"The words carved on Shakespeare's gravestone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, seem to repel attempts to disinter or reanimate him. The claim that virtually nothing is known about his life has been used to support a Romantic view of Shakespeare as free-standing genius in lofty isolation from the mundane doings of the Renaissance world. In fact, as this compelling and challenging study confirms, a substantial body of records bears witness to material aspects of the dramatist's life from baptism to burial and with much in between. There are also many contemporary allusions both to Shakespeare as player and poet and to his writings." "Yet this material casts little immediate light on the more personal questions asked by today's readers. Katherine Duncan-Jones has set out to write a different kind of life of Shakespeare, both by exploring areas that other biographers have neglected, and by looking afresh at many familiar documents and episodes." "Rather than chronicling each recorded event, play or poem, Duncan-Jones identifies topics and issues associated with particular phases of Shakespeare's life, weaving them into a complex narrative which brilliantly carries the reader through the complexities of life in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. A key element throughout is her analysis of Shakespeare's dealings with fellow writers with whom he both collaborated and competed."--Jacket.