{"product_id":"9780812971811","title":"Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare","description":"\u003cp\u003e“One man in his time plays many parts,\u003cbr\u003eHis acts being seven ages.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bard’s own immortal list of a man’s seven ages in \u003ci\u003eAs You Like It\u003c\/i\u003e, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeare’s life and connects them to his world and work as never before.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere is the author as an infant, born into a world of plague and syphillis, diseases with which he became closely familiar; as a schoolboy, a position he portrayed in \u003ci\u003eThe Merry Wives of Windsor\u003c\/i\u003e, in which a clever, cheeky lad named William learns Latin grammar; as a lover, married at eighteen to an older woman already pregnant, perhaps presaging Bassanio, who in \u003ci\u003eThe Merchant of Venice \u003c\/i\u003ewon a wife who could save him from financial ruin. Here, too, is Shakespeare as a soldier, writing Henry the Fifth’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, with a nod to his own monarch Elizabeth I’s passionate addresses; as a justice, revealing his possible legal training in his precise use of the law in plays from \u003ci\u003eHamlet\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eMacbeth\u003c\/i\u003e; and as a pantaloon, an early retiree because of, Bate postulates, either illness or a scandal. Finally, Shakespeare enters oblivion, with sonnets that suggest he actively sought immortality through his art and secretly helped shape his posthumous image more than anyone ever knew.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEqual parts masterly detective story, brilliant literary analysis, and insightful world history, \u003cb\u003eSoul of the Age\u003c\/b\u003e is more than a superb new recounting of Shakespeare’s experiences; it is a bold and entertaining work of scholarship and speculation, one that shifts from past to present, reality to the imagination, to reveal how this unsurpassed artist came to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Random House Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031018127600,"sku":"9780812971811","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780812971811_p0.jpg?v=1763738712","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780812971811","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}