2 - Shakespeare’s Life, Times and Stage

Summary

The three categories specified in the title of this review are difficult to distinguish and still more difficult to delimit: how does one trace the circumference of a circle in the water? As I write, for instance, the Times Literary Supplement is the scene of a mild scholarly debate, caused by Eric Sams’s contention that Shakespeare might have written Edmund Ironside during the so-called ‘missing years’ before the first mention of him in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit. Whether this news item belongs to Shakespeare’s Life or only to his Times depends on how one feels about the argument. Like many others, I rushed out and read the play at once: it doesn’t sound much like Shakespeare, but then the argument is that early Shakespeare wouldn’t have sounded like Shakespeare anyway. Less subjective rebuttals (based on the Common Source argument) have since appeared; Sams has replied to these; and I suspect that the excitement will have died down by the time this is read.