Shakespeare Revealed: A Biography
by Rene Weis
John Murray, HK$160
Speculating about Shakespeare is an industry that continues to thrive almost four centuries after the Bard's death. Although scholars have described his writings as non-autobiographical, some have read into his plays and sonnets clues they have linked to form a multi-dimensional image. Rene Weis, a professor at University College London, says, 'Shakespeare's works reflect his life much more closely than anyone has assumed to date.' Apart from painstaking research into the market town of Stratford where Shakespeare grew up, Weis builds a picture of his inner life and loves. Where others have seen metaphors, he extracts supposed evidence, for example that Shakespeare had a club foot or that he hobbled. He also identifies Shakespeare's infamous Dark Lady (the woman with a swarthy complexion and questionable morals in more than two dozen of his sonnets), cites the Earl of Southampton as the object of his desire and contends that dramatist William Davenant was his illegitimate child. In lieu of evidence to the contrary Weis is on fairly safe ground, although readers will probably be niggled by doubts about whether it is wise to read so literally into the works of a man of such imagination.