Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
“Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare.
So far from Shakespeare’s being the least known, he is the one person in all modern history fully known to us.”
~ Emerson
The Obscure & The Elusive
This ‘biography’ that Ackroyd strings together is mostly tedious, though it has a few really good moments and it has to be admitted that it presents most of the facts that is known of the great Bard. In spite of this, I think it is a mistake to pick up this bio unless one is familiar with ALL the plays of Shakespeare, including the controversially attributed ones – since Ackroyd constructs the bio mostly through the plays and the lines and extrapolating form them, tying together with some skill the fragmentary traces Shakespeare left in the world outside the stage.
The fact that whatever is…
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