Shakespeare—Bard Thou Never Wert

THE “William Shakespeare” we know is both fact and artifact, a composition of nineteenthcentury scholarship and sentiment. No serious biography of him was undertaken until nearly two hundred years after his death, when Shakespeare studies became a heavy industry, inseparable from Bardolatry.

But the biographers never really caught their man. The portrait that emerged from research was unsatisfying. Maybe it was just the skimpiness of the records, but nothing in the new data reflected a literary life or personality—just a businessman.