Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life (Arden Shakespeare)

It is frustrating to read interesting text about works of art only to realize the actual photos were left out of this edition. If i had it over to do, I'd buy a different edition.I have to confess, this book has a lot more context than I need for my level of curiosity. I don't really care what lesser known writers came from Shakespeare's home town, for example. This book is for scholars.I haven't read much of it all yet, and it may become engrossing.

This book is too dense for me, as I'm a Shakespeare fan but not a Shakespeare scholar. I think the book would appeal to scholars in this area but not to the general reader.

A must-read for anyone interested in the factors that motivated the world’s most supreme and sublime poet. Valuable to lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.

Determined to discover "the person" behind the works, I've read over a dozen biographies of Shakespeare, from Marchette Chute's popular biography to fantastically thick (by size and prose) scholarly studies. This text, while scholarly, is excellent, well-researched and well written, offering some reasonable speculation while avoiding flights of fancy. I would recommend reading two biographies of Shakespeare, since differing (if only slightly) perspective is always welcome, however this should be one of the two.

Was sorry when this book was finished, as I found every page a joy. It's not light stuff, written as it is by a British Shakespeare scholar who dumbs down nothing. Reading her puts one in a lofty circle. Loved this book. She writes so well about one who wrote so well.

Very sad that the author, Duncan-Jones, has devoted her entire career to studying a man she obviously can't stand. Anyone who reads this book should be aware of her bias against Shakespeare: Whenever there are two plausible interpretations of his behavior, you can count on Duncan-Jones to embrace the one that makes Shakespeare look bad. That she profits from her unfair and unkind conclusions about the greatest writer who ever lived is nothing less than outrageous.

Very interesting mustering of small but significant facts about Shakespeare's life, especially in old age.

Interstinf ife, written maybe for more higher intellect? I just found it har din some pklaces to "translate". I enjoyed it

The choice of title,"Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life" contains a deliberate ambiguity: the biography is not going to be an exercise in bardolatory and its subject didn't always behave in a manner befitting the Gentleman that he had paid through the nose to become. Were we never to hear the last of that second best bed? It turns out that Anne Hathaway wasn't the only person Shakespeare behaved uncharitably towards: Queen Elizabeth got no elegy from him, the parish no dues and the poor no alms. In addition he made a habit of associating with ne'er-do-wells like the "unsavoury" George Wilkins. Katherine Duncan-Jones follows close at his heels and ponders and speculates. Some of her speculations strike me as a bit far-fetched (as when she tries to persuade us that the dedicatory epistle to "Venus and Adonis" was designed to be read one way by the Earl of Southampton and another by Lord Burghley), but they are never less than interesting, and what she has to say about Shakespeare's relations with Ben Jonson is very persuasive.Despite the feminist bias lurking in the very title, I enjoyed this life of Shakespeare. Her scholarship is not mugged up; it's the fruit of a lifetime's research, lightly worn and very comprehensive. It's an impressive achievement to have written a 300-page biography which, rather than go back over more or less familiar ground, contains so much original material.

As advertised - thank you.

good