In the company of players
In the TLS, Charles Nicholl reviews Bart van Es’s Shakespeare in Company.
"He seeks to show that Shakespeare’s achievement as a writer was in crucial ways communal; that the contributions of his playhouse colleagues, indeed his whole immersion in the business and practice of the theatre, are woven into the fabric of his plays; and that in a broadly chronological framework one can see his literary skills evolving in response to certain changes in his working conditions. These are not in themselves new ideas, but they are pursued with great vigour and clarity, and with much telling documentary detail, and the book moves us yet further away from that daft but tenacious construct of Shakespeare the lofty genius, 'seated' (as Coleridge put it) among the 'glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain.'"
With a lovely long chapter on my impish friend Armin.
Nine
"He seeks to show that Shakespeare’s achievement as a writer was in crucial ways communal; that the contributions of his playhouse colleagues, indeed his whole immersion in the business and practice of the theatre, are woven into the fabric of his plays; and that in a broadly chronological framework one can see his literary skills evolving in response to certain changes in his working conditions. These are not in themselves new ideas, but they are pursued with great vigour and clarity, and with much telling documentary detail, and the book moves us yet further away from that daft but tenacious construct of Shakespeare the lofty genius, 'seated' (as Coleridge put it) among the 'glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain.'"
With a lovely long chapter on my impish friend Armin.
Nine