Jonathan Bate.
JONATHAN BATE
SOUL OF THE AGE: THE LIFE, MIND AND WORLD OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (2008)
William Shakespeare (born 1564) is widely regarded as the world’s greatest English language playwright. His work includes more than 30 plays, over 150 sonnets, and three long narrative poems. He was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway; they had three children - Susanna, and the twins Hamnet and Judith. In the late 1580s he began a successful career in London as playwright, actor, and part owner of an acting company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. At around the age of 50 he retired to Stratford-on-Avon, dying there at the age of 52 in 1616.
The Guardian wrote of Jonathan Bates’ book: ‘All books about Shakespeare tell us as much about their author as they do of their subject. What this book tells us about Bate is that he has the gift of a true teacher - able at once to educate and to entertain.’ The Literary Review wrote: ‘Jonathan Bate has a true novelist’s gift for scene setting and story telling. He spots interesting details and connections overlooked by previous writers, allowing his lively imagination to play freely around them.’
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Sir Jonathan Bate (born 1958) is a British academic, writer and broadcaster who holds appointments at Arizona State University and at Worcester College, Oxford, where he is Prsofessor of English Literature and was Provost of the college from 2017 to 2019. He took his degree in English at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, returning to the college to undertake his PhD on ‘Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination’. He also spent a year at Harvard University as a Harkness Fellow. His several books include a prize-winning biography of the poet John Clare.
