Go to Hachette Book Group home

Search

Site Preferences

Show prices in:

By clicking “Accept,” you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies on your device as set forth in our Cookie Policy and our Privacy Policy. Please note that certain cookies are essential for this website to function properly and do not require user consent to be deployed.

Shadowplay

The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare

Shadowplay Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Clare Asquith

Formats and Prices

Price

$21.99

Price

$28.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $21.99 $28.99 CAD
  2. ebook $11.99 $15.99 CAD

Also available from:

In 16th century England many loyal subjects to the crown were asked to make a terrible choice: to follow their monarch or their God. The era was one of unprecedented authoritarianism: England, it seemed, had become a police state, fearful of threats from abroad and plotters at home. This age of terror was also the era of the greatest creative genius the world has ever known: William Shakespeare. How, then, could such a remarkable man born into such violently volatile times apparently make no comment about the state of England in his work?

He did. But it was hidden. Revealing Shakespeare’s sophisticated version of a forgotten code developed by 16th-century dissidents, Clare Asquith shows how he was both a genius for all time and utterly a creature of his own era: a writer who was supported by dissident Catholic aristocrats, who agonized about the fate of England’s spiritual and political life and who used the stage to attack and expose a regime which he believed had seized illegal control of the country he loved.

Shakespeare’s plays offer an acute insight into the politics and personalities of his era. And Clare Asquith’s decoding of them offers answers to several mysteries surrounding Shakespeare’s own life, including most notably why he stopped writing while still at the height of his powers. An utterly compelling combination of literary detection and political revelation, Shadowplay is the definitive expose of how Shakespeare lived through and understood the agonies of his time, and what he had to say about them.

Genre:

On Sale
Sep 25, 2018
Page Count
370 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9781541774292

You May Also Like

James Joyce
James Joyce $3.99 $4.99 CAD
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy $3.99 $4.99 CAD
After Theory
After Theory $19.99
Eugene Onegin: A Novel In Verse
Eugene Onegin: A Novel In Verse $19.99 $25.99 CAD
Hemingway
Hemingway $29.99 $38.99 CAD

Clare Asquith

About the Author

Clare Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith, is the author of Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare. She studied English literature at Oxford, where she gained a congratulatory First. Her ideas about Shakespeare’s politics and religion were first raised in the Times Literary Supplement in 2001. Since then, she has written numerous articles and lectured widely on Shakespeare and his background.

Learn more about this author