William Shakespeare: History in an Hour

Sinead Fitzgibbon

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780007542581
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.

In a writing career that spanned over twenty years during the explosion of poetic and theatrical creativity of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, William Shakespeare produced a body of work that has become the bedrock of human thought, literature and language in English. His poetry and plays have endured for almost 450 years, such is their universal appeal and understanding of the human condition. And yet Shakespeare wrote almost nothing of himself. Who was this socially ambitious wordsmith who had neither pedigree nor university education? What was his family life like? How did he work?

Shakespeare: History in an Hour is the essential guide to the life of Shakespeare, his relationships, colleagues and his breathtaking works. From the Elizabethan world to which he was born, to the theorists and critics that continue to debate him to this day, this is the story of the most revered writer of all time.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour…

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Setting the Scene
• The Childhood Years
• The Family Years
• The Jack-of-All-Trades
• The Lord Chamberlain’s Men
• The King’s Men
• The Wooden O
• The Works
• The Autobiographical Author?
• The Affluent Years
• Shuffling Off This Mortal Coil
• The Contested Will
• Quartos, Folios and the Missing Plays
• The Authorship Debate
• Becoming the Bard
• Appendix 1: Key Players
• Appendix 2: Timeline of William Shakespeare 1564–1616
• Appendix 3: An Approximate Timeline of the Complete Works c. 1590–1613
• Got Another Hour?
• Copyright
• About the Publisher