Shakespeare : a life in art / Russell Fraser ; with a new preface and introduction by the author.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fraser, Russell A.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Shakespeare, William.

Dramatists, English--Early modern, 1500-1700--Biography.

Dramatists, English.

Dramatists, English--Early modern--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

1 volume (various pagings) : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

[Transaction edition].

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick : Transaction Publishers, [2008]

Summary:

Shakespeare: 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 hew 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. Eraser'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.

Contents:

Book I Young Shakespeare

1 The Country 1

2 The Town 25

3 "I, Daedalus" 50

4 Shadows of Himself 79

5 Wild-Goose Chase 107

6 A Motley to the View 136

7 The Dyer's Hand 163

Book 2 Shakespeare: The Later Years

1 Two-Headed Janus 1

2 The Revolution of the Times 34

3 Sailing to Illyria 65

4 Fools of Nature 101

5 Treason in the Blood 134

6 The Wine of Life 160

7 Bravest at the Last 188

8 Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores 216

9 Journey's End 247.

Notes:

Originally published as two volumes by Columbia University Press: Young Shakespeare, 1988, and Shakespeare: the later years, 1992.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Contains:

Fraser, Russell A. Young Shakespeare.

Fraser, Russell A. Shakespeare, the later years.

ISBN:

9781412806053

1412806054

OCLC:

76937361