Overview
Covering 400 years of Shakespeare scholarship, Schoenbaum's now classic
William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life received high acclaim from
critics and scholars. The New York Review of Books called it "a
masterpiece," and the Guardian labeled it "our best life of
Shakespeare." Making the resources of the world's greatest Shakespeare
collections more accessible to all readers, this updated "Compact Life"
contains a refined and amplified version of the original text and fifty
of the original documents reproduced in smaller format. Schoenbaum has
incorporated new material into his narrative, including an eyewitness
account, in harrowing detail, of a murder believed to have occurred in
New Place, the house that Shakespeare bought in Stratford in 1597. He
also provides a new postscript which includes newly-compiled information
from recent research on Shakespeare.