Shakespeare's Kings
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- €12.99
Publisher Description
In a sparkling, fast-paced narrative, Shakespeare's Kings chronicles the turbulent events that inspired Shakespeare's history plays, from Edward III to Richard III. In a time of uncertainty and incessant warfare - when the crown was constantly contested, alliances were made and broken, and the people rose up in revolt - this was the raw material that inspired Shakespeare's dramas. But what really happened between 1337 and 1485? Where did history stop and drama begin? John Julius Norwich establishes just how real Shakespeare's characters and events are and what liberties he took with the facts to entertain his audience. Shakespeare's Kings is an illuminating companion to history and to the richness of Shakespeare's imagination, with a body of work which still shapes our view of the past today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This is a painstakingly sensible book, suitable for die-hard Shakespeare lovers. The author of the massive, three-part Byzantium turns here to the equally byzantine world of late medieval England, providing a complex context for the bard's nine Histories (including the recently authenticated Edward III) and asking: How accurate were Shakespeare's royal portraits? The canvas stretches from the Hundred Years War to the end of the Wars of the Roses. Norwich, structuring his book as political narrative, helpfully fills in gaps between the action of the plays. The book will be useful as a historical primer for those already familiar with the plays (or films: many will associate Henry V with Kenneth Branagh, or Richard III with Ian McKellen), but it lacks intellectual muscle, and the awkwardly intermittent analyses of accuracy obscure the natural flair of the author's prose. Norwich is conscientious in reconstructing detail, but his larger claims are meager. We learn, for instance, that Shakespeare has a "cavalier approach to chronology" and that his portraits sometimes fall prey to personal prejudice, but that with the great exception of Richard III (already vilified by Thomas More), the bold historical outlines are generally on the money. In his epilogue, the author briefly places the Histories against the backdrop of new Elizabethan self-confidence: England, "the only possible hero" in this long, sordid drama, craved the telling of its tale in the most accessible literary form of the day. Yet the elusive intellectual prey--the making of national identity--escapes through the thickets of history.
