Shakespeare: For All Time

by Stanley Wells

From the entry of Shakespeare's birth in the Stratford church register to a Norwegian production of Macbeth in which the hero was represented by a tomato, this enthralling and splendidly illustrated book tells the story of Shakespeare's life, his writings, and his afterlife.
Drawing on a lifetime's experience of studying, teaching, editing, and writing about Shakespeare, Stanley Wells combines scholarly authority with authorial flair in a book that will appeal equally to the specialist and the untutored enthusiast. Chapters on Shakespeare's life in Stratford and in London offer a fresh view of the development of the writer's career and personality. At the core of the book lies a magisterial study of the writings themselves--how Shakespeare set about writing a play, his relationships with the company of actors with whom he worked, his developing mastery of the literary and rhetorical skills that he learned at the Stratford grammar school, the essentially theatrical quality of the structure and language of his plays. Subsequent chapters trace the fluctuating fortunes of his reputation and influence. Here are accounts of adaptations, productions, and individual performances in England and, increasingly, overseas; of great occasions such as the Garrick
Jubilee and the tercentenary celebrations of 1864; of the spread of Shakespeare's reputation in France and Germany, Russia and America, and, more recently, the Far East; of Shakespearian discoveries and forgeries; of critical reactions, favorable and otherwise, and of scholarly activity; of paintings, music, films and other works of art inspired by the plays; of the plays' use in education and the political arena, and of the pleasure and intellectual stimulus that they have given to an increasingly international public.
Shakespeare, said Ben Jonson, was not of an age but for all time. This is a book about him for our time.

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

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 2, 2003

About the author

Stanley William Wells, CBE, is a Shakespeare scholar and Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Reviews

[Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and well-researched book. It covered not only Shakespeare's life, but his legacy throughout the ages since his death. I liked that the author gave Shakespeare the benefit of the doubt that he actually loved his family, and though his job required him to spend much of his time in London, Wells mentioned several things Shakespeare did in his hometown, pointing out that he did spend at least some time with his family in Stratford. (He mentions that many biographers are of the opinion Shakespeare all but abandoned his family during the London years.)

However, I did not think the author handled one area very well: the sonnets, particularly the ones written to a boy. Wells, while careful not to subscribe to this theory himself, has to mention that Shakespeare may have been bisexual because of these sonnets. (Wells mentions sexual relations and natures a little too often for my taste....I really don't think that is as important a topic, but I guess that's just me.) I watched the tv series 'Searching for Shakespeare' and the writer of that show seemed to think that Shakespeare wrote these sonnets to his only son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11. Personally I like that theory better, but Wells didn't even mention it as a possibility.

The second half of the book covers what has happened to Shakespeare's plays since his death. This is interesting, too, but maybe not as much as Shakespeare's life. Lots of information about the different people of different ages that adapted the plays, preformed in the plays, researched the plays, and printed the plays. Some of the stories are interesting, others, not so much.

Overall, a very interesting and thorough book. That said, I'd still like to find a different biography on Shakespeare for my kids to read in high school.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just great. Stanley Wells can do no wrong, and this is yet another example. The book takes a no-nonsense approach to Shakespeare, laying out the basic facts we know about him and the theatre of his time, and then devoting much of the book to Shakespeare's afterlife. Wells regales us with stories of the actors, directors, writers, naysayers, fans, and idolaters who kept Shakespeare's name in the common mind for four hundred years. By the nature of this book, it's inevitably a surface-level tour. The book has a lengthy bibliography, as this is not attempting to be comprehensive so much as all-encompassing.

I'd say this is a worthy read for any Shakespeare fan, because it covers a different tract of the area of scholarship. This book is much more about how the public and the fans grappled with Shakespeare's works, rather than how academics did so, and for this it is highly worth reading.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. I've actually been working on this one for several months, so was glad to finally finish it. I felt like a got a good overview of the influence of Shakespeare throughout the years. The writing style wasn't too academic and scholarly either. It's a good resource to have--and to have read.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book charts the uncertain boundary between a coffee table book and a comprehensive and disciplined chronology of Shakespeare from his birth through the early years of the 21st century. And it seems to succeed in that challenging task. It is a beautiful book, with thick glossy pages, large in format with a beautiful, attached gold grosgrain ribbon place marker, and resplendent with plates, both black and white and full color. Finally, it is a remarkably readable book, written in a lively narrative style that moves along briskly. As for its merits as a disciplined scholarly work, it also succeeds; while tracking through each era's estimation and rendition of Shakespeare's work, Wells presents each in the round, with actors, and acting styles. producers/directors' production values, artistic representation and staging, and music, both incidental to the play and integral to the story line, as in the case of opera. Critical and scholarly views of each period are surveyed, and where sources can be found, audience and public reception are presented. The third chapter, "Shakespeare the Writer" was the most satisfying section of the book. It took a serious look at how Shakespeare went about his work, how he related to patrons, his collaborators and his fellow actor-sharers by examining the texts. His textual analysis stayed at a serious level without getting me lost in the deep weeds of Bardology. A book worth reading whatever one's level of interest in the subject.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book opens with discussions of the environment that Shakespeare was born into. This section is terrific. Wells is deft with his presentation of what is known, and what is likely to have been true/untrue of Shakespeare's life. From this discussion of Shakespeare and his times, Wells moves on to how later cultures, English speaking as well as non-English speaking, assimilated or mistreated Shakespeare's plays.

A low rating of 2 stars reflects my own impatience and lack of caring as to how the treatment of Shakespeare changes over time. A single (short) chapter on this would have sufficed for me. The author, however, demonstrates incredible knowledge and sensitivity to all things Shakespeare, and I will eagerly seek out another text by him.

[Brian Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I love about this book is that it is not the traditional 1564-1616 narrative history of Shakespeare's biographical details. Rather, it focuses on Shakespeare as an entity, detailing important aspects of his life story as a cultural force. There are closer looks at those years of course, particularly his associations with Stratford and London, as well as what we know about what it meant to be a writer at that time. The gold mine comes after his death and how successive eras dealt with Shakespeare as a cultural icon. The Restoration, the age of Garrick, the Romantics, the Victorians, the 20th century: all are detailed with a specific focus on theatrical history and visual representation. Stanley Wells is the foremost expert on Shakespeare, but he doesn't get lost in tendentious speculation. He gets down to the meat and potatoes of what it means for US that Shakespeare existed and how we have valued him. This is the best book available for those who want to begin studying Shakespeare as a cultural force over the last 400 years.

[Zachary Waltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where this books gets interesting is in chapter four when Wells traces the traditions of Shakespeare after him. Wells simultaneously follows several tracks: (1) Major actors, both male and female, (2) the major stage adaptations, (3) the major artwork, visual and musical, and (4) the major Shakespeare scholarship. These are all things that I take for granted now. To learn about their gradual development was eye-opening.

Quotes

- "Some geniuses grow on fertile ground. Mozart's father was a decent composer and a competent performer; Virginia Woolf's was a man of letters. On the other hand, among Shakespeare's contemporaries, Christopher Marlowe's father was a shoemaker, and Ben Jonson's stepfather, who brought him up, a bricklayer. Nothing that we know of Shakespeare's heredity points to a source for his talents."
- “It is telling,” observes Stanley Wells, “that William Shakespeare’s birth is recorded in Latin but that he dies in English, as “William Shakespeare, gentleman.’”

[Krysta]

blogged ... http://krystahigginsphotography.squar...
... and again http://krystahigginsphotography.squar...

[Robert Walrod]

A solid introduction to Shakespeare.

[Habibimichael]

i think that book about life