This three-part series from 2023 is an attept to construct a very personal and contemporary image of the poet, playwright, producer, actor and businessman William Shakespeare. In some ways it works well. But it omits too much to actually give us a nuanced portrait of the man. The strenght of the series is how it contextualises the plays (it does not mention the 154 sonnets he wrote or his much discussed sexuality) in the affairs and politics of the day. There are also some insightful interviews with actors, dramatists and academics. I would recommend Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (2005) for a more detailed (although somewhat speculative) account of whom Bill Shakespeare may have been as a person in the world.
The central conceit of Julian Jones’s proposition is that we can fill in the gaps in Shakespeare’s life story by extrapolating from what was on his mind as revealed in his contemporaneous works. Some such speculations have the ring of plausibility about them: Titus Andronicus written as a Tarantino-esque blood fest to bring in the plebs when he needed money shortly after his arrival in the capital; Julius Caesar written as a warning against the unintended consequences attendant on usurping a leader when the succession is uncertain. Others are shoehorned in with the air of an enthusiastic undergraduate dissertation running out of steam. - Gary Naylor
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