Shakespeare

280 Pages·2002·40.42 MB·English

by  Anthony Burgess

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For more than three hundred years, in pur-
suit of William Shakespeare, scholars have
combed the archives, romantics have given
play to their fantasies, cryptographers have
attempted to "decode" the plays. The man
haseludedthem.
Now the hunt is joined by a writer most
brilliantly apt for it: Anthony Burgess,
scholar, poet, novelist, a man of peculiarly
Elizabethan temper in his curiosity and
creativity. Out ofhis profound and sympa-
thetic knowledge of Shakespeare's England
- its life, language, landscape, its great and
ordinary people - and out of his artist's
comprehension of the English drama as it
grew from, and out-grew, the medieval
morality play, he projects in rich and
persuasive detail the world and the spirit of
William Shakespeare.
Interweaving his narrative with a superb
collection of portraits and contemporary
scenes, Burgess begins with the Stratford
ofShakespeare's boyhood, the lively market
town,theshabby-pretentiousestablishment
of the poet's father, merchant glover and
would-begentleman,thepettyschoolwhere
Latin was force-fed to boys hustled into
adulthood. He gives us Will at eighteen in
love with one Anne, married to another
eight years his senior. He makes immediate
the complex, dazzling, squalid London of
the 1580's as it spread before the ambitious
young provincial from Stratford, arriving
unknown to seek his fortune: a roistering,
often brutal, world of alehouse poets, of
playhouse rivalries, of rioting apprentices,
of dangerous political intrigues, of fire,
famine, and plague - but everywhere,
always, the show going on, on open-air
stages the melodramas of Marlowe and
lesser men, at court the masque played by
and for the aristocrat, and for the populace
thebearpitandthepublicexecution.
Burgess captures - and communicates -
the inspired garrulity of that most verbal
timeandplace,thepervadingexuberanceof
language which was to be distilled in
Shakespeare's great works. He gives us
Shakespeare the actor, the theatrical busi-
nessman, the suitor after patronage and
advancement, the indifferent husband, be-
reaved father, lover of the Dark Lady, the
{continuedonbackflap)
48colorplates
97black-and-whiteillustrations
jacket pictures: (front) Detail from the bust of
Shakespeare in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-
Avon (back)theFlowerPortraitofShakespeare
;

Shakespeare
Opposite The escutcheon thatJohn Shakespeare coveted as an alderman gloverwas earned forhim by
his sonWilliamasanactorandplaywright. QuarteredonitherearethearmsofArden,whichWilliam
Shakespearewaspermittedtoadd,thoughheisnotknowntohavedoneso,onthedeathofhismother.
Frontispiece In Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, the authentic bust ofShakespeare holds
initshandaquilloflaterorigin,replacingtheoriginalleadpen.
End-papers For their pillow-covers wealthy Elizabethans favoured designs like this, embroidered on
lineninsilkandsilver-giltandsilverthread.

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Alfred A. Knopf
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Copyright C 1970byAnthonyBurgess
FirstAmericanEdition
AllrightsreservedunderInternationalandPan-American
CopyrightConventions.
Publishedinthe UnitedStatesby
AlfredA.Knopf,Inc.,New York,
anddistributedby
RandomHouse,Inc.,New York.
ThisbookwasdesignedandproducedinGreatBritainby
GeorgeRainbirdLtd.,
MarbleArchHouse,44EdgwareRoad,LondonW2
Pictureresearch: YorkeCrompton
Additionalresearch:Julia Trehane
Design:RonaldClark
Filmsetinnji3pt.MonophotoPlantinno
Typesetandcolorplatesprintedby
WesterhamPressLtd.,Kent,England
Textprintedandboundby
&
Jarrold SonsLtd.,Norwich,England
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:73-112637