Shakespeare by Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd's method is to position Shakespeare in the close context of his world. In this way, Ackroyd not only richly conjures up the texture of Shakespeare's life, but also imparts an amazing amount of vivid, interesting material about place, period and background. The book is packed with gems - and the reader turns the pages eagerly, keen to absorb the next nugget of information. Some snippets: Shakespeare was secretly a Roman Catholic; he wrote many more plays but these have been lost; the witches in Macbeth were not hags but women fairies or nymphs played by boys; the 'best' bed was for guests which was why he bequeathed his wife his 'second best' bed (the matrimonial bed in which he probably died); 'ham acting' derives from the strutting walk which showed off the ham-strings; an actor called 'Will' played female parts - could it have been Shakespeare himself?; and the strongest bond in the plays is between father and daughter perhaps reflecting Shakespeare's own family life.
Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. He achieved a Double First at Cambridge and studied in America at Yale as a Mellon Fellow. His first two publications were books of poetry; his first biography was about Ezra Pound and his first novel was about Oscar Wilde. He is a successful novelist (taking most of his backgrounds from history) and has written biographies of T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake and Thomas More, as well as short books on Chaucer and Turner. He has written and presented two TV series for the BBC (Dickens and London) and is the author of London: the biography and Albion: the origins of the English Imagination.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781856197267 |
| ISBN 10 | 1856197263 |
| Title | Shakespeare |
| Author | Peter Ackroyd |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2005-09-01 |
| Number of pages | 560 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |