The above list essentially provides the basis of Jonathan Bates , 2010 Play The man from Stratford which starred Simon Callow.
The guardian’s criticism of this piece was that the performance should be billed as a lecture rather than a play, saying, rather cruelly, that its “ reductive rent-a-quote approach simply treats the writer as a 17th-century celebrity” (Guardian)
I wanted to find a way of reading Shakespeare as a credible character , in a one man show that illustrated his world and context and bought his colleagues to life too.
I wanted to avoid the lecture style form of the man from Stratford and didn’t want to reproduce something already written.
With the caveat that every biographical fiction or semi-fiction is by definition a construction and always an examination to some degree of the time in which a work is made, I ensured that each textual decision was accountable via documented or inferred evidence and sought to identify a mode of writing and performing that balanced imagination, epic performance, poetry, story telling, and naturalism.
At the time of writing the textual-archeological investigations of The Rose Theatre, New Place, and the re-creation of Blackfriars yielded insights into some aspects of theatre and domestic life.
These find their way into the text, offering physical detail to augment the action. For example, the mention of the shimmering phantoms at Blackfriars discovered by testing candle light and pearl dust, Shakespeare's descriptions of lodging with his father, cleaning the oyster shells from the floor of the theatre and other details.
I wondered how taking into account the pressures and form of times shaped by a police state, international paranoia and strict control might re-contextualise our reading of what certain events and behaviours might mean.
I examined the materiality of his relations with properties, the new industry of theatre, and the intrigues of court. These findings along with scrutiny of various arguments by scholars that combine textual analysis with historicism like Greenblatt and Shapiro, with those predominantly British scholars that focus on the biographical elements of Shakespeare's life like Jonathan Bate and Stanley Wells.
I also used reports and writings of contemporaries like Ben Jonson and those at court that offer us insight into wider perspectives.
Politics and writing: this combined supositions, intuitions and findings from textual historicist readings of text-orientated academics like Paul Cantor and Stephen Greenblatt and Oxford scholar Emma Smith.
Every time a play is is mentioned in a personal context I played with the intimations and deductions of these scholars.
Cantor and Smith's online lectures informed ideas surrounding a number of plays in the text. These accompany historical deductions by writers including James Shapiro, Micheal Wood, and Jonathan Bate.
Initial Reading included the following:
Ackroyd, Peter. 2010. Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Knopf Doubleday.
Bate, Jonathan, and Dora Thornton. 2012. Shakespeare. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bloom, Harold. 2010. Shakespeare. London: Fourth Estate.
Bloom, Harold. 2004. Shakespeare's Henry IV. New York: Riverhead Books.
Crystal, David, and Ben Crystal. 2004. Shakespeare's Words. London: Penguin.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2004. Will In The World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and Walter Cohen. 2008. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Greer, Germaine. 2009. Shakespeare's Wife. New York: Harper Perennial.
MacGregor, Neil. 2012. Shakespeare's Restless World. London: Viking.
Shapiro, James. 2011. 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. London: Faber & Faber.
Wood, Michael. 2007. In Search of Shakespeare. London: BBC Books.
This list of major documented notes is published by the Folger library and amounts to the essential list of most commonly known primary biographic sources on Shakespare’s life. This list essentially provided a series of clear headings from which I could investigate the far more detailed inductive and deductive scholarship that offers context to his life.
1564: William Shakespeare born in Stratford-upon-Avon
1582: Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway
1583: Shakespeare’s first child, Susanna, is born
1585: Shakespeare’s twins, Judith and Hamnet, are born
1592: Shakespeare is first alluded to as a playwright, in Greene’s Groates-worth of Wit
1593: Shakespeare’s first printed poem, Venus and Adonis, appears
1594: Shakespeare’s first printed play, Titus Andronicus, appears
1596: Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, is granted a coat of arms; Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, dies
1597: Shakespeare purchases New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon
1598: Shakespeare is first mentioned as a sonneteer and author of 12 plays in Palladis Tamia
1599: Shakespeare’s father is granted a confirmation of arms; Shakespeare’s acting company takes down its old theater and uses the timber to build the Globe
1601: Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, dies
1602: The heralds dispute the legitimacy of a group of coat of arms, including Shakespeare’s; Shakespeare ratifies his purchase of New Place
1603: Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, becomes the King’s Men at the accession of James I; Hamlet appears in print
1607: Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna marries John Hall
1608: Shakespeare’s mother, Mary (Arden) Shakespeare, dies; his granddaughter Elizabeth is born
1609: Shakespeare’s Sonnets appears in print
1613: Shakespeare purchases the Blackfriars gatehouse in London; the Globe burns down during a performance of Henry VIII and is rebuilt within a year
1616: Shakespeare writes his will; his daughter Judith marries Thomas Quiney; Shakespeare dies
1623: The First Folio is published; Shakespeare’s widow Anne dies
