"Shakespeare & Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas
Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story" by Stanley
Wells (Vintage, 9780307280534, $14.95)
April 23 is Shakespeare's birthday (and strangely, also the anniversary of
his death), and with this recent book, Stanley Wells throws the Bard a
posthumous birthday party--with all his old friends invited along to share
it. "Shakespeare & Co." puts Shakespeare in context by focusing on the
playwrights around him, that half-wicked fraternity of players, poets, and
public scandal-makers who were Will's great colleagues and competitors. This
varied lot of university wits and working-men's sons are the giants from
whose shoulders Shakespeare stood as he wrote and remade the world.
Stanley Wells is the perfect person to write this book, and he writes it
perfectly. He's the general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, chairman of
the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, and author of
"Shakespeare: For All Time," a magisterial recent biography. In "Shakespeare
& Co.," Wells offers a lively, quick-reading overview of the playwrights who
wrote at the dawn of English drama, when theatres were gaudy, filthy, wooden
circles built bankside on the wrong side of the river, cheek-by-jowl with
brothels and pits for fighting bears. In the summer months of those thankful
years when plague did not rain messy death down on London, these clever men
set up bands of heroes and clowns before their loyal but demanding
listeners, and for two hours' time, the crowds of England enjoyed a chance
to play.
Wells writes to explode our image of the singular Shakespeare who sprang
from a literary vacuum and rose, uncontested, to peerless heights. He shows
us precursors like Thomas Kyd, whose flair for vengeful tragedy helped pave
the way--and create an audience--for "Hamlet," "Othello," and "Macbeth." He
explores the life and work of Shakespeare's great rival Christopher Marlowe,
whose mighty lines outstripped Shakespeare's own until his untimely death in
a bar brawl. And Wells gives special attention to Thomas Middleton, John
Fletcher, and other writers who actually co-wrote plays with Shakespeare,
but whose names have never achieved a notoriety to equal his.
None of this contextualizing is meant to diminish Shakespeare's achievement,
quite the opposite. As Wells writes, "To see him as one among a great
company is only to enhance our sense of what made him unique." And
Shakespeare does emerge from these pages as a uniquely faceted author whose
writings exhibit a particular stamp of faraway romanticism and a strong
breath of poetic introspection. This slim book is a wonderful dip into the
deep pool of English literary history, a history that more than deserves to
be remembered and celebrated. And of course, it's fitting that the guest of
honor at such a celebration should be William Shakespeare. After all, it is
his birthday, and he deserves a party.
Review by
Mark David Bradshaw, April 24, 2008
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