Saturday, May 14, 2005
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.
I’ve been listening to a biography of William Shakespeare, Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt, while I drive around town. It’s really very engaging, although if you aren’t a fan of Shakespeare or the history of England at the turn of the 17th century, you might have a better way to spend 15.25 hours.
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The coolest thing about the biography (Shakespeare is cool, I don’t care what others might think) is that it grounds Shakespeare in the society that he came from. In spite of taking a couple of college-level courses on Shakespeare, and spending a month in London and Stratford learning about the guy, I never really understood the society that created him. This is a time when they were still lopping off peoples’ heads and putting them on pikes above the London Bridge, for peet's sake.
The book paints a very close picture of the social and political realities of Elizabethan society. And it draws parallels between Shakespeare’s life, his writing, and his world. The text sometimes drifts into the realm of speculation (there is a whole chapter on how Will as a young man might have been involved in an underground Catholic movement). But even these conjectures are a fascinating look at Shakespeare’s England. The narrator of the audioCDs is a great reader, but it is also available in book form. I highly reccomend it.
Shakespeare Links:
Shakespearean Insulter
Shakespeare and the Internet
Shakespeare's Globe
Elizabethan England
.The coolest thing about the biography (Shakespeare is cool, I don’t care what others might think) is that it grounds Shakespeare in the society that he came from. In spite of taking a couple of college-level courses on Shakespeare, and spending a month in London and Stratford learning about the guy, I never really understood the society that created him. This is a time when they were still lopping off peoples’ heads and putting them on pikes above the London Bridge, for peet's sake.
The book paints a very close picture of the social and political realities of Elizabethan society. And it draws parallels between Shakespeare’s life, his writing, and his world. The text sometimes drifts into the realm of speculation (there is a whole chapter on how Will as a young man might have been involved in an underground Catholic movement). But even these conjectures are a fascinating look at Shakespeare’s England. The narrator of the audioCDs is a great reader, but it is also available in book form. I highly reccomend it.
Shakespeare Links:
Shakespearean Insulter
Shakespeare and the Internet
Shakespeare's Globe
Elizabethan England
# posted by Alison @ 2:56 PM 