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. ( )

An imaginative and effective biography. ( )

Burgess's foreword tells readers exactly what to expect from this biography of Shakespeare:

This is not a book about Shakespeare's plays and poems. It is yet another attempt—the nth—to set down the main facts about the life and society from which the poems and plays arose. If I discuss the content or technique of what Shakespeare and other men wrote, it is not with a view to providing literary history or literary criticism; it is because the people in this book are mostly professional writers, and what they attempted in their art often relates closely to what they did with their lives...

What I claim here is the right of every Shakespeare-lover who has ever lived to paint his own portrait of the man.

Burgess combines the scant documentary evidence for Shakespeare's life with his knowledge of Shakespeare's works, the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Elizabethan theater, and Elizabethan and Jacobean society to produce a lively biography. Burgess's Shakespeare isn't a “dead white man” - he's a man, not just of his time, but of all times. This is a biography meant for lovers of Shakespeare, not for academics. Burgess provides no footnotes or bibliography. However, academics shouldn't dismiss Burgess's Shakespeare as irrelevant. It's the equivalent of classroom lectures delivered by a charismatic teacher, and his passion for his subject may continue to inspire new generations of readers to experience Shakespeare for themselves. ( )

Lively and entertaining account of Shakespeare's life and the astonishing transformation of English drama in the last 10 years of Elizabeth I's reign. Burgess's pace never flags and while much of it may not be strictly true (as he himself points out at relevant points), like the plays, it has the ring of truth. Burgess never lets his undoubted scholarship get in the way of his hugely enjoyable narrative. Especially recommended for the hundreds of illustrations of Shakespeare's contemporaries and scenes of Elizabethan life. The Penguin edition is also really nicely typeset (in Plantin). ( )

How much money? And run did he where? Anthony Burgess was one of the few great men of letters in the 20th century. His URGENT COPY is well worth the trouble. ( )