Preface ; Introduction ; PART ONE: WHO IS SHAKESPEARE? WHAT IS HE? ; 1. A Life of Anecdote ; 2. Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems? ; 3. The Authorship Controversy ; 4. Marlowe's Ghost ; 5. Shakespeare's Peculiarity ; PART TWO: THE SHAKESPEARE EFFECT ; 6. The Original Genius ; 7. The National Poet ; 8. All the World his Stage ; 9. From Character to Icon ; 10. The Laws of the Shakespearean Universe ; Afterword ; Notes ; Index

"Bate offers an excellent resource for students of English literature and the Elizabethan era in this thoughtful, well-researched and even playful explication of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets."-Publishers Weekly "Jonathan Bate, the sanest, shrewdest scholar of Shakespeare at present, has written the just, liberal, unhostaged book that one has been waiting for."-James Wood, Guardian "A shrewd, nimbly written book, one of the few on its subject that will be read and enjoyed off-campus."-Terry Eagleton, Independent "Ambitious, exceptionally well informed and immensely engaging . . . Bate has, to an exceptional degree, the virtue of readability. He writes with unflagging energy, intelligence, wit and enthusiasm."-Stanley Wells, Daily Telegraph "The theme of this wonderfully written, diverse book is diversity itself, and its range serves only to confirm the disparate nature of Shakespeare's achievement."-Peter Ackroyd, The Times "What made Shakespeare 'Shakespeare'? How much do we really know about his life? How do we know that he really wrote the plays attributed to him? What defines his singularity? No book on the market answers these questions better than The Genius of Shakespeare."-James S. Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

Selling point: Penned by one of the most renowned Shakespeare scholars writing today. Bate ranks alongside widely known and highly influential critics of early modern drama like Stephen Greenblatt, David Bevington, and Stanley Wells Selling point: Written in a lively, engaging, and accessible style that will appeal to students, professors, and the general reader Selling point: Updated with a new twenty-page afterword addressing the renewed interest in Shakespeare and recent film adaptations