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Shakespeare

anthony burgess

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Like Burgess's early novel, Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love-Life, this equally delightful factual treatment of what we know of the Bard combines Burgess's stimulating erudition and his well-informed imagination. The result is at once a speculative biography, a theatrical history, and a re-creation of the Elizabethan age. Whether a vivid retracing of the evolution Elizabethan theater, a bravura reconstruction of the first performance of Hamlet, an infiltration of the intricacies of the court of the Virgin Queen, or an elegy on the era's end with the distrastrous Essex Rebellion, Burgess -- author of the classic A Clockwork Orange -- sets the stage for England's most glorious time and turns the spotlight on the figure of William Shakespeare. "Animated by affection and an understanding of the creative imagination that only a creative writer can bring to bear."—Atlantic Monthly "A smooth-flowing narrative, often enlivened by Anthony Burgess's Joycean appetite for linguistic fantasy."—Economist "Bright, racy...knowledgeable and humorous, alternately sensible and quirky."—Terry Eagleton, Commonweal "Burgess's wonderfully well-stocked mind and essentially wayward spirits are just right for summoning up an apparition of the Bard...."—Daily Telegraph

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1970
Places
united kingdom, 

This edition

Format
256 pages, Paperback
Published
February 9, 2002 by Da Capo Press
ISBN
9780786709724
ASIN
0786709723
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the B...

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About the author

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anthony burgess

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).

He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers, a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air. His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King, and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire. He composed the Sinfoni Melayu, the Symphony (No. 3) in C, and the opera Blooms of Dublin.

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 35 votes)
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35 reviews All reviews
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ReinaHimeka
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I'm torn on this one. As far as Shakespeare biographies go, it's probably pretty good (I have nothing to judge it by!). At times some of the conjecture on Burgess' part bothered me, but a biography of The Bard can be little more than supposition. At other times, particularly during his narrative concerning the performance of Hamlet, I was enchanted by the reality of attending an Elizabethan play.

Heavy on historical context--that being the only concrete detail available--the biography provided a very convincing impetus for the creation of each play.
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Powerbank5000mah
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Perhaps the most distinctive and pleasing element of Burgess' book lies not in its ability to inform by dissecting the "raw facts" of history, but rather in its reflection of one accomplished writer's speculative musings on the great--yet altogether elusive--details of the life of one of his literary heroes. In this playful biographical study, the author pieces together the scant surviving historical accounts of the life of The Bard and acknowledges them as the thin and inadequate skeleton that they are for framing the life behind the greatest playwright of all time. Then he effusively fills in the gaps with his own informed guesses and imaginative theories. The Shakespeare that Burgess portrays is one who may or may not have been real, but who commodiously satisfies the personal questions that plain history leaves disappointingly unanswered.

The extent to which Burgess' guesses often digresses into the realm of fantasy and grandiose myth will inevitably elicit a cringe or two from the reader; however, the book is altogether an enjoyable read and does an excellent job of placing Shakespeare and his works in a historical context that fans of his plays and poems might not otherwise consider. Personally, I couldn't put it down. The book certainly enabled me to see some of my favorite plays in a new light and instilled me with an eagerness to read or reread several of his works.
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Chiibi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I am not sure was I prepared to read this work by Anthony Burgess about Shakespeare. I get that a lot of it was a speculation and fiction written about Shakespeare. It was an interesting piece of work, however it took me forever to read it. Some places were intriguing, had a lot of historical facts which amazed me and I felt that they were useful. Yet, in some cases the speculation of facts was too long and complicated to understand.
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aredessa502
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A joyous, intellectual read. Wasn't Burgess a genius? Truly a remarkable man. In truth, Burgess' Shakespeare has very little of factual novelty to offer my generation; all of his knowledge and intuition have formed part of the basis of the latest generation of Shakespeare biographers and writers, not to mention those like Robert Nye's The Late Mr. Shakespeare.

Nevertheless, the way that Burgess writes makes this book easily worthwhile. Taking just the facts that we know about the Bard (or, knew, in 1976), he strings a story of Shakespeare's life that is full of reasonable assumptions and some more fantastic but equally beautiful surprises. A vivid and enjoyable read.
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Ravell
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Not the most reliable biography of Will floating around out there, but Burgess is fully upfront whenever he is indulging in a flight of fancy or making a bold speculation. The few hard facts that we have about Shakespeare don’t make for a very riveting read, so I immensely enjoyed following Burgess into the realm of imagination in order to conjure up vivid depiction of Shakespeare’s London, his cranky contemporaries, and of course the mysterious man himself.
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AZ1087653
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Very nicely illustrated and a interesting look-see at the possible Dark Lady...
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