{"product_id":"soul-of-the-age-book-jonathan-bate-9781400062065","title":"Soul of the Age","description":"One man in his time plays many parts, \u003cbr\u003eHis acts being seven ages. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of today's most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bard's own immortal list of a man's seven ages in \u003ci\u003eAs You Like It\u003c\/i\u003e, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeare's life and connects them to his world and work as never before. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHere is the author as an infant, born into a world of plague and syphillis, diseases with which he became closely familiar; as a schoolboy, a position he portrayed in \u003ci\u003eThe Merry Wives of Windsor\u003c\/i\u003e, in which a clever, cheeky lad named William learns Latin grammar; as a lover, married at eighteen to an older woman already pregnant, perhaps presaging Bassanio, who in \u003ci\u003eThe Merchant of Venice \u003c\/i\u003ewon a wife who could save him from financial ruin. Here, too, is Shakespeare as a soldier, writing Henry the Fifth's St. Crispin's Day speech, with a nod to his own monarch Elizabeth I's passionate addresses; as a justice, revealing his possible legal training in his precise use of the law in plays from \u003ci\u003eHamlet\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eMacbeth\u003c\/i\u003e; and as a pantaloon, an early retiree because of, Bate postulates, either illness or a scandal. Finally, Shakespeare enters oblivion, with sonnets that suggest he actively sought immortality through his art and secretly helped shape his posthumous image more than anyone ever knew. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEqual parts masterly detective story, brilliant literary analysis, and insightful world history, \u003cb\u003eSoul of the Age\u003c\/b\u003e is more than a superb new recounting of Shakespeare's experiences; it is a bold and entertaining work of scholarship and speculation, one that shifts from past to present, reality to the imagination, to reveal how this unsurpassed artist came to be. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom the Hardcover edition.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49571340878097,"sku":"GOR005592584","price":11.8,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49625480266001,"sku":"GOR006262474","price":7.4,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50373365891345,"sku":"CIN1400062063A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51411963085073,"sku":"CIN1400062063VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51422789107985,"sku":"CIN1400062063G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1400062063.jpg?v=1751432614","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/soul-of-the-age-book-jonathan-bate-9781400062065","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}