Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard

It's easy to assume that William Shakespeare has always held his position at the top of the literary canon. But the truth is not that simple, as Lynch, a professor of English at Rutgers and longtime student of literary history, demonstrates. He ably chronicles how "in three hundred years, William Shakespeare the talented playwright and theatre shareholder had become Shakespeare the transcendent demigod," against whom no slight of literary criticism was too small not to be deemed heresy. Along the way, Shakespeare was all but forgotten; criticized for his sloppy, profane dramaturgy; rewritten, forged and bowdlerized (literally, by the eponymous Bowdler); hijacked as a spokesperson for political causes of all stripes; revered and, finally, unquestioningly glorified. Lynch tells the story of the personalities and politics that shaped both the reception of the Bard's works and the development of the theater in England between 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, and 1864, his 300th birthday. Lynch writes fluidly about the Puritan aspirations that shut the English theaters after Queen Elizabeth's death, the Restoration and consequent revitalization of London's theatrical culture, the rise of celebrity culture and the spread of literacy that took Shakespeare off the stage and into the parlor and classroom. Illus. (July)