The Fictional Lives of Shakespeare

ISBN-13: 9780367891596 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 246 str.

Kevin Gilvary

Opis

This study begins with a short survey of the history and practice of biography and then surveys the very limited biographical material for Shakespeare.

 

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Spis treści

Contents

Early Editions of Shakespeare’s Works v

Abbreviations v

List of Tables vii

List of Plates vii

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction: The Fictional Lives of Shakespeare 1

1 Biography: Much Practice, Little Theory 7

1.1 The Western Tradition of Biography 8

1.2 Coherence and Linear Narrative in Biography 12

1.3 Types of Biographical Material 16

2 Gaps in Our Ignorance: the Biographical Material for Shakespeare 18

2.1 Source Material for Shakespeare 19

2.2 Public Records: Stratford 28

2.3 Public Records: London 33

2.4 Literary & Theatrical Records 34

3 Inventing the myths: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 43

3.1 Early Fictions 43

3.2 Nicholas Rowe’s Acount of the Life &c (1709) 47

3.3 Reprints of Rowe’s Account 52

3.4 Dr. Johnson’s unattempted life of Shakespeare 55

3.5 Edward Capell’s Neglected Insights (1767) 57

4 Doubting the Myths: Malone’s Unwritten Life of Shakespeare 60

4.1 Attempt at a Chronology 61

4.2 Use of the Poems for Biographical Inference 68

4.3 Ambition for a Life of Shakespeare 69

5 Filling in the Gaps: Constructing a life of Shakespeare: 1805-1975 76

5.1 Skepticism in the Nineteenth Century 77

5.2 Emergence of Romantic Biography 79

5.3 Exemplary Life and National Biography 82

5.4 Dowden and the adoption of a chronology 87

5.5 Rejection of Bardolatry in the twentieth century 89

5.6 Persistence of Bardolatry in the twentieth century (to 1975) 92

6 Re-Imagining the Life: Samuel Schoenbaum 94

6.1 Shakespeare’s Lives 94

6.2 William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life 98

6.3 "Gentle" Shakespeare 104

7 After Schoenb

O autorze

Kevin Gilvary received his Ph.D. in English Literature from Brunel University London in 2015. He also holds a BA and MA in Classics as well as an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Southampton. He taught at Barton Peveril College in Hampshire, UK, for twenty years.