Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life

Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: As with Duncan-Jones's biography of Sidney, her strength is her imagination. A book, like so many other 'Shakespeare biographries', that belongs on the 'fiction' shelf.

Rating:
Summary: Rattling the Bones
Review: I enjoyed this highly original Shakespeare biography, if only because of its deliberate departure from mainstream Bardolatry. Biographers of Shakespeare are in a paradoxical situation: Shakespeare left behind reams of writings of genius, and many legal documents, but there is little solid indication of what sort of personality he was, or what made him tick. Would-be biographers therefore resort to supposition and fabrication to fill in the numerous blanks. Biographies of Shakespeare thus reflect more about the desires, needs, and personality of the biographer than Shakespeare himself. Duncan-Jones' book is no exception. She seems to be motivated by a rather adolescent resentment of Shakespeare because many fine Elizabethan or Jacobean writers, such as Sidney, Nashe, Webster, and Marston, are neglected at his expense. This leads her into the worst possible interpretation of Shakespeare's activities at every turn. Despite this, or because of it, Ungentle Shakespeare is compelling, provocative, and important, by forcing us to acknowledge the possibility that Shakespeare (gasp!) was a complex, flawed guy. It is well-written and generally well-argued. Occasionally, her animus against Shakespeare leads her into assertions which are plain silly: Why should Shakespeare's appropriation of Robert Greene's Pandosto for the plot of The Winter's Tale be seen as "settling scores"? More realistically, this is a probably a generous tribute to a departed rival.

Readers seeking a more favorable slant are advised to read Michael Wood's intriguing biography (another shocker: was Shakespeare Catholic?) or the very sober, but highly reliable biography by Park Honan.

Rating:
Summary: The Arden Shakespeare graced by a provocative new biography
Review: Recent years have given us several fine new works on Shakespeare, among them Harold Bloom's prickly but masterful "The Invention of the Human" and Park Honan's well-researched, sober "Shakespeare - A Life". To these we must now add Katherine Duncan-Jones' "Ungentle Shakespeare". Where Bloom illuminates the works and marvels at the scope of Shakespeare's mind, and Honan relates the life based on the "facts", with as little speculation as possible, Ms. Duncan-Jones draws on what is clearly an encyclopedic knowledge of documents, history, and scholarship to consciously extract from the context of the times possible insights into the man and his craft.

The author (refreshingly) sets out with nothing special to prove and no incipient desire to deify or demonize the Bard. Even Honan seems to tend, if in doubt, to "find in the Bard's favour": the sum left Stratford's poor in Shakespeare's will, for example, is deemed a "generous bequest". Until, that is, it is viewed next to the bequests of other contemporary people of wealth, as Duncan-Jones does, revealing it as paltry by comparison - once we view it in a broader context.

This is the pattern for the entire book: intentionally not an exhaustive biography, "Scenes From His Life" (the book's sub-title) are used to illuminate the poet's achievement, hitherto unexplored but likely aspects of his personality, and his journey through his times in a way that nicely supplements more (and also far less) cautious biographys. In questioning certain aspects of received wisdom, Duncan-Jones invites us to envision Shakespeare the man, living and interacting in a complex, high-pressure reality, not as a Cultural Icon on a pedestal.

For those of us who wish to "take him all in all", Duncan-Jones' "Ungentle Shakespeare" is a wonderful invitation to broaden our perspective on the Bard. Orchids to the Arden Series for publishing it, as it expands on and supplements information in the series' excellent introductions to specific plays. My bottom line: I've seldom put down a biography with such a sense of having gotten real insights about a famous historical figure about whom (ostensibly)"little is known".

Rating:
Summary: Provocative and informative
Review: The reviewer who dismissed this book as "fiction" was totally wrong. This is a highly original book, which shows us that the implications of the familiar evidence for Shakespeare's life have never been fully understood until now. The author is not afraid to challenge many of our most entrenched assumptions about Shakespeare -- not least the hope that he must have been "a nice person". Duncan-Jones uses her brilliant knowledge of original documents and sources to demonstrate that there is a great deal of evidence that Shakespeare behaved pretty badly in relation to the poor and towards his daughters, and that he wangled his way to getting a coat of arms. It's a refreshing picture, which hasn't been presented in ANY previous biography; perhaps it's no coincidence that this is the first Shakespeare biography written by a woman. But this is by no means simply a hatchet job. Duncan-Jones' account of Shakespeare's social climbing is balanced by some wonderfully sensitive accounts of the plays; she shows her capacity both for sharp psychological insight, and for appreciative literary criticism. Anyone interested in Shakespeare (and who isn't?) needs to buy this book.