5.0

Wonderful scholarship that reads more like great biography. It is just what the subtitle suggests--a biography of the mind of Shakespeare. Bate engages in exegesis only minimally while relying on original contemporary sources as they explain how Will's thinking was likely affected by them. Of the many Greenblat, Shapiro, Rosenbaum, Nicholl and Norwich books about Shakespeare this one gets at what thinking was shaping his world view and playmaking best.