Shakespeare: His Life, Work, and Era Book

William Shakespeare's life has been the subject of innumerable myths, yet tantalizingly little is known about the motives, passions, conflicts, ideas, and struggles that shaped him. Now Dennis Kay looks beyond the established facts of Shakespeare's life and traces how the events of his era affected the way he lived, thought, and wrote. The extraordinary artistic and intellectual achievements of Renaissance England were forged in a time of great ferment. Shakespeare reveals how factors such as the plague, political scheming and skullduggery, a burgeoning of moral and philosophical discussion, and the birth of professional theater all had a profound influence on one of the world's most enduring and influential cultural icons. Painstaking historical research combined with a practical discussion of the plays, poems, and sonnets is interwoven with relevant moments in both Shakespeare's life and age: the financial ruin of his father, his marriage to an older woman, the early deaths of both his brother and his only son, his arrival in London to build a theatrical career, the business interests that left him a wealthy man, the pleasure of royal patronage, and the final family disgrace just before his death. Perhaps most fascinating is how Shakespeare emerged as a survivor: one who challenged and questioned in his art, but one who did so without alienating either his political masters or those who flocked to the Globe Theater to see his plays.