The Life And Times of William Shakespeare: 1564-1616

By Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel

William Shakespeare's literary work has fascinated and entertained people throughout the world for centuries. His life, however, has been shrouded in mystery. Now an eminent Shakespearean scholar... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1904449557
• ISBN13: 9781904449553
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Chaucer Pr
• Length: 420 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.5" x 1.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

remarkable biography

[this is a review in progress, to be continued and revised] Here's a very impressively-researched and well-illustrated book (and given the high quality of illustrations, many in color, reasonably priced). She claims Shakespeare was a life-long secret Catholic. Others have claimed this before. Surely he was baptized as such and had family members and friends who evidently were still Catholic when that was illegal in England. But his book goes beyond that, claiming that Shakespeare studied in continental European colleges set up for English Catholics. She claims much else too. It may suggest caution that she claims to have discovered so much: who was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets (Southampton's wife), which four portraits are genuine (and others not), and even what disease she thinks he died of--and more! (Even if he had the disease, which I'm not qualified to evaluate, it does not necessarily follow that he died from it.) So one might think that's just too much to believe, and, perhaps, though I don't know this, she might want him to be a Catholic, to claim him. But all that said, and even if some of her claims are speculative, she offers pretty good evidence for some of these claims. Less persuasive speculations include what life situations gave rise to some of his writings--occasionally possiblilty but not necessity--and whether or not he wrote a sonnet copied on a painting that forms part of the "Dark Lady" identification; if his sonnet, it is not among his best. It is at least quite plausible that Shakespeare had more education than grade school would have provided. And he could not have attended Oxford or Cambridge without taking an oath of loyalty to the Queen and the Church of England. Though perhaps one could argue that he was merely an avid reader, largely self-educated, I think his apparent education is one reason that so many theories have been proposed and enthusiastically promoted that really Francis Bacon or de Vere or Marlowe (with a supposedly faked death) or someone else really wrote Shakespeare. Years ago I read several of these alternate author scenarios and conspiracy theories, all of which I found, besides being contradictory, unpersuasive. Also, there's the relatively sparse documentation of his life--lesser authors contemporary with him left a bigger personal paper trail. For some reason--temperament or a need to hide his religion, or both?--he kept a low profile, especially considering that he was a writer and actor. When asked to write a poem honoring Queen Elizabeth, who persecuted Catholics, he declined. That last item is merely circumstantial evidence, but she piles up many such circumstances, and she gives a plausible chronology of his trips to Europe, even giving plausible names and photographs in the school registers that he might have used to prevent English spies from identifying him. At a minimum, she has reopened some old questions in an interesting way, and has provided at least some new relevant evidence. Even