If you love Shakespeare, buy this book--you won't be disappointed. Schoenbaum doesn't discuss the plays, but instead the man who wrote them--or, more specifically, the differing ways that his life has been interpreted. That's right, it's a biography of Shakespeare's biographers, leading us step by step through several centuries of interpreters of the Bard, and the various wacky ways they have interpreted his life. It might not sound compelling, but boy it is. The early portions of the book are good enough, but it really takes off when the author starts to discuss the "Baconian" heretics--authors who have argued that Francis Bacon (or some other aristocratic, and therefore supposedly more intelligent, fop) actually wrote the world's greatest plays. He wonderfully illustrates the bizarreness of the men and women who originated this fanciful claim, and explains how it has unfortunately caught on in the popular imagination. (One of the first "Baconians," the not-coincidentally named Delia Bacon, is a tragically grotesque character worthy of Shakespeare himself.) This is a hefty book that you won't finish in a single sitting, but I still highly recommend it.

This book is the most thorough book on the life of the Bard

Keep this in your library - not only does it look good it feels good. You will always have Shakespeare on hand to get in your literary fix. Shakespeare in a serious readers library is a must!

I was a personal friend of Sam's in fact a neighbor of his in Maryland for 6 years. I spoke with him a week before he passed away and he was telling me that Shakespeare's Identity was still an elusive subject for him and other scholars. He felt that his book ,William Shakespeare : A Compact Documentary Life, a lifelong pursuit was a good primer for beginners but that he felt incomplete about it and wished he had another life to make changes. This I found powerful as he was willing to be open about this and not be stuck in being an expert. Although his research in this book carries influence as authoritarian on Shakespeare's life , Sam up till the end of his life was convinced there had to be more. His publisher of course was unwilling to consider a new revised edition. But one thing Sam stressed over and over in the book as well that it was important for teachers who used his research to be careful in not telling students this was the absolute Gospel on Shakespeare's life.

Schoenbaum's book, which I have used to teach college courses for years, is rigorous and objective in its scholarship. He succeeds in separating the legend from the fact, and gives us the best possible view of the notoriously elusive "man who was Shakespeare." The text is eminently readable, and irresistably interesting.