In The Lodger, Charles Nicholl, like a cold-case detective, revealed a detailed social and physical context from which it's possible to infer Shakespeare's presence in his London digs. " They should all be subtitled "Climbing Mount Conjecture".įrustrated by the paucity of evidence, two recent books on Shakespeare have uncovered more of him by oblique and original methods. " - or the coy historical present: "He sits at his oak table, sharpening his quill. Biographies appear with astonishing frequency, writer after writer tirelessly examining the same known knowns and the same known unknowns, all obliged to rely on what should be called the speculative tense - "Shakespeare might have stood in this room. What we know of Shakespeare's life is little more than we know of Jesus's, which is why, like communicants in a church or spiritualists round a ouija board, we try to summon him to us - as if to know him more fully as a man were to understand his genius as a writer. The engraving is alleged to be of William Shakespeare, but it's probably no more truthful a likeness than the postcard I have of Jesus that makes him look like David Beckham. I have before me an engraving of a bald, mild-mannered man who looks faintly like Alan Ayckbourn (who, incidentally, is the second most popular playwright in the world).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |