Shakespeare and Biography (review)

Making biographies of Shakespeare is an industry in itself. New ones have been appearing every year in publishers' listings in recent times. The Bard has something of the myth of the magus about him, something more than natural, it seems, so that authors and readers hope to pluck out his secret, to solve the mystery of how this son of a glover brought up in a country town could become the greatest poet and dramatist in English history and, as many claim, in the world. The main facts about his life have been known for a long time, but provide little more than an outline. Biographers are forced to fill in the shape of his life with speculation. Typically their accounts bristle with subjunctives, with "may have been," "might have," "could possibly," and suchlike formulations. In the absence of details about much of Shakespeare's life, his works are combed for possible hints about his character, his ideas, and his state of mind at various times. The plays dramatize conflicting perspectives in a variety of characters, and the Sonnets, though written in the first person, cannot certainly be dated or sequenced, and their bearing on Shakespeare's life remains open to interpretation. David Bevington invokes on page 59 of his new book, Shakespeare and Biography, the concept of "negative capability," explained in a letter written by John Keats on 21 December 1817 as Shakespeare's capacity for "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Biographers reach after fact and reason, but Shakespeare seems equally eloquent on both sides in any debate. One biographer will be persuaded that Shakespeare was a Catholic in religion and Conservative in politics, while another will find evidence that he was Protestant in religion and radical in politics. His mysteries remain unresolved, eluding all inquiry that seeks a definitive explanation.

It was an excellent idea to add David Bevington's book to the Oxford Topics series. It is not another biography, but a guide to the variety of perspectives associated with noted biographers of Shakespeare since Nicholas Rowe offered a first sketch in the eighteenth century. The book will provide students with a shortcut to understanding all the main issues, speculations, and claims. To start with, there are two short general chapters that set the parameters, one on the problems of writing a biography of Shakespeare, given the limitations of the available evidence, and another on early comments, rumors, and anecdotes that gave to Shakespeare's biography its "basic shape" by the end of the eighteenth century. The succeeding chapters focus first on sex, with reference mainly to the romantic comedies and the Sonnets; second on politics, with an emphasis on the history plays; and then on religion, taking off from the Ghost in Hamlet to consider possible evidence for Catholic and Protestant sympathies in a variety of plays. The last two chapters are headed "Out of the Depths" and "On the Heights," borrowing these phrases from Edward Dowden's portrayal of Shakespeare in his Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (London: H. S. King, 1875), and are chiefly concerned with the major tragedies and the late romances. A brief postscript includes some justifiably dismissive reflections on those who have argued that the man from Stratford could not have written the plays and have proposed a variety of other writers as author.

The chapter headed "Sex" begins by emphasizing Shakespeare's "amazing gift in his plays for seeing the varying sides of an important issue like courtship and marriage" (34). From time to time, Bevington reminds his readers of the possibility of varying, even contradictory, interpretations, as for example in relation to political issues in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus (58–59). At the same time, the argument of the book perhaps inevitably follows the pattern of Shakespeare's life established by the majority of biographers. They have found suggestive clues concerning Shakespeare's personality, relationships, and character in the works. So he may have...