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The Secret Life of William Shakespeare: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Jude Morgan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 101 ratings
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Named One of Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Books of 2014

There are so few established facts about how the son of a glove maker from Warwickshire became one of the greatest writers of all time that some people doubt he could really have written so many astonishing plays. We know that he married Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant and six years older than he, at the age of eighteen, and that one of their children died of the plague. We know that he left Stratford to seek his fortune in London, and eventually succeeded. He was clearly an unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband. But when and how did he also become a genius?

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare pulls back the curtain to imagine what it might have really been like to be Shakespeare before a seemingly ordinary man became a legend. In the hands of acclaimed historical novelist Jude Morgan, this is a brilliantly convincing story of unforgettable richness, warmth, and immediacy.

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  1. Print length
    465 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    St. Martin's Press
  5. Publication date
    April 1, 2014
  6. File size
    1154 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

At the age of 18, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, a woman six years his senior and already pregnant. These facts, among a smattering of additional information, are really all that’s known about the early life of English literature’s most celebrated author. From this paucity of hard facts, novelist Morgan sets out to explore Shakespeare’s personal life in some comprehensive way. He is successful in some respects, bringing into sharp focus the voice of Anne Hathaway, weaving in the personalities of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe, and laying out Elizabethan life in a way that feels authentic. Morgan is no stranger to literary historical fiction, and readers of his previous works, including a novel about the Brontës (Charlotte and Emily, 2010), will note that The Secret Life of William Shakespeare takes liberties with the Bard’s words, motivations, and personality while staying true to the spirit of the Shakespeare we all know and love. An entertaining read. --Heather Paulson

Review

“It's hard to imagine a better historical novel about the Bard than this one; in quality and power, it rivals Hilary Mantel's justly acclaimed books (Wolf Hall; Bring Up the Bodies) about Thomas Cromwell....Morgan's novel will stimulate the same literary enthusiasm for the Elizabethans.” ―Library Journal (starred review)

“Morgan writes masterful characters...In a layered narrative with a richness that rewards measured reading, Morgan re-creates Shakespeare's Elizabethan milieu, every place and person rendered with near-perfect realism....A tour de force.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“An imaginative, absