Duncan-Jones draws on what is clearly an encyclopedic knowledge of documents, history, and scholarship to consciously extract from the context of the times possible insights into the man and his craft.
The author (refreshingly) sets out with nothing special to prove and no incipient desire to deify or demonize the Bard. Even Honan seems to tend, if in doubt, to "find in the Bard's favour": the sum left Stratford's poor in Shakespeare's will, for example, is deemed a "generous bequest". Until, that is, it is viewed next to the bequests of other contemporary people of wealth, as Duncan-Jones does, revealing it as paltry by comparison - once we view it in a broader context.
This is the pattern for the entire book: intentionally not an exhaustive biography, "Scenes From His Life" (the book's sub-title) are used to illuminate the poet's achievement, hitherto unexplored but likely aspects of his personality, and his journey through his times in a way that nicely supplements more (and also far less) cautious biographys. In questioning certain aspects of received wisdom, Duncan-Jones invites us to envision Shakespeare the man, living and interacting in a complex, high-pressure reality, not as a Cultural Icon on a pedestal.
For those of us who wish to "take him all in all", Duncan-Jones' "Ungentle Shakespeare" is a wonderful invitation to broaden our perspective on the Bard. Orchids to the Arden Series for publishing it, as it expands on and supplements information in the series' excellent introductions to specific plays. My bottom line: I've seldom put down a biography with such a sense of having gotten real insights about a famous historical figure about whom (ostensibly)"little is known".
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Title: Imagining Shakespeare by Stephen Orgel ISBN: 1403911770 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Pub. Date: 06 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Shakespeare: For All Time by Stanley W. Wells ISBN: 0195160932 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Shakespeare by Michael Wood ISBN: 0465092640 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Arden Dictionary of Shakespeare Quotations by Jane Armstrong ISBN: 1903436680 Publisher: Arden Shakespeare Pub. Date: 14 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.99 |
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Title: Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion by David Crystal, Ben Crystal, Stanley Wells ISBN: 0140291172 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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