Shakespeare And His Birthplace

As the site of literary pilgrimage since the eighteenth century, the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the topic of hundreds of imaginary portrayals, Stratford is ripe for analysis, both in terms of its factual existence and its fictional afterlife. The essays in this volume consider the various manifestations of the physical and metaphorical town on the Avon, across time, genre and place, from America to New Zealand, from children’s literature to wartime commemorations. We meet many Stratfords in this collection, real and imaginary, and the interplay between the two generates new visions of the place.

A new biography of William Shakespeare that explores his private life in Stratford-upon-Avon, his personal aspirations, his self-determination, and his relations with the members of his family and his neighbours. The Private Life of William Shakespeare tells the story of Shakespeare in Stratford as a family man. The book offers close readings of key documents associated with Shakespeare and develops a contextual understanding of the genres from which these documents emerge. It reconsiders clusters of evidence that have been held to prove some persistent biographical fables. It also shows how the histories of some of Shakespeare's neighbours illuminate aspects of his own life. Throughout, we encounter a Shakespeare who consciously and with purpose designed his life. Having witnessed the business failures of his merchant father, he determined not to follow his father's model. His early wedding freed him from craft training to pursue a literary career. His wife's work, and probably the assistance of his parents and brothers, enabled him to make the first of the property purchases that grounded his life as a gentleman. With his will, he provided for both his daughters in ways that were suitable to their circumstances; Anne Shakespeare was already protected by dower rights in the houses and lands he had acquired. His funerary monument suggests that the man of 'small Latin and less Greek' in fact had some experience of an Oxford education. Evidences are that he commissioned the monument himself.

A morbid tragedy about mortality, madness, and murder, Hamlet follows the eponymous Prince of Denmark as he plots to avenge his father's murder at the hands of Claudius, Hamlet's uncle and the current king, who married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Haunted by a ghost and arguing with his girlfriend Ophelia, Hamlet struggles to take revenge, as delay and feigned insanity preoccupy him. Rounding out the cast are other famous figures, like Horatio, and Polonius, and of course, the Gravedigger, who finds the skull of "poor Yorick." Perhaps Shakespeare's most popular play, Hamlet.

The Merchant of Venice, is an intriguing drama of love, greed, and revenge. Believed to have been written in 1596, it is classified as a comedy, but while it shares certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps remembered more for its dramatic scenes, and especially for the character of Shylock, a vengeful Venetian moneylender. At its heart, the play contrasts the characters of Shylock, with the gracious, level-headed Portia, a wealthy young woman, besieged by suitors. One suitor in particular, Antonio, a merchant in Venice, must default on a large loan provided by Shylock, who insists on the enforcement of the binding contract that will cost the life of Antonio, inciting Portia to mount a memorable defense. In this richly plotted drama, Shylock, whom Shakespeare endowed with the depth and vitality of his greatest characters, is not alone in his villainy. In fact, the large cast of ambitious and scheming characters demonstrates in scene after scene, that honesty is a quality often strained where matters of love and money are concerned. In many of the play’s productions, Shylock gives such powerful expression to his alienation due to the hatred around him that, he emerges as the hero. The suspense and gravity of the play's main plot, along with its romance, have made The Merchant of Venice an audience favorite and one of the most studied and performed of Shakespeare's plays.