Nine Lives of William Shakespeare

by Graham Holderness

Acclaimed as the greatest dramatist of all time, William Shakespeare needs little introduction. Or does he? Going beyond Shakespeare the writer and actor, Graham Holderness explores the fact and fiction, tradition and myth, surrounding Shakespeare's life. Combining biography and fictional narrative, Holderness takes a fresh critical approach to the problem of piecing together a definitive account of Shakespeare's life and work from scant historical information. Instead, this study builds upon and examines the many theories that surround the life of this well-known, yet remarkably unknown man. Nine Shakespeares are writer, player, butcher boy, businessman, husband, friend, lover, Catholic and portrait. By carefully critiquing these biographies and reimagining these nine men, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare creates a unique picture of how this playwright became Shakespeare as he is understood today. Shakespeare Now! is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source - the most living language imaginable - and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.

Genres: Biography

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2011

About the author

Writer and critic Graham Holderness has published over 40 books, many on Shakespeare, and hundreds of chapters and articles of criticism, theory and theology. He was one of the founders of British cultural materialism, and is acknowledged as a formative contributor to a number of branches of Shakespeare criticism and theory. He has published pioneering studies in Arabic adaptations of Shakespeare, culminating in The Arab Shakespeare Trilogy by Sulayman Al Bassam (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, 2014).

His more recent work has pioneered methods of critical-creative writing, exemplified by his innovative factual-fictional biography Nine Lives of William Shakespeare (Bloomsbury/Arden Shakespeare, 2011). Extending these methods, and published in 2014, are Tales from Shakespeare: Creative Collisions (Cambridge University Press, June 2014) and Re-writing Jesus: Christ in 20th Century Fiction and Film (Bloomsbury, November 2014). His latest book is The Faith of William Shakespeare (Lion Hudson, 2016).

He is also a novelist, poet and dramatist. Graham Holderness has published two Shakespearean novels: The Prince of Denmark (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001), and the historical fantasy novel Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare Vampire Hunter (Top Hat Books, 2015). His poetry collection Craeft: poems from the Anglo-Saxon received a Poetry Book Society award in 2002; and his play Wholly Writ was in 2011 performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, and by Royal Shakespeare Company actors in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Reviews

[Xandra Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best biography I had the pleasure to encounter so far. The information is perfectly arranged and solves every doubt one might have after having read some other books about Shakespeare. And the chapter about his relationship with Southampton, marvelous!

[Gamze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Şahane bir Shakespeare biyografisi. Maggie O’Farrell’in muhteşem kitabı Hamnet’ten sonra bir Shakespeare biyografisi okumak için çok hevesliydim ama daha önce hiçbir metnini de okumadığım için çok fazla çekincem vardı. Biraz araştırma yaparak aradığımın bu kitap olduğuna kanaat getirdim ve çok doğru br kararmış, ilk bölümden itibaren anladım.

Kitabımız isminden de anlaşılacağı üzere Shakespeare’in hayatını 9 farklı başlıkta ele alıyor ve her başlıkta aslında gerçekliğinden emin olduğumuz bilgiler, efsanaler ve tartışmalar kısmı ile gayet doyurucu ve aynı zamanda okuyucuyu sıkmayan detaylar veriliyor. Her bölümün sonunda ise 9 yaşamdan hangisini okuyorsanız bununla ilgili kurgu bir metin yer alıyor.

Ben gerçekten bayılarak okudum ve çok tadında buldum her türlü ayrıntıyı. Hem çok güzel düşünülmüş hem de önsöz ve giriş kısımlarındaki vaatleri de gayet yerine getirebilmiş. Giriş niteliğinde bir Shakespeare biyografisi arayanlar için bulunmaz bir nimet diyebiliriz.

[Nagehan Büyükkeresteci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheakspeare’in bildiklerimizin dışında yaşamını dokuz farklı açıdan incelenmesi. Şaşırtıcı detaylar daha çok araştırma isteğine yöneltti. Yazarın bilinen yeteneğinin dışındaki yaşamı hakkında, muamma, soru işaretleri, farklı açılardan izlenmesi etki yaratıyor.

[Roy Kenagy]

Review: http://bit.ly/sqXyOx

"The New Biography questions the dominance of the positivist paradigm; accepts that Shakespeare’s lives, though multiple and discontinuous, are yet facets of a single life; validates biographical speculation; and takes biographical fiction seriously. Above all, New Biography is prepared to confront the Shakespeare Authorship Problem, and to embrace all the mystery, inconsistency and incongruity that surround the figure of “the Stratford man”."

[Frank Lawler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This Stratfordian exercise in imaginative self-indulgence – not surprisingly -- adds little to the authorship debate. Graham Holderness addresses nine different aspects of Shakespearean research (e.g. the Bard’s purported Catholicism, the identity of the Dark Lady, the accuracy of the Droeshout portrait). For each of them, he reviews some relevant facts and legends, and concludes with a brief fictional piece on the topic. The feeling, however, is of flights of fancy that remain tethered to an orthodox anchor-point. The authorship of the canon is never seriously questioned; Stratfordian-tolerated theories about the “lost years” are vaguely acknowledged, and any material possibly objectionable to the Shakespeare Trust is safely defanged as explicitly fictional writing.