Describes family life during Shakespeare's time, to give a better understanding of his works and their context.

From the star-crossed romance of Romeo and Juliet to Othello's misguided murder of Desdemona to the betrayal of King Lear by his daughters, family life is central to Shakespeare's dramas. This book helps students learn about family life in Shakespeare's England and in his plays. The book begins with an overview of the roots of Renaissance family life in the classical era and Middle Ages. This is followed by an extended consideration of family life in Elizabethan England. The book then explores how Shakespeare treats family life in his plays. Later chapters then examine how productions of his plays have treated scenes related to family life, and how scholars and critics have responded to family life in his works. The volume closes with a bibliography of print and electronic resources. The volume begins with a look at the classical and medieval background of family life in the Early Modern era. This is followed by a sustained discussion of family life in Shakespeare's world. The book then examines issues related to family life across a broad range of Shakespeare's works. Later chapters then examine how productions of the plays have treated scenes concerning family life, and how scholars and critics have commented on family life in Shakespeare's writings. The volume closes with a bibliography of print and electronic resources for student research. Students of literature will value this book for its illumination of critical scenes in Shakespeare's works, while students in social studies and history courses will appreciate its use of Shakespeare to explore daily life in the Elizabethan age.

Using the evidence of wills and inventories, Jeanne Jones has built up a detailed picture of everyday life in Stratford, with chapters on where and how people lived, what they did for a living, standards of literacy, marriage, families and friends

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.

Describes Shakespeare's experiences in London and his retirement to the country in a fictional account that includes excerpts from his works.

Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.