Covering 400 years of Shakespeare scholarship, Schoenbaum's now classic
William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life
received high acclaim from critics and scholars.
The New York Review of Books
called it "a masterpiece," and the
Guardian
labeled it "our best life of Shakespeare."
Making the resources of the world's greatest Shakespeare collections more accessible to all readers, this updated "Compact Life" contains a refined and amplified version of the original text and fifty of the original documents reproduced in smaller format. Schoenbaum has incorporated new material into his narrative, including an eyewitness account, in harrowing detail, of a murder believed to have occurred in New Place, the house that Shakespeare bought in Stratford in 1597. He also provides a new postscript which includes newly-compiled information from recent research on Shakespeare.