2 - Shakespeare’s Life, Times and Stage

Summary

In his handsomely produced pictorial biography of Shakespeare, F. E. Halliday dresses up the facts with some genially sentimental speculation, discovering the profound effect on the play-wright of the death of Hamnet, and the inspiration his grand-daughter provided for the last plays; it is all most enjoyable and should have a wide appeal to Stratford audiences fresh from the theatre. At least this book shows how many facts are known about Shakespeare’s life, and perhaps not many more will be discovered; this year has produced only a further note on his possible acquaintances. But in view of the endless spate of speculation which is so often presented as if it were fact, Robert Adger Law has performed a useful service in comparing three recent works relating to Shakespeare’s early life and career, and showing not only that each is unfounded, but that they mutually contradict one another. It is not easy for critics to avoid some prejudice or distortion in their account of the poet, as is brought out by Horst Oppel, who surveys a variety of beliefs ranging from the assertion that he was the most characteristic figure of his age, to the claim that he was the least typical: these extreme attitudes illustrate the difficulty of seeing Shakespeare as fully belonging to his own age, and also as a unique artist distanced by his universality from his contemporaries, and Oppel suggests that a right perspective would reconcile both views. A right perspective eludes W. Schrickx, who presents a Shakespeare too passionately interested in the squabbles of Harvey, Nashe and Greene to be credible. He would relate Love’s Labour’s Lost and an early draft of As You Like It, dating these in 1592–3, to their pamphlet war, finding parallels and allusions everywhere; the trouble is that assumptions multiplied do not approach certainty, as the author seems to think, and their importance for the interpretation of the plays is at best marginal.