Shakespeare Unbound: Decoding a Hidden Life » (First Edition)

René Weis is a professor of English and vice-dean of the faculty of arts and humanities at University College, London. He is the author of The Yellow Cross and Criminal Justice.

At last—a key that unlocks the secrets of Shakespeare's life

Intimacies with Southampton and Marlowe, entanglements in London with the elusive dark lady, the probable fathering of an illegitimate son—these are among the mysteries of Shakespeare's rich and turbulent life that have proven tantalizingly obscure.

Despite an avalanche of recent scholarship, René Weis, an acknowledged authority on the Elizabethan period, believes the links between the bard's life and the poems and plays have been largely ignored. Armed with a wealth of new archival research and his own highly regarded interpretations of the literature, the author finds provocative parallels between Shakespeare's early experiences in the bustling market town of Stratford—including a dangerous poaching incident and contacts with underground Catholics—and the plays.

Breaking with tradition, Weis reveals that it is the plays and poems themselves that contain the richest seam of clues about the details of Shakespeare's personal life, at home in Stratford and in the shadowy precincts of theatrical London—details of a code unbroken for four hundred years.

Publishers Weekly

Shakespeare's subjective 'I' is everywhere" in his work, writes Weis, a professor of English at University College London, who pores over every line for evidence it may offer about the Bard's life. Weis frequently uses words like "perhaps," "might have" and "possibly," and he offers some eyebrow-raising deductions from the texts. Shakespeare walked with a limp, for example, and probably played the lame Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. The Bard was bisexual, at least in his emotions, and may well have slept with rival playwright Christopher Marlowe. Some of Weis's convictions are shared by other Shakespeareans: for instance, that the Dark Lady of the sonnets was likely Emilia Bassano, daughter of a Venetian Jewish musician. While Stephen Greenblatt's brilliant and equally speculativeWill in the Worldfocused on clues the work gave us about Shakespeare's engagement with Elizabethan society, Weis's conjectures tend to the personal: The Merchant of Venicewas a farewell to the triangular relationship immortalized in the sonnets; architectural metaphors in 2 Henry IVindicated that Shakespeare intended to buy a grand new house in Stratford. It's all great fun for Bardolators, who will appreciate Weis's formidable erudition. Others may occasionally wonder if it's necessary to so relentlessly identify real-world roots for one of literature's most fertile imaginations.(Nov.)