Shakespeare's penmanship has made his figure bigger than life to a point where it is hard to imagine him ever being human like us. With Shakespeare Anthony Burgess manages to bring down the great playwright to the realm from which he originated from, displaying the layers of imperfect humanity within him. Here he is unfaithful, gets easily heartbroken, has glimpses of vanity, is careful with his money and never forgets a loan. Admiration of the poet's talent also seeps through the pages, but instead of it taking central stage (à la Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc), the praise is displayed more subtly. Burgess also understands the importance of context, paying a significant amount of his writing to detailed descriptions of Elisabethan era England and the events that directly influenced the bard and his writing. Granted, those people who are looking for a more traditional biography might come out dissapointed. The scarce amount of information regarding Shakespeare during his lifetime leaves Burgess no choice but to sometimes infer (albeit logically) as to what might have happened. On the other hand, this frees Burgess to tackle his ‘biography’ as a work of fiction, which is evident in his loose and playful style, which is a welcome addition to the overall enjoynment of the book.

I picked this book at random and I am in no form a Shakespeare scholar, my knowledge of his complete oeuvre could best be described as ‘basic’ or ‘highly aware’. As mentioned, Burgess does not shy away from providing the smallest of details, with myriads of names and contextual bits sometimes being the reason as to why I was losing my interest.

Not necessarily as well researched as Greenblatt's study, but certainly more poetic.

Šių laikų aktualijoms įdomus faktas. Elžbietos, Šekspyro Anglija, 1590-ieji ir maras. Mirdavo net?:) 30 žmonių per dieną, o teatrai buvo uždaryti du metus..
Knyga labai smulkmeniška, toks jausmas kad apie Šekspyrą jau viskas parašyta, tad autorius stengės išknisti 3-os kartos pusbrolius ar kitus ne tokius reikšmingus faktus. Norėjau pažinti Šekspyrą. Nepažinau.

Yra lietuviškas leidimas "Siluetų" serijoje (1990 m., leidykla "Vyturys"). Įdomi, profesionaliai parašyta biografinė knyga.

Burgess's novelistic skills enrich this erudite (but not stuffy) and entertaining portrait of Shakespeare and his times.

En teoría terminé de leer este libro. Ahora, si me preguntan por la vida de Shakespeare no tengo ni idea porque entre tantos personajes que presenta esta biografía, anécdotas, temas de rima y otras cosas, todo se volvió una masa revuelta de nombres y hechos que no puedo conectar para armar la biografía del bardo.
Rescató algunas frases bellas, al final si había algo de encantador en este libro.
Sonará cringe, pero el párrafo final creo que es muy bonito “No tiene porque afligirnos no disponer de un retrato satisfactorio de Shakespeare. Para ver su cara nos basta con mirar a un espejo. El es cualquiera de nosotros, personar corrientes y sufrientes, impulsadas por ambiciones modestas, preocupadas por el dinero, víctimas del deseo, demasiado mortales…”

Who better to tell the life of Shakespeare than the author of A Clockwork Orange (where he invented a sort of Russian/Shakespearean dialect amongst his fictional world of chaos). Unlike other biographies of Shakespeare, this one doesn't run on too long, finishing just a little north of 200 pages. And Burgess glides you along the read with ease and humor. He's also not afraid to voice his opinion regarding specific plays from the Bard (he hates Pericles and Winter's Tale), and he never lets you forget that this biography of an old writer is told by a writer himself, who feels connected to Shakespeare, even if only because they share the same profession and love of writing. He talks a lot about the other writers that lived around Shakespeare's time (Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, etc.) and while these parts can feel a little dull, they do help put the time period and political events into perspective. Burgess is humorous in explaining his own specific theories about Shakespeare's life, as he is always quick to remind the reader that he has no way of proving that this happened. It feels like you're having a one on one chat with Burgess, learning about Shakespeare from him, and then hearing what his opinion is on the manner.

Absolutely gorgeous writing. Didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but put it all together very, very succinctly. Tight writing with a very strong voice. An absolute breeze to read. Puts the whole era and Will's genius in context. Ties up all the known facts, the supposed facts, and the outright myths and lies in one nice pie that you couldn't eat fast enough.

Very good, if a bit speculative. On the other hand, Burgess makes no apologies: "This book contains conjecture - duly and timidly signaled with phrases like "It may well be that..." or "Conceivably, about this time..."

Good quote: "All that young men of learning like Greene and Nashe and Peele and Kyd could do was write eyecatching pamphlets and essay the drama (unless, of course, they wished to take up espionage like Marlowe and end up with a dagger in the frontal lobes)..."

Negalima teigti, kad knyga neįdomi, tačiau sunkoka. Ypač jei žinai tik dvi pagrindines Vilio pjeses:) Nors perskaityti reikia ir tikrai įmanoma.

If you are looking for any biography on Shakes, you should go to this one. Burgess understands that next to nothing is known about him, so he does well with creative speculation and gives us an overall picture of what life was like back then and an appreciation for how strange it is that we don't know anything about Shakespeare.