I loved this book. I don't often start my blogs with praise, but this book deserves up front adulation.
Williams Shakespeare left us very little information about his life. We know more about his family than we do about him, the man. In his life time he seems to have been little interested in having his work printed, leaving it up to patrons and posterity to rescue hand written plays and other work to be printed later. This novel is, therefore, very much fiction, built around the few facts that history tells us.
We read about Will's meeting with Anne Hathaway, who becomes his wife and who raises their children (2 daughters to adulthood and a son who dies in childhood) in Stratford whilst Will pursues his passion for the theatre in London. We see Jude Morgan's version of Shakespeare's relationships with his parents and siblings and glimpse what the citizens of Stratford might have thought of his marriage to an older woman whom he later left behind for life in the capital fleshpots. Was he a faithful husband? Did he visit his family regularly? What were his relationships with the other great writers and actors of the day? How much did he plagiarise the work of others to produce his greatest work?
Jude Morgan builds a tale skilfully, making us believe in the man, Shakespeare, whilst showing us a little of life of rural Warwickshire and the teeming streets of London during the dying days of Elizabethan England.
The language in this book is superb; lilting, lyrical and shadowy with Shakespeare's literary genius. As I said, I loved it. More, please!
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