What Was Shakespeare Really Like?

This illuminating compilation from Wells (Shakespeare’s Tragedies), honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, collects his lectures speculating on Shakespeare’s character. In “What Manner of Man Was He?” Wells suggests that fond references to Shakespeare in the poems and private notebooks of his contemporaries indicate he was “liked and admired,” and contends that the playwright cared deeply about his family, as illustrated by his investment in large Stratford-upon-Avon estates, where his wife and children lived, while spending relatively little on the London quarters he kept to be close to the Globe theater. Wells analyzes in “What Made Shakespeare Laugh?” how Shakespeare’s comedies reveal his sense of humor, and contemplates his authorial practices in “How Did Shakespeare Write a Play?” which notes that the Bard likely consulted with his company on “the subject matter and style” of plays and had to balance artistic ambition against such practical concerns as not engaging “directly with contemporary political issues” at risk of drawing the monarch’s wrath. Wells’s brisk style makes this an unusually breezy discourse on the playwright, even if it’s not always convincing, as when Wells contends that Sonnet 144’s reference to “two loves... of comfort and despair,” personified as a man and a woman, implies Shakespeare may have been bisexual. Still, this helps separate the man from the myth. Photos. (Sept.)