The Truth About William Shakespeare : : Fact, Fiction and Modern Biographies / / David Ellis.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2013-2000
• VerfasserIn: Ellis, David,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 p.)

A polemical attack on the ways recent Shakespeare biographers have disguised their lack of informationGBS_insertPreviewButtonPopup(['ISBN:9780748646678','ISBN:9780748646661','ISBN:9780748646685']);How can biographies of Shakespeare continue to appear when so little is known about him? And when what is known has been in the public domain for so long? In the past decade, the majority of these biographies have been published by distinguished Shakespeareans - shouldn't they know better? To solve this puzzle, David Ellis looks at the methods that Shakespeare's biographers have used to hide their lack of knowledge. At the same time, by exploring efforts to write a life of Shakespeare along traditional lines, it asks what kind of animal 'biography' really is and how it should be written.Key FeaturesAn exposé of the Shakespeare biography industry showing that books which are marketed as biographies of Shakespeare are nothing of the kindFrom this book, the reader can learn all that is directly known about ShakespeareAsks the reader to think about how we acquire our knowledge of other people and what we ought therefore to expect of biographies"

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- PART I -- 1 Rules of the game -- 2 How to make bricks without straw -- 3 Forebears -- 4 The female line and Catholicism -- 5 Boyhood and youth -- 6 Marriage -- 7 The theatre -- 8 Patronage, or who’s who in the Sonnets -- 9 Shakespeare and the love of men -- 10 Shakespeare and the love of women -- 11 Friends -- 12 London life -- 13 Politics -- 14 Money -- 15 Retirement and death -- 16 Post-mortem -- PART II -- 17 Gossip -- 18 The post-modernist challenge -- 19 The argument from expertise -- 20 Final thoughts -- Notes -- Index