The Truth about William Shakespeare

David Ellis is Professor of English Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Preface; Acknowledgements; PART I; 1. Rules of the game; 2. Bricks without straw; 3. Forbears; 4. The female line and Catholicism; 5. Boyhood and youth; 6. Marriage; 7. The theatre; 8. Patronage, or who's who in the Sonnets; 9. Shakespeare and the love of men; 10. Shakespeare and the love of women; 11. Friends; 12. London life; 13. Politics; 14. Money;15. Retirement and death; 16. Post-mortem; PART II; 17. Gossip;18. The post-modernist challenge; 19. The argument from expertise; 20. Trahison des clercs?; Notes; Index.

Very readable and often witty: David Ellis makes a convincing and entertaining case that recent biographies of William Shakespeare, though claiming to add to our knowledge of the poet's life, cannot really do so because the body of directly relevant evidence has remained more or less constant for the last hundred years. -- Robert Bearman, former Head of Archives, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust In exposing the fabrications that biographers have resorted to in the face of the lack of knowledge of any kind to be had about Shakespeare's personality and private life, this book is sharply incisive, humorously as well as forensically so. It is also thoroughly informative about Shakespeare's life, insofar as it is known. -- George Donaldson, University of Bristol Very readable and often witty: David Ellis makes a convincing and entertaining case that recent biographies of William Shakespeare, though claiming to add to our knowledge of the poet's life, cannot really do so because the body of directly relevant evidence has remained more or less constant for the last hundred years. In exposing the fabrications that biographers have resorted to in the face of the lack of knowledge of any kind to be had about Shakespeare's personality and private life, this book is sharply incisive, humorously as well as forensically so. It is also thoroughly informative about Shakespeare's life, insofar as it is known.