Contents
Early Editions of Shakespeare’s Works v
Abbreviations v
List of Tables vii
List of Plates vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: The Fictional Lives of Shakespeare 1
1 Biography: Much Practice, Little Theory 7
1.1 The Western Tradition of Biography 8
1.2 Coherence and Linear Narrative in Biography 12
1.3 Types of Biographical Material 16
2 Gaps in Our Ignorance: the Biographical Material for Shakespeare 18
2.1 Source Material for Shakespeare 19
2.2 Public Records: Stratford 28
2.3 Public Records: London 33
2.4 Literary & Theatrical Records 34
3 Inventing the myths: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 43
3.1 Early Fictions 43
3.2 Nicholas Rowe’s Acount of the Life &c (1709) 47
3.3 Reprints of Rowe’s Account 52
3.4 Dr. Johnson’s unattempted life of Shakespeare 55
3.5 Edward Capell’s Neglected Insights (1767) 57
4 Doubting the Myths: Malone’s Unwritten Life of Shakespeare 60
4.1 Attempt at a Chronology 61
4.2 Use of the Poems for Biographical Inference 68
4.3 Ambition for a Life of Shakespeare 69
5 Filling in the Gaps: Constructing a life of Shakespeare: 1805-1975 76
5.1 Skepticism in the Nineteenth Century 77
5.2 Emergence of Romantic Biography 79
5.3 Exemplary Life and National Biography 82
5.4 Dowden and the adoption of a chronology 87
5.5 Rejection of Bardolatry in the twentieth century 89
5.6 Persistence of Bardolatry in the twentieth century (to 1975) 92
6 Re-Imagining the Life: Samuel Schoenbaum 94
6.1 Shakespeare’s Lives 94
6.2 William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life 98
6.3 "Gentle" Shakespeare 104
7 After Schoenb
Biography
Kevin Gilvary received his Ph.D. in English Literature from Brunel University London in 2015. He also holds a BA and MA in Classics as well as an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Southampton. He taught at Barton Peveril College in Hampshire, UK, for twenty years.
