Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life

Arden Shakespeare Library

by Katherine Duncan-Jones

This lively, readable and challenging new biography, by the editor of the acclaimed Arden edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, takes a fresh look at an enduring cultural icon, about whose life it is widely claimed that nothing is known. As a result Shakespeare has tended to be viewed in Romantic the Bard as lonely inspired singer enthroned on a mountain peak.The aim of this study is to replace the image of the lonely genius with one of Shakespeare as deeply involved, even enmired, in the geographical, social and literary context of his time. This Shakespeare is a man who lives in a congested city and has to deal with disease, debt and cut-throat competition; his manifest brilliance often makes him the object of envy and malice, rather than adulation. Much of his life and writing is seen as the result of accident and circumstance, rather than the product of artistic vision or a grand career plan. From his shotgun wedding at the age of 18 to the burning down of the Globe Theatre over 30 years later, he is beset by bad luck. His most brilliant works are seen as creative responses to external constraints, such as the plague outbreaks that frequently closed the public theatres during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Katherine Duncan-Jones also takes a fresh look at the tradition of Shakespeare's love for a 'Dark Lady' and concludes rather that he devoted his most personal and passionate writing to the service of young men.

Genres: Shakespeare, Biography, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, History

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 22, 2001

About the author

Katherine Dorothea Duncan-Jones, FRSL (13 May 1941 – 16 October 2022) was an English literature and Shakespeare scholar and was also a Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge, and then Somerville College, Oxford. She was also Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2001. She was a scholar of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blah. Duncan-Jones seems to know her material well enough certainly, though she writes with this stacatto, parrot-with-a-typewriter rythmn, which is quickly read but doesn't sink in all that much, or get penetrating with insights into the elusive, compelling Bard of Avon.

The history gets more of a focus here, which is a good thing, but when I read a bio of Shakespeare (it's for a class, not my personal whim) I kind of want to...I dunno...HEAR ABOUT SHAKESPEARE. This is of course totally different than perusing a tome on, say, Tolstoy or Dickens or Sartre or something, since we know a heck of a lot more about them then we do Big Willy. Pretty much every attempt is essentially a conjecture. Fine. OK, then, conjecturize then! go for it! the other one I read, Rene Weis, was interesting for the precise reason that it seemed like he just did some amateur sleuthing and came up with interesting conclusions as per the Dark Lady, the eroticism of the sonnets, the marriage, the politics, etc.

Duncan-Jones doesn't do that, and it's not because of an obsession with responsibility. She makes her conjectures too, since every biographer must behold his subject with a blur in the looking-glass, but they aren't all that novel or exciting.

Also, I really hate when biographies wrap up by saying something to the effect of "well, really the best way to understand the person behind the work is to 'read the ___ (poems, novels, plays, whatever)'...well....yeah, obviously. but guess what? That's probably why and how I came upon this bio in the first place, let alone decided to spend the time reading it. It's almost a cop-out, and it seals the deal on what was a somewhat interesting but ultimately annoying and unenlightning investigation on what is justifiably a fascinating figure.

PS
I also hate to admit that reading this book sort of explodes my theory that Brits make the best biographers. Ah well, you can't win 'em all, and this is the fly in the proverbial ointment...

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this - been a while since I attempted any of the myriad bios. Nothing terribly new, but there are some interesting connections and suppositions and journeys down the rabbit hole. Duncan-Jones' attempt to remain serious in tone and unsentimental makes for a somewhat detached/academic feel that at times both serves and detracts from the overall narrative and reading experience. Easy to see the influence this work has had in the bio-realm (and the influence of other, earlier works on this one). Worthy read - it does illuminate and expand the 'Shakes world' - and that's not an easy thing to do.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a re-read for me. I read the book originally 20 years ago, but wanted to get another look, probably due to having just read a different book that was focused on the thesis that Shakespeare could not have been the author of the plays and poems. Ungentle Shakespeare takes the opposite thesis, and delves deeply into the times and evidences that shed light on who this mysterious man was. Duncan's knowledge of the other plays and playwrights of the period is formidable. This book is loosely chronological, and often quite speculative. Duncan proceeds through Shakespeare's life using the poems, plays, and a vast amount of other material from those times to generate context for her reader on who this man likely was, and what the forces were that drove him. It is often not a pretty picture.

The book begins with a consideration of the Arden of Shakespeare's youth in Stratford-upon-Avon in Elizabeth's reign, and also his marriage to Anne Hathaway. Duncan postulates that Sonnet 145 was one of the first poems he ever wrote, then considers how/why he may have made his way towards London. (Curiously, this sonnet appears to me to defeat one of Duncan's theses about the forces driving Shakespeare - more on this later.)

One of the interesting aspects of this book is the amount of comparison that is generated by looking at how the respective playwrights copy each other, improve on each other, and take shots at each other. Competition amongst the playwrights was often direct. The playwrights as a matter of course borrowed liberally from each other, referenced each other, and sniped at each other in direct and indirect ways. For example, Duncan discusses Robert Green and Thomas Nashe and 'their' attack (Nashe, according to Duncan) on the 'upstart crowe' of Shakespeare. It is unclear why this upstart crowe represented such a threat to the gentle/educated dramatists of the time, but this attack is considered in a fair amount of detail. Among other things, it appears that Nashe was competing with Shakespeare for the attentions of Southampton.

The portrayal of the Shakespeares's character that Duncan achieves is often not a terribly pleasant one. A lot of time and attention is given to the efforts by Shakespeare of attaining 'gentle' status with a coat of arms. While other authors portray this as an effort by Shakespeare to elevate his father, Duncan seems to lean to a much more personal need for recognition and status. On top of this need for recognition, Duncan layers many critical aspects of Shakespeare's life: she looks at the abandonment of his wife and family, his potential drinking, potential whoring, the miserliness of his will with respect to his wife, potential homosexuality, etc.. The man that emerges is not one that sounds very likable.

Duncan uses the term misogyny to describe Shakespeare numerous times, particularly with respect to Anne Hathaway (sonnet 145 again) and the Dark Lady of the sonnets, but this doesn't necessarily ring true for me. Sonnet 145 comes across as youthful anxiety, exuberance, and love to me, while the sonnets of the Dark Lady sequence feel more like tortured desire, compounded by self-loathing and intense jealousy, and yes, with some spite mixed in. Misogyny does not seem warranted as an accusation, but having said that, Duncan knows her material cold, so I'm not sure where to go with this.

The book provides a look at Shakespeare through many lenses. Some of these lenses are individuals who cannot necessarily be trusted (e.g., Nashe, Ben Jonson). Duncan considers many contemporary playwrights and their plays as part of her analysis, and this is indeed comprehensive, but can be difficult to follow.

By the end (of this book), the Shakespeare that emerges is complex. From a simple beginning, he magically arrives in London as an actor, and quickly becomes an extraordinary poet and dramatist. He is the honey-tongued one who is liked, envied and resented. He survives the numerous years of the plague. By the end of his life, he is an embittered, somewhat miserly, probably syphilitic, individual. He does not (financially) care for his community, and works hard to protect his inheritance from his daughter Judith and her betrothed, all while denying his wife Anne apparent assets other than the 'second-best bed' in his will while ensuring that she not be interred with him. Having said all that, Duncan (following Shakespeare's Elizabethan contemporaries) indicates that we should not attend to his life, but to his words and works. However, many of these words are optimistic, and at odds with the character of the man that emerges from her pages.

[Jiang Yuqi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Duncan-Jones gives some plausible arguments here, however, she's too selective in choosing the material she presents, and just conveniently omits a lot of evidences that conflict with her story-arc.
P.S. not all the things Shakespeare's contemporaries wrote were about Shakespeare! They had their own lives! Too many allusions that she lists as the other authors' retaliations of W.S. being "un-gentle" might not be about William Shakespeare at all in the first place.
P.P.S. please refer to Donaldson's essays on the coat of arms thing...

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshingly brief and stripped-down account of Shakespeare's life, which focuses on facts instead of florid speculation. Ending with an exhortation to return to his works and "read him", this is the only life of Shakespeare you'll need.

