Genius of Shakespeare: Tenth Anniversary Edition - Softcover

"Bate offers an excellent resource for students of English literature and the Elizabethan era in this thoughtful, well-researched and even playful explication of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets."-Publishers Weekly "Jonathan Bate, the sanest, shrewdest scholar of Shakespeare at present, has written the just, liberal, unhostaged book that one has been waiting for."-James Wood, Guardian "A shrewd, nimbly written book, one of the few on its subject that will be read and enjoyed off-campus."-Terry Eagleton, Independent "Ambitious, exceptionally well informed and immensely engaging . . . Bate has, to an exceptional degree, the virtue of readability. He writes with unflagging energy, intelligence, wit and enthusiasm."-Stanley Wells, Daily Telegraph "The theme of this wonderfully written, diverse book is diversity itself, and its range serves only to confirm the disparate nature of Shakespeare's achievement."-Peter Ackroyd, The Times "What made Shakespeare 'Shakespeare'? How much do we really know about his life? How do we know that he really wrote the plays attributed to him? What defines his singularity? No book on the market answers these questions better than The Genius of Shakespeare."-James S. Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

This fascinating book by one of Britain's most acclaimed Shakespeare scholars explores the extraordinary staying-power of the world's most famous dramatist. Bate opens by taking up questions of authorship and then goes on to trace Shakespeare's canonization and near-deification, examining not only the uniqueness of his status among English-speaking readers but also his effect on literary cultures across the globe. Ambitious, wide-ranging, and historically rich, this book shapes a provocative inquiry into the nature of genius as it ponders the legacy of a talent unequalled in English letters. A bold and meticulous work of scholarship, The Genius of Shakespeare is also lively and accessibly written and will appeal to any reader who has marveled at the Bard and the enduring power of his work. This tenth anniversary edition has a new twenty-page afterword that addresses the renewed interest in Shakespeare and recent film adaptations of his most celebrated works.