William Shakespeare: His Life and Work Book

Anthony Holden certainly does not pull his punches in his choice of biographical subjects. Having already taken on the Prince of Wales in Charles: A Biography, Olivier and Tchaikovsky, this time Holden has gone for no less than the Bard himself, with his action-packed biography, William Shakespeare.Dismissing claims that there is nothing left to say about Shakespeare, Holden's bold study argues that, on the contrary, there is a great deal to say about Shakespeare: The archives are in fact rich with traces of the Bard as husband, father, actor, dramatist, poet and Stratford lad made good. Holden also argues that "if each generation recreates Shakespeare in its own image", then we need a new version of the Bard in the 21st century. As a result he obliges with a racy, incident-packed account of the glovemaker's son from Stratford who rose to subsequent immortality via the stage of Elizabethan London. As well as poring over the established evidence, Holden makes some controversial, but intriguing claims. Not only was Shakespeare a covert Catholic, who spent his so-called "lost years" as a budding actor in Catholic households in Lancashire under the name of "Shakeshafte", but he also suffered from sexually transmitted diseases, experienced a nervous breakdown, fathered an illegitimate son via his middle- aged landlady and sailed close to the political wind with what Holden sees as his residual Catholic and "republican instincts". It's all very entertaining, if at timess lightly out on an interpretative limb, but this is a lively and refreshing approach to the Bard as an Elizabethan man behaving badly, which may not be for all time, but is pretty resonant for our times. --Jerry BrottonRead More