Shakespeare and Biography is not a new biography of Shakespeare. Instead, it is a study of what biographers have said about Shakespeare, from the first formal biography in the early 18th century by Nicholas Rowe to Stephen Greenblatt, James Shapiro, Jonathan Bate, Germaine Greer, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Park Honan, Rene Weis, and others who have written recent biographical accounts of England's greatest writer. The emphasis is on what sorts of issues these biographers have found especially interesting in relation to sex and gender, politics, religion, pessimism, misanthropy, jealousy, aging, family relationships, the end of a career, the end of life. How has Shakespeare's contemplation of these issues changed and grown, and in what ways do those changes reflect new cultural developments in our world as it continues to reinterpret Shakespeare? Features: A lively account of Shakespearean biography by one of the world's foremost Shakespearean scholars; Probes the challenges faced by biographers of Shakespeare across the ages; Explains what is really known of the life of William Shakespeare from the historical record and from his plays and poems. - Publisher.