Michael Dobson writes:

The ploy of concentrating on the events of a single exciting year neatly leaves out much of what can make the average cradle-to-grave life of Shakespeare seem turgid and off the point - all that stuff about infant mortality rates in Warwickshire and the ecclesiastical rules governing marriage licences; all those guessing games about how, when and where young William got out of the glove-making and wool-dealing business and into the theatre - and allows Shapiro to get straight to the much more interesting question, often skimped in such books, of what Shakespeare's working life, the bit that made him matter, actually consisted of from one week and month to the next.

(LRB 20 October 2005)

Faber and Faber | Paperback 464 pp. |ISBN: 9780571214815