Stanley Wells is Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He has an extensive record of publications, mostly concerned with Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

This eloquent, humane and balanced book wears its erudition lightly. In doing so it rescues its subject from the overbearing weight of cultural, political and theoretical baggage with which it has often been loaded in the past few decades.

• PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; PART ONE: LIFE AND TIMES; PART TWO: PLAYS AND POEMS; CONCLUSION; FURTHER READING

Stanley Wells is Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He has an extensive record of publications, mostly concerned with Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

This eloquent, humane and balanced book wears its erudition lightly. In doing so it rescues its subject from the overbearing weight of cultural, political and theoretical baggage with which it has often been loaded in the past few decades.

• PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; PART ONE: LIFE AND TIMES; PART TWO: PLAYS AND POEMS; CONCLUSION; FURTHER READING

Stanley Wells is Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He has an extensive record of publications, mostly concerned with Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

This eloquent, humane and balanced book wears its erudition lightly. In doing so it rescues its subject from the overbearing weight of cultural, political and theoretical baggage with which it has often been loaded in the past few decades.

• PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; PART ONE: LIFE AND TIMES; PART TWO: PLAYS AND POEMS; CONCLUSION; FURTHER READING