[Juli Morgan-russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating insight - not just to Shakespeare but Elizabethan theatre in general. Got a bit academic in places but overall a lovely read.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a shit

[David Cowling · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 400 years we seem to have reimagined Shakespeare in every possible light. Augustan sage, Romantic genius, trenchant nihilist, and in Katherine Duncan-Jones’ Ungentle Shakespeare, a nasty piece of work. Soon I shall declare him progenitor of the bongo drums. ('It’s been done', comes a bored cry from the gallery.)

These fanciful speculations are unavoidable given the relative poverty of the biographical record, but that need not be a regrettable thing. Duncan Jones’ interpretation offers a needed antidote to books like Bloom’s absurd Invention of the Human or more conventional and well received books on the bard by James Shapiro and Jonathan Bate.

There is something faintly ridiculous about the ungentle Shakespeare, though. In the author's account, the relationship with the criminal and hack George Wilkins presents Shakespeare as mainly guilty by association. The famous shotgun wedding to Anne Hathaway followed by hasty marital abandonment are examples of a callous brute at work; the poems to patrons are further evidence of a heartless social aspirant. Perhaps so, but taking the customs of 16th century marriage and patronage out of context is like blaming Shakespeare for lacking basic hygiene when the toothbrush was a far off invention.

Ultimately there is something lively and gamesome in this alternative portrait, as unconvincing as it may be. Dickens said of Shakespeare’s origins ‘I tremble every day lest something turn up’ - and so do I, if it means a less entertaining debate that refuses to admit an Ungentle Shakespeare.

[Aileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Even though neither the library's founder, Sir Thomas Bodley, nor its first Librarian, Thomas James, were at all well disposed towards such light literature as play-books, the agreement ensured that a mint copy of the 1623 Folio6 was promptly delivered, being sent by the Librarian to an Oxford book-binder, William Wildgoose, in February 1624. Once returned, the book was chained to a shelf in the part of Duke Humfrey's Library known as Arts End by means of a clip through its front cover. Young men at Oxford during the reign of Charles I perused the volume with such enthusiasm that parts of some pages were entirely worn away by the friction of their hands and elbows, despite the unusually high quality of the Crown paper, normally reserved for Bibles, on which it was printed. This provides a unique early record of the relative popularity of Shakespeare's plays among exactly the kind of young men who had been his greatest fans at the turn of the sixteenth century. Just like those Elizabethan students, these Caroline ones most admired Shakespeare as a poet of love. They voted with their elbows for Romeo and Juliet as far and away their favourite play, and the 'balcony scene' as far and away their favourite passage. Parts of the facing leaf, where many arms rested, have vanished altogether." (312)

[Heidi Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives context to Shakespeare’s plays and poetry in history and in Shakespeare’s life’s events. It’s probably a good book for something like me who wants to understand the basics, in detail, about Shakespeare’s life. Katherine Duncan-Jones has certainly done her homework here. She juxtaposes him with his family, his contemporary friends and rivals, his sponsors, the politics of court, his financial and legal woes, his faults and indulgences, and scours his works, his co-writers’ and rivals’ works, to unearth evidence of Shakespeare’s life in his writing. Much of Duncan-Jones’ writing is insightful, some perhaps is far-fetched, but all of it is thought-provoking. The author packs her writing tightly, like a stuffed suitcase full of travel essentials. There’s so much here that I found myself taking time out from reading to investigate the people, places, and times further online. I did reach a point where I found some the author’s conclusions to be naïve or underdeveloped, and was surprised to find that Duncan-Jones is not, herself, an “upstart” but an author with some history. With that said, I appreciate her creation of this vehicle that makes it impossible not to think about what compelled Shakespeare in his writings.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, detailed, well-argued view of Shakespeare's life. While there's not the connective narrative to get a full view, Duncan-Jones gets into hyper-focused detail on many aspects and events. This wouldn't be a great primer on his life for someone who has no knowledge of the basic biography, but is an excellent second step. It's fascinating, well written, and something I'll go back to again and again.

[Tom Delise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't buy a number of things -- and it is not just idolatry.

[Meha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine -- entertaining and with some interesting critical points. Some conclusions seemed slightly far-fetched to me though.