Shakespeare - Resource Guide for Instructors

This is a book that reflects on our attachment to the biography of Shakespeare by looking at the two centuries when Shakespeare had none. From 1600 to 1800, the constituents of biography were not yet available: no chronology to hold the narrative together, no documents on which to base the narrative, no identification of the Sonnets as Shakespeare's first person writing. Each of the book's four chapters focuses on one of those critical absences in order todiscover what was there instead: not a continuous narrative but episodic anecdotes, not chronological development but classification by genre, not authentic documents but received records, notautobiographical sonnets but verses which survived in manuscript and print without the biographical trappings of authorship.

This analysis of primary documents allows readers to understand Shakespeare's tragedies within the context of historical issues of Renaissance England. Comprising dozens of primary source documents, this book explores Early Modern historical issues reflected in four of Shakespeare's tragedies most commonly taught in secondary schools and universities around the world: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth.