Shakespeare: A Life Read Free

milieu and working conditions in
London than formerly, as well as about theatres such as the Rose, the
Globe, and Blackfriars, and Shakespeare's reactions to the children's
companies. In a continuous narrative one has a chance to see what he
learned and how he thrived, whom he imitated and at least some of the
factors that set him apart as a person. The inner theatre of his
development is a deep, wonderful story, of which his colleagues, his
rivals, his company, his Ovidian poems, his plays, and even Stratford
grain-speculators give us varying glimpses. That development occurred
in an England in which communal instincts and divisions of social rank
were almost unimaginably stronger than today, and where
    -xii-

terms such as 'homosexual' and 'bisexual' and certain other modern
categories did not exist. I have tried to sketch briefly the homoerotic
world of his patron Southampton's friends, some attitudes expressed
in the sonnet vogue, and to say what Shakespeare's sonnets may suggest
about him. I include material on Hunsdonand Howard's theatrical plan,
also on Shakespeare's access to books, on his reactions to changing
modes in plays and to dilemmas of his company, and again on his
relations with individual actors, poets, or the Revels Office so far
as these can be known.
    The plays
    In a biography one may only touch upon great, textually unstable,
works which have elaborate stage histories and critical histories of
their own, and which will surely evolve or seem fresh in many new ways
in the future. Without distortion, I hope, I have 'used' the plays to
suggest, for example, what is known today of Shakespeare's processes
of writing: of his imitativeness or response to rivals, his awareness
of a troupe's needs at particular times, and his self-mockery, limited
satire, and topicality. I offer no separate sections of 'literary
criticism', but have not eschewed interpretation. Having read dozens
of articles, books, and reviews of the dramas for thirty-five years, I
make no plea for my originality, but I criticize in my own right and
have tried to signal a debt when I can recall the creditor. I look into
Shakespeare's apparent uses of memory and of locales that he knew,
his reflection of changing theatrical conditions and of implicit
criticisms of his work (as in the Poetomachia, or Poets' War), his
varying attitudes to history and to sources, and some of his deepest
exploratory interests in life.
    As
for the topic of Shakespeare's personality, I have meant it to be the
implicit subject of every chapter, and yet he is to be no more fully
defined and categorized, finally, than any of his sonnets or plays. At
the end of the book I have offered a family tree for central figures
appearing in this narrative, a tree for descendants of the poet's sister
Joan Hart who are alluded to in Chapter 18, and a sketch of the
Shakespeare biographical tradition and useful and relevant sources.
    -xiii-

The notes and the third appendix will signal my chief debts to persons
and sources. Yet notes many times as lengthy could not acknowledge
what I have learned from others about Shakespeare. My interest began
even before I brashly proposed, fresh out of the army, to write a
thesis on his tragedies, decades ago, at University College London.
Before a supervisor sent me on to my friend Paul Turner, James
Sutherland told me, over sherry, to look into other writers 'first'.
Cause and effect in a life are less neatly related than one may think,
but, for a few decades, I looked into biographical problems involved
with Browning, Arnold, and Jane Austen, and have not regretted that
experience, as oddly preparatory as it may seem. Colleagues invited me
to lecture at Birmingham,s Shakespeare Institute off and on, over
fifteen years, before my teaching in Renaissance literature began at
Leeds.
    I owe a large debt to modern
Shakespeare scholarship, criticism, and performance. I gladly
acknowledge