William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life

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Oxford University Press, 1987 - Biography & Autobiography - 384 pages
Covering 400 years of Shakespeare scholarship, Schoenbaum's now classic William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life received high acclaim from critics and scholars. The New York Review of Books called it "a masterpiece," and the Guardian labeled it "our best life of Shakespeare."
Making the resources of the world's greatest Shakespeare collections more accessible to all readers, this updated "Compact Life" contains a refined and amplified version of the original text and fifty of the original documents reproduced in smaller format. Schoenbaum has incorporated new material into his narrative, including an eyewitness account, in harrowing detail, of a murder believed to have occurred in New Place, the house that Shakespeare bought in Stratford in 1597. He also provides a new postscript which includes newly-compiled information from recent research on Shakespeare.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Stratford Town and Stratford Church
3
The Shakespeares From Snitterfield to Stratford
14
Offspring
23
Rise and Fall
30
John Shakespeares Spiritual Testament
45
Faith and Knowledge
55
Early Employment and Marriage
73
The Lost Years
95
Plays Plague and a Patron
159
The Lord Chamberlain s Man
184
A Gentleman of Means
220
His Majestys Servant
249
Stratford Again
278
Postscript
320
Notes
329
Acknowledgements of Facsimiles
359

London and the Theatres
118
The Upstart Crow
143

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About the author (1987)

S. Schoenbaum, Director of the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies at the University of Maryland, is the author of Shakespeare's Lives and Shakespeare: The Globe and the World.

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