Shakespeare's Other Lives

by O'Sullivan, Maurice J.

• ISBN13: 9780786422807
• ISBN10: 0786422807
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-30
• Publisher: McFarland Publishing

Summary

For generations scholars have labored scrupulously to try to separate the facts of William Shakespeare's life from the myths that have entangled them. However, those who have written fictions about the bard have operated under no such constraints. They offer solutions to the identities of W.H. and the Dark Lady, suggest Shakespeare's role in the shaping of the King James Bible, and trace his relationships with Sir Thomas Lucy, Francis Bacon, Elizabeth I, Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson. And they speculate endlessly about Shakespeare's pets and poaching, his sources and inspiration, his melancholy and death. From Alexandre Duval's Shakespeare (1804) to Anthony Burgess's "The Muse," this is an anthology of nineteen fictional depictions of Shakespeare. They include Edward H. Warren's account of Shakespeare playing the stock market on Wall Street (with the Three Weird Sisters making stock predictions near a blast furnace in New Jersey), Leon Rooke's vivid memoir of the Bard's dog, and the works of such notables as George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling and Edward Bond are included.

Author Biography

Maurice J. O'Sullivan, Jr., is the chairman of the English department at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(24)
ALEXANDRE DUVAL
Shakespeare Amoureaux (1804)	25	(19)
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
From Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare...before the Worshipful Sir Thomas Lucy, Knight, Touching Deer-Stealing (1834)	44	(15)
JOHN BROUGHAM
Shakspeare's Dream (1858)	59	(7)
WILLIAM RENDLE
"Shakespeare at the Tabard Inn" (1882)	66	(2)
FRANKLIN HARVEY HEAD
From Shakespeare's Insomnia and the Causes Thereof (1886)	68	(12)
RICHARD GARNETT
From William Shakespeare: Pedagogue and Poacher (1904)	80	(12)
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
"The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" (1910)	92	(12)
"A Dressing Room Secret" (1910)	104	(5)
MAURICE BARING
"The Rehearsal" (1911)	109	(8)
CHARLES WILLIAMS
From A Myth of Shakespeare (1928)	117	(11)
EDWARD H. WARREN
Shakespeare on Wall Street (1929)	128	(20)
RUDYARD KIPLING
"Proofs of Holy Writ" (1932)	148	(11)
EDWARD BOND
From Bingo (1974)	159	(10)
JOHN MORTIMER
From Will Shakespeare (1977)	169	(7)
LEON ROOKE
From Shakespeare's Dog (1983)	176	(9)
ANTHONY BURGESS
"The Muse" (1984)	185	(16)
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"Everything and Nothing" (1961)	201	(4)
Appendix I: Anonymous, The Visitation; or, an Interview Between the Ghost of Shakespear and D-V-D G-RR--K, Esq. (1775)	205	(5)
Appendix II: George M. Woodward, Familiar Verses from the Ghost of Willy Shakspeare to Sammy Ireland (1796)	210	(5)
Bibliography	215	(4)
Index	219