ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book identifies many new documents concerning the life and times of William Shakespeare. It aims to produce an exemplary biography worthy of the National Poet. The book traces the influence of the New Biography in the twentieth century. At the same time, there was a strong current of skepticism as to the value of a Life of Shakespeare. The book reviews a wide range of modern biographies on Shakespeare. It also reviews the thin evidence linking Shakespeare with the Earl of Southampton. Accepting the myth that Shakespeare enjoyed this aristocrat's patronage, biographers project the playwright into the earl's life, often by identifying him with the 'fair youth' of the sonnets and the underlying subject of Venus and Adonis. The book is concerned with two supposed relationships of Shakespeare, both important for any literary biography.
