Shakespeare the Player: A Life in the Theatre

by John Southworth

"Man of the Millennium" he may be but William Shakespeare is a shadowy historical figure. His writings have been analyzed exhaustively but much of his life remains a mystery. This controversial biography aims to redress the balance. To his contemporaries, Shakespeare was known not as a playwright but as an actor, yet this has been largely ignored or marginalized by most modern writers. Here John Southworth overturns traditional images of the Bard and his work, arguing that Shakespeare cannot be separated from his profession as a player any more than he can be separated from his works. Only by approaching Shakespeare's life from this new angle can we hope to learn or understand anything new about him. Following Shakespeare's life as an actor as he learns his craft and begins work on his own plays, Southworth presents the Bard and his plays in their proper context for the first time. Groundbreaking, contentious and a work of deep scholarship and understanding, "Shakespeare the Player" should change the way we think about the English language's greatest artist.

Genres: Shakespeare, Biography

368 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2000

Reviews

[Bobby Thym · Rating 5 out of 5]

My daughter did a semester abroad in London and took a course on Shakespeare. She told her professor that I was a Bardolator, and he recommended this book for me. Southworth makes the argument that in the “Missing Years” the Bard leaves Stratford with the Worcester’s Men and learns from Robert Browne and Ned Allyn before he emerges in London in the 1590’s. This biography bases its premise on William Shakespeare as an actor-playwright who writes his plays to take advantage of the talents of the actors around him, Southwell’s theories on the roles The Bard played appear to be logical and well-researched.

[Mark Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagines what roles Shakespeare may have played in his plays. Learned lots I didn’t know about theater troupes of that time and how connected Shakespeare’s company was to the royal court. Enjoyable book!

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

A different angle, which gave it appeal but sometimes dragged on a bit felt like a series of lists.

[Julianthebarbarian · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are plenty of better books about Shakespeare. The idea of this book is that Shakespeare was apprenticed to a group of actors ("players", at the time) at a very young age, even though there is no firm evidence for this; also, its much liklier that Shakespeare's dad, a glovemaker, would have apprenticed his son to himself, like most tradesmen of the era, rather than to a troupe of players who, as Southworth himself says, were seen as little more than vagabonds - a very perjorative term at the time.
This book. is not for fans of plain English - if you read it you'll need to deal with words like "mimetic" and " armorial". Southwork sometimes seems to wish to impress, not to communicate.
Much of the book is taken up with Southworth's musings about which part Shakespeare played in each of his plays, if we assume that Southworth is right about Shakespeare's early training. For the record, many scholars reckon that as playwright, part owner, and part manager of the company, Shakespeare was quite busy enough and generally took much smaller parts than Southwork thinks. Some think that he was the "prompt"who read through the dialogue and reminded the actors who dried up what to say. (This probably happened much more than in the modern theatre, so this would have been a key role).
The book is not completely useless to hard core Shakespeare addicts like me - it explains Shakespeare's role as a "sharer" (part owner) of the troupe, and he shows that the Troupe travelled much more widely than is generally thought, which means that the shows were not just put on in the 2 stages recreated in London's beloved Globe theatre, but in a wide variety of venues.
If you are only going to read one book about Shakespeare make it " history in an hour" or something similar. After that try "1599 a year in the life.....", which is based on fact, not speculation, and which really puts across the flavour of the era. Don't bother with this book until you have read them, and if you are really really keen.

[Pam Lindholm-levy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes a look at, just as the title says, Shakespeare's place in Elizabethan and Jacobean theater companies as actor, playwright, "sharer" (part owner). There aren't a lot of sources to back up many of the writer's (also an actor) assertions and suggestions. Nevertheless, I found in this book yet other facets of the Bard's life, and I enjoyed it very much as an addition to having read some of the Tragedies during spring quarter at PSU.