Shakespeare: A Life in ArtShakespeare: A Life in Art brings together in a single volume Fraser's previously published two-volume biography (Young Shakespeare, 1988, and Shakespeare: The Later Years, 1992). This volume includes a new introduction, which looks back on the author's lifelong commitment to Shakespeare's work and seeks to find the pattern in his carpet.Fraser's approach places Shakespeare's work first but shows how the life and art interpenetrate, like the yolk and white of one shell. What Shakespeare was doing in Stratford and London underlies what he was writing, or more exactly, the two flow together. Most of the book is devoted to Shakespeare the man and artist, but it simultaneously throws light on his literary and personal relations with contemporaries such as Jonson, Marlowe, and others known as the University Wits. His experience as an actor and man of theater is absorbingly recounted here, as well as his relations to well-born patrons like the Earl of Southampton and Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon (England's Lord Chamberlain). In 1603 when James I ascended the throne, the Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men, passing under the sovereign's protection. How Shakespeare responded to his ambiguous role--he was both servant to the great and their remorseless critic--is another of Fraser's subjects. In short, Fraser's principal purpose is to advance our understanding of Shakespeare, at the same time throwing light on the work of the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. John Dryden, Shakespeare's first great critic, said that, and Fraser tries to estimate what he meant. |
From inside the book
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... Shakespeare, old is often livelier and fraught with possibility for getting us next to their subject. We are introduced to a more fully fleshed playwright and a larger cast of characters. According to one authority, the hero, growing up ...
... Shakespeare, old is often livelier and fraught with possibility for getting us next to their subject. We are introduced to a more fully fleshed playwright and a larger cast of characters. According to one authority, the hero, growing up ...
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... Shakespeare, no idiots either. Shakespeare's characters are fully fledged, “out of the nest,” and must choose for themselves like Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. As the moment of choice approaches, we suppress a laugh or wait in ...
... Shakespeare, no idiots either. Shakespeare's characters are fully fledged, “out of the nest,” and must choose for themselves like Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. As the moment of choice approaches, we suppress a laugh or wait in ...
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... Shakespeare's reading of human nature. He isn't cynical, only skeptical, but ... Shakespeare has his hands on the ropes. Logic is in abeyance, so is desert ... characters whose very mainspring of behavior is evil. “Burrs that will stick ...
... Shakespeare's reading of human nature. He isn't cynical, only skeptical, but ... Shakespeare has his hands on the ropes. Logic is in abeyance, so is desert ... characters whose very mainspring of behavior is evil. “Burrs that will stick ...
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... Shakespeare. He thinks “There's place and means for every man alive” (4.3). Shakespeare's psychology meets St. Thomas's in one particular, that his characters, all of them, have “the wisdom by their wit to lose” (Merchant of Venice 2.9) ...
... Shakespeare. He thinks “There's place and means for every man alive” (4.3). Shakespeare's psychology meets St. Thomas's in one particular, that his characters, all of them, have “the wisdom by their wit to lose” (Merchant of Venice 2.9) ...
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... Shakespeare. Youth finds it sustaining to emphasize this side of him, anyway mine did. I liked to say, with one of his beleaguered characters, “I know not What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face,/ But in my bosom shall she never ...
... Shakespeare. Youth finds it sustaining to emphasize this side of him, anyway mine did. I liked to say, with one of his beleaguered characters, “I know not What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face,/ But in my bosom shall she never ...
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Common terms and phrases
actors Antony Blackfriars blood Burbage Caesar called Chamberlain’s church comedy comic Coriolanus Court Cymbeline dark daughter death died doesn’t Duke Earl Elizabeth England English Essex Falstaff famous father fellow Garden Globe God’s Hamlet hand Henry VIII hero’s heroine history plays honor isn’t John Shakespeare Jonson King Lear King’s knew later lived London looks Lord Love’s Macbeth man’s Marlowe Marlowe’s master means Measure for Measure Midsummer Night’s Dream moral nature Othello Paul’s perhaps play’s players playhouse playwright plot poem poet Puritans Queen readers remembered Richard Richard II Romeo says scene Shakespeare’s characters Shakespeare’s hero Shakespeare’s play Snitterfield sonnets Southampton stage story Stratford Street tale tells theater things thinks Thomas thought Titus Andronicus took tragedy Troilus and Cressida truth turned Twelfth Night villain wanted William words wrote young Shakespeare