Critical Survey

This issue of Critical Survey is dedicated to the life of Shakespeare, from a variety of angles ranging from biofiction to what we would recognise as more traditional biography. To begin with the latter: from one perspective, Shakespearean biography may be said to be booming, with a major new account of the life, or even two, coming out just about every year. Paradoxically, from another perspective, Shakespearean biography might be said to be in crisis: not a crisis of dearth, but one of plenty. How can standards of quality be maintained as the quantity burgeons? Such questions are raised by the inconsistent, often even contradictory views on Shakespeare’s life aired by biographers. One reason for this plurality is undoubtedly gaps in the record of Shakespeare’s life. This is not to say that we know hardly anything about him, but rather that each new biographer will have a different way of joining the dots together.

This article focuses on how the Shakespeare courtship and marriage are interpreted in a number of recent biographies. This small piece of Shakespeare's life story can serve as a microcosm, both for biographical studies of Shakespeare, and for the way his relationship with his wife affects interpretation of his life, and (perhaps) his work. The various configurations of the Shakespeare courtship help determine how the Stratford parts of Shakespeare's life fit into the larger biographical design. A glimpse into the window of 'Shakespeare as lover' may reveal how biographers and readers around the millennium would like him to be as a wooer, lover, and husband.

This article examines the relationship between Shakespeare and Marlowe as it has been portrayed in biographical forms in the early twenty-first century. Just six months before the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Katherine Duncan-Jones's biography of Shakespeare, entitled Ungentle Shakespeare, burst on the scene and the political landscape was as altered as the biographical renderings of the two playwrights. I begin my survey with a brief review of Duncan-Jones's book, before focusing on biographical works which followed hers to show how twenty-first-century biography has already re-written the relationship.

The article uses performance and life analogies in ten novels for juvenile readers to investigate the young protagonists' quest for identity or orientation. Through their experiences in the theatre and as Shakespeare's colleagues, apprentices, or friends, the young people find out who they are and who they might be or should become. The narratives suggest that, not only as stage-actors but also as life-performers, they relive experiences that can be ascribed also to Shakespeare himself. As seen with their eyes, this Shakespeare is de-bardolatrised and de-mythologised when the life-and-theatre analogies he shares with them are extended to his working methods as a poet and playwright.

José Carlos Somoza (1959- ) is the latest in a list of Spanish writers, starting in the Romantic period, who have dealt with Shakespeare as a fictional character. This article examines his presentation of the Bard in his play Miguel Will (1997) and in his short story 'Hamlet' (2008). In the former, Shakespeare is obsessed with the writing of Cardenio and confuses reality and fiction in his private life. In the latter - a short story narrated from the viewpoint of his dog Hamlet - Shakespeare is presented in his domestic milieu in Stratford, where he is forced by a secret corporation to write a different Hamlet.

In fiction as in biography, Shakespeare's life is often politicised. Originally, the story of young Shakespeare caught poaching deer and forced to flee Stratford served to illustrate the role of fate in the creation of genius, while his irresponsible behaviour was downplayed. Later, the poaching was represented as rebellion against aristocratic privileges, and even as a deliberate political protest against enclosures of arable land. In more recent fiction, Shakespeare needs to be forced into a social awareness by the deer stealing episode, or even becomes a heartless landlord himself. Thus, Shakespeare's fictional lives reflect political developments in society, from class conflict to cultural levelling.

This article ties in with the recent interest in Shakespeare's biography and early modern religious discourses. In the following I will try to synthesise two seemingly disparate fields, respectively personalities: I will combine William Shakespeare and his literary work and Nicholas Owen, the master-builder of Jesuit priest holes of the time. As I will propose, the tertium comparationis could be the culture of Doppelbödigkeit, and according to my knowledge this topic has not been pursued to date. What I will not do in this article in the context of Shakespeare's biography, however, is to trace further possible Catholic influences on him, 2 nor maintain that he was a Catholic.

The ways in which New Place has been written about in Shakespearean biographies are changing. This article suggests that the biographical stories we tell ourselves, recycle, and develop are in part influenced by the curating of the material cultural remains associated with the subject which, in the case of New Place, is the responsibility of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. A newly fashioned New Place is emerging before us as the archaeological dig started in 2010 shares its findings in the context of a cultural organisation willing to tell a revisionist story about the site.

Pia Tafdrup is a, possibly the, premier poet of Denmark, who has garnered many accolades and awards including the coveted Nordic Prize – the most prestigious literary award of the five Scandinavian countries – and the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize 2006. She has travelled throughout the world with her poetry and her work has been translated into many languages. She is a member of the Danish Academy and the prestigious European Academy of Poetry.

Cimitero Gathering On Loan by ROY MARSHALL

Keem Bay – Achill Girl: Keel Bay - Achill by RUTH O’CALLAGHAN

Mystery by RICHARD KELL

Notes on contributors