In the last ten years, virtually every previously known fact about Shakespeare has been modified by new research. Park Honan draws on this new information to dramatically alter our perceptions of the actor, poet, and playwright. Here is virtually all that can be factually known or reasonably speculated about Shakespeare's life. Readers will find a vivid picture of what Shakespeare's childhood might have been like in the small English town of Stratford, which had but a dozen streets in 1560. We meet his father, John Shakespeare, the glovemaker of Henley Street, who rose to the office of High Bailiff and Justice of the Peace before he was beset by financial difficulties. There is a fascinating portrait of London and of the life of an Elizabethan actor (a neophyte Shakespeare may have had to learn as many as a hundred small parts per season). Honan casts new light on the young poet's relationships--his early courtship of Anne Hathaway, their marriage, his attitudes to women such as Jennet Davenant, Marie Mountjoy, and his own daughters--illuminating Shakespeare's needs, habits, passions, and concerns. The author shows in fresh detail that Shakespeare was well acquainted with violent crime and murder in daily life. And he also examines the world of the playing companies--the power of patronage, theatrical conditions, and personal rivalries--to reveal the relationship between the man and the writing. Park Honan's Shakespeare casts new light on a complex and fascinating life, illuminating Shakespeare's extraordinary development into the greatest dramatist of his or any age. Honan (English, emeritus, Univ. of Leeds), author of biographies of Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, and Robert Browning, aims to create the most up-to-date and accurate narrative of the bard's life yet penned. Dismissive of other writers who, in his view, have imagined moments and motives in Shakespeare's life, he tries to rely on documentary and contextualized fact. The result is a blow-by-blow account of Shakespeare's life from birth to death, with some attention paid to the historical, political, and social world Shakespeare inhabited. Extensive notes and a study of the biographical writings on Shakespeare to date conclude the work. At times this biography is overwritten for its target audience, the general public, and it can be slow reading. However, as the most up-to-date biography of Shakespeare, and certainly one of the most complete linear narratives, it is useful and therefore recommended for academic and larger public libraries.?Neal Wyatt, Chesterfield Cty. P.L., VA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. A meticulously researched, lucidly presented, but oddly undramatic life of English literature's elusive icon. Bardolaters hoping for more speculation about the Dark Lady's identity or adventurous hypotheses of the ``missing years'' before London will get a refreshing cold shower from this up-to-date, strictly factual life. Veteran British biographer Honan (professor emeritus of English at the University of Leeds; Jane Austen, 1988, etc.) pitches in with Shakespearean studies' slow work to overturn the romantic tide of mythologizing, garbled oral tradition, and basic errors surrounding the poet ever since Aubrey's gossipy anecdotography in his Restoration-era Brief Lives. With the current accumulation of unearthed Elizabethan documents, Honan's work has a solid footing in the era. Mapping out Shakespeare's post-Reformation Stratford, the author analyzes both his father's business and civic affairs, his family's ties to recusant Midlands Catholics, and his mother's and wife's personalitiesat least as far as can be inferred from official documents such as wills. Honan also goes into detail about a grammar school education (and how it would have formed the basis of Shakespeare's tutelage) before he suggests that Will left to become something like a teacher-cum-actor in Lancashire (if ``William Shakeshafte,'' in the employ of Alexander de Hoghton, is indeed the Bard). Picking up his trail in London, Honan's treatment of Shakespeare's career in the tumultuous Elizabethan theater is grounded in documentary evidence wherever possible, with suppositions about Shakespeare's attitudes to his fellow actors and contemporary tastes (such as for child actors) always carefully qualified. By the end, although Honan is impartial about the dogmatic conflicts of Shakespeare's times, he does not approach the final question of Shakespeare's personal religious convictionsas Aubrey noted, he was accused of having ``died a papist.'' Still, this life objectively scrutinizes the public individual rather than the inner man. Synthesizing current scholarship, Honan is as likely to quote from official documents, from church records and business papers, or from law court testimonies, as from Shakespeare's works for his portrait. (b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. `It does bring us closer to the world t