Shakespeare: The Biography
by Peter Ackroyd
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 144)
The definite article in the title seems a little hubristic. I don't know if this is the definitive biography of Shakespeare — haven't read any of the hundreds of others — but I certainly enjoyed it.
I don't know if I completely trust Ackroyd as a historian; it's probably unfair, but I just get a nagging sense sometimes that he's a bit too fond of a good story. He has clearly done a ton of research, though, and as you'd expect he's very good at providing historical context. And he w...more
I don't know if I completely trust Ackroyd as a historian; it's probably unfair, but I just get a nagging sense sometimes that he's a bit too fond of a good story. He has clearly done a ton of research, though, and as you'd expect he's very good at providing historical context. And he w...more
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Read in March, 2008
This is not a biography in the traditional sense. Pecious little is known about Shakespeare's life, so Ackroyd goes through contemporary accounts and historical documents, leaving every page filled with conjecture about what WS might have done, could have felt or can conceivably have intended. But to his credit, Ackroyd is an unabashed Shakespeare lover and leaves few details unteurned to present a reasonably full account of Elizabethan life and literary history. Though not quite up to the calib...more
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Read in January, 2006
Everybody knows that there is precious little actual information about Shakespeare and as a result there are all these theories speculating about who he really was. I have always considered these to be crapola that reveal more about the proponent of the theory than they do about the Bard.
Rather than claim that the bald actor from Stratford is an imposter Ackroyd's approach is to, on the one hand, do a biography of Elizabethan London and on the other trace Shakespeare through all the lawsu...more
Rather than claim that the bald actor from Stratford is an imposter Ackroyd's approach is to, on the one hand, do a biography of Elizabethan London and on the other trace Shakespeare through all the lawsu...more
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Read in June, 2008
not bad...my one complaint would be there doesn't seem to be a lot of original work here...
ackroyd basically took all the bios that were written in the past decade or so and aggregated them into one volume...i read greenblatt's 'will in the world' a few years back and could readily pick out passages that were re-produced here almost verbatim...his photographs were also culled from other recent texts...not a big problem, but there it is...
if you haven't read any of the the other recent works ...more
ackroyd basically took all the bios that were written in the past decade or so and aggregated them into one volume...i read greenblatt's 'will in the world' a few years back and could readily pick out passages that were re-produced here almost verbatim...his photographs were also culled from other recent texts...not a big problem, but there it is...
if you haven't read any of the the other recent works ...more
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Read in July, 2006
Leaving aside the inherent pretentiousness of calling any work on Shakespeare "the" biography, this book does show painstaking research into not just Shakespeare's life, but his time, environs, social circles, etc. It does weave together to form a coherent narrative, and Ackroyd does sometimes offer up various interpretations of particular information, but equally often he simply asserts his theory as "likely." Despite being a Shakespeare fan, I wasn't very engaged by this.
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Read in August, 2008
A good deal of this biography is conjecture, but that's to be expected--there isn't much documentation of Shakespeare's life. The best thing about this book is that Ackroyd makes educated guesses and takes the time to explain why he believes certain things are likely to be so. The contextual information on Shakespeare's London and Stratford helps fill in a lot of blanks in my knowledge, too.
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Not only did I learn so many interesting factoids about the man himself, but also of that time in history, and what life would have been like in Elizabethan England. Ackroyd is a master storyteller and really pieced together the parts of Shakespeare's life to make one hell of a biography. I would recommend this book to anyone who has even the tiniest interest in the Bard.
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
people who like shakespeare/equivocators
I submit that if you broke up all the words of this book and weighed them, by far the heaviest category would be the qualifiers 'maybe', 'possibly', 'perhaps', and the like. It's more a list of suppositions than a biography, but for all that, Ackroyd knows his London and certainly imagines his Shakespeare well enough.
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Read in December, 2007
A comprehensive attempt to construct the man from the scant historical record. Short chapters and a rich imaginative style rescues this lengthy work from feeling excessively academic. Wonderful illustrations on glossy plates. A good gift for a lover of Shakespear.
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So far, I'm enjoying this book, even though I'm having to squeeze it in between my classwork. Ackroyd proposes Shakespeare as a crypto-Catholic in a changing and rather dangerous England for Catholics.
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Read in January, 2006
Ackroyd is a gorgeous biographer and, although I didn't learn much I didn't already know, it's a beautiful read. I particularly enjoyed his speculations on Shakespeare's relationship with his daughters.
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