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Shakespeare and Co
By Stanley Wells
Penguin Books £25
286 pages
Dateline: 12th September, 2006
From time to time, it is tempting to suggest that like whaling, they
should be a moratorium on books about William Shakespeare.
This would protect a dead genius who must be constantly revolving in
his grave, and, at the same time, save the world from what is all too
often tedious speculation about a man whose life will always remain
unknown.
This moratorium could perhaps be lifted when H G Wells's Time Machine
allows some intrepid academic to whiz back 400 years and interviewed
the Bard about his life and writings.
There is an exception that proves every rule and, despite the fact
that he has already made a career out of writing books on and around
the subject, Professor Stanley Wells has found a fascinating new insight
into the legend.
These days, it has become fashionable to try and work out what Shakespeare
must have been like by considering the society in which he lived and
combining this with an analysis of the words that he wrote. So far,
so good.
For far too many writers, the last piece of the jigsaw is to make outrageous
assumptions from the information available and present these as incontrovertible
facts.
The first couple of chapters of Shakespeare & Co threaten
to follow this formula but, once Professor Wells gets into his stride,
this book proves to be both intelligent and fascinating, as well as
painstakingly researched. It also demonstrates that its author has a
knowledge of the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries that must
be second to none.
The basis of the book is to look at the writings of the many playwrights
who were writing at the same time as William Shakespeare and to analyse
them, in conjunction with his.
This allows conclusions to be drawn about exactly when certain plays
were written, and more interestingly by whom. Often, in Elizabethan
and Jacobean times, writers collaborated and the author is happy to
put forward suggestions as to who might have penned which parts of which
plays. This both expands and contracts Shakespeare's canon with proposals
as to parts of others' plays that he might have written and vice versa.
He also, in passing, provides short biographies of many of Shakespeare's
contemporaries and it is depressing to find out that so few lived long
and happy lives. The debtors' prison and an early death were common
factors in a large number of instances.
In manageable chapters, the Professor allows the general reader to
find out much about the likes of the playwright/spy Christopher Marlowe
who had an influence on Shakespeare's early days, other colourful characters
such as George Wilkins, who ran a brothel as well as writing much of
Pericles, Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher to the final chapter
on the best of the Jacobean writers and the only one commonly produced
today, John Webster of Duchess of Malfi fame.
What had initially threatened to be a dreary academic book, is in fact
lightly written and contains much research that if not entirely original
can never have been pulled together in this way before.
For Shakespeare fans everywhere, this book should be top of the Christmas
list.
Philip Fisher
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