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The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare PDF Book SOUL OF THE AGE: THE LIFE, MIND AND WORLD OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Jonathan Bate | 512 pages | 01 Aug 2009 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780141015866 | English | London, United Kingdom Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare PDF Book As Jonathan Bate observes in the concluding pages of his splendid work, John Hemings and Henry Condell, who gathered the 37 texts included in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, receive too little gratitude for the Folio and for saving 18 plays that otherwise would never have appeared, including As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra, and Dazzling. Academic, historian, literary critic , biographer, broadcaster. I might refer back to the book again as This is a book I admired more than enjoyed. Highly readable. You know the saying: There's no time like the present The Best Books of So Far. It is about the poetry of the plays and how actors should speak the lines. An intriguing idea, but not one that I am sure comes across as completely successful in this text. The other area which struck me listening especially to the later plays though perhaps it doesn't fit Bate's intellectual scheme is Shakespeare's use of music, song and dance as an integral part of the play. Interesting thoughts are presented here, but they are at best conjecture, and thus not as important as Bate seems to emphasize. If there is a gap anywhere in Bate's universe it is that, except for saying "as far as we know he did not experience soldiering at first hand", he fails to deal with what seems to me an obsessional interest in military life. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Richard Eyre. More filters. And, by deft footwork, answers the question and more besides. Can another biography really surprise us? In this book, Soul of the Age, Bate puts Shakespeare in historical context of the Renaissance and places him firmly in the history of his times as both an Elizabethan and Jacobean writer. Bill Bryson, the author of a recent very likeable condensed biography, put it perfectly: Shakespeare, he said, is the "literary equivalent of an electron - forever there and not there. Jonathan Bate's Soul of the Age brings us closer than ever to understanding what being Shakespeare was actually like. They discussed relief for the plague victims. In the bloody Roman play Titus Andronicus, it looks for a moment as though the black baby born of the clandestine affair between villainous Aaron the Moor and Tamora, queen of Goths and empress of Rome, will also be dispatched at birth. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. Email Address. How did Bottom's dream rewrite the Bible? With a bucket of whitewash, and a two-shilling bill to follow, workmen covered over all these images, obliterating the signs of a shared faith and folk memory. While I stumbled a little in beginning it, the test of a 5 star rating is readability. Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare Writer It transformed Shakespeare from jobbing playwright to courtly poet, marked him out as the crossover man who could appeal equally to penny- paying groundlings and powerful courtiers or even the queen herself. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Truly, it's a masterwork -- scholarly and brilliantly insightful. Apr 07, ISBN Many sections of the book were deeply fascinating to me. It also won the Falstaff Award. I realised for the first time that it was the banning of the cycles of medieval mystery plays by the Protestant Reformation which created a vacuum into which Shakespeare could present his new plays, untrammelled by dogma, relatively free to range over a wide range of topics and ideas. The population of this small but prosperous market town in the English Midland county of Warwickshire was about fifteen hundred, so more than one in seven were taken in those few months of devastation. Greenblatt's "Will in the World" did a similar study but with many more "Could it be that? Mar 01, Sydney rated it it was ok Shelves: non-fiction , , biography. Series of the book contains:. Readers will be struck by different revelations and insights in the spate of ideas. Really good information. Second was his survival of the plague. Rating details. Bate demonstrates that Shakespeare's work is veined with the Latin grammar that was the basis of his schooling and that he gathered the habit of translation from his education - Ovid's shadow fell over the comedies, and Plutarch's Parallel Lives spawned the Roman plays. I did learn a lot about Elizabethan England and Shakespeare, but the writing never quite grabbed me and pulled me in. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Joseph Anton. Few books pack so much new thinking about Shakespeare between their covers. Here 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 The Merry Wives of Windsor , 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 The Merchant of Venice won a wife who could save him from financial ruin. Become a Member Start earning points for buying books! Download as PDF Printable version. Topics Biography books The Observer reviews Reuse this content. Cause of deaths unknown. Weaving a dazzling tapestry of Elizabethan beliefs and obsessions, private passions and political intrigues, Soul of the Age leads us on an exhilarating tour of the extraordinary, colourful and often violent world that shaped and informed Shakespeare's thinking. Written by one of the greatest living critics, this book is perhaps the best one on the Sonnets. Retrieved 15 January Sep 20, Tiffany Williams rated it it was amazing. I just wish I had enjoyed it a bit more. Home 1 Books 2. What this book tells us about Bate is that he has the gift of a true teacher - able at once to educate and to entertain. There is a good discussion of astrology and astronomy Shakespeare was clearly a sceptic of horoscopes , but no mention of witchcraft or other aspects of the supernatural, which is a pretty huge lacuna - from Joan La Pucelle and the sorcerous Duchess in Henry VI 1 and 2, to the deities performing in The Tempest, unearthly powers are never far away. Edward de Vere was dead for most of the time Shakespeare was alive! It is at its best when it sticks to the literary and theatrical stuff: his plays, his theatres and the people he knew. The Guardian. There is London and there is the rest of England. The horror faced by the townspeople may be glimpsed from a contemporary account of a plague outbreak in London. Product Details. The cause is duly noted in a marginal annotation opposite the burial entry for Oliver Gunne, apprentice: hic incepit pestis. Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare Reviews It's not perfect, but no book is, and for this Shakespear Every book about Shakespeare must deal in conjecture, since the subject is unknowable in so many areas of his life, and since all plays are open to interpretation, readers can disagree with an author's view, but one ought not fault an author for what he thinks. Stacy Schiff. In that case, we can't His biography, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life , published globally by HarperCollins , was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and was named by the Biographers' International Organization as the outstanding biography of the year in the category of Arts and Literature. Enter your email address to subscribe to this site and receive notifications of new posts by email. We know all of one, and very little about the internalization of the other. Show More. If you enjoyed this list, check out our pick of the 10 best books about literature and our interesting facts about the Bard. Really good information. Bate demonstrates that Shakespeare's work is veined with the Latin grammar that was the basis of his schooling and that he gathered the habit of translation from his education - Ovid's shadow fell over the comedies, and Plutarch's Parallel Lives spawned the Roman plays. The Girl in the Red Coat. In this book, Soul of the Age, Bate puts Shakespeare in historical context of the Renaissance and places him firmly in the history of his times as both an Elizabethan and Jacobean writer. That hasn't stopped writers from speculating, however, and from going to the plays and poems to plug the biographical holes. It doesn't matter, because it works. I am a bit of a Shakespeare 'bore' and will not hear a word against him. More than an actual life-story, Bate sets out to write an 'intellectual biography' of Shakespeare. Greenblatt is the founder of the school of criticism known as New Historicism, which, put crudely and simply, examines literary works in their original context through particular focus on the network of writings that were being produced at the time the literary text was produced. At the same time, Bate uses what he discovers about the places, events, and ideas that Shakespeare encountered to illuminate the works. Vintage Baldwin. Sitting alone upon my thought in melancholy mood, In sight of sea, and at my back an ancient hoary wood, I saw a fair young lady come, her secret fears to wail, Clad all in colour of a nun, and covered with a veil; Yet for the day was calm and clear I might discern her face, As one might see a damask rose hid under crystal glass.
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