The Return From Parnassus Part 1

The Genius of Shakespeare is a new kind of biography: a biography of Shakespeare's talent and reputation, beyond the limits of his actual life. Part One explores the origins and development of his works, Part Two traces their effects on succeeding generations, and demonstrates how Shakespeare came to be regarded as the supreme dramatist.

Originally published in Moscow, The Shakespeare Game quickly hit Russia's "nonfiction best seller" list. It was an intellectual sensation and went through three editions in the first year. Asking why do we have Shakespeare, and who is Shakespeare, Gililov has studied watermarks and printer's type, registration dates, and documented biographical details of Shakespeares contemporaries, considering the physical evidence as well as the personalities and motives of the suspects. Gililov suggests an answer to the Shakespeare riddle -- one that will delight literature fans and confound the proponents of other "candidate bards." He finds the key in the most mysterious Shakespeare poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle, and the collection in which it was published; he identifies its heroes and reveals the meaning in this shocking requiem and its connection with works by Ben Jonson, John Donne and other great contemporaries of "Shakespeare." Along the way, Gililov probes and refutes the mystification around the court jester Thomas Coryate and numerous other Elizabethan/Jacobean literary oddities. Book jacket.

Twenty-six original essays by leading theorists and historians of the pre-seventeenth-century English stage chart a paradigmatic shift within the field. In contrast to the traditional emphasis on individual authors, the contributors to this storehouse of new historical information and critical insight explore the place of the stage within the larger society, as well as issues of performance and physical space, providing an innovative approach to both literary studies and cultural history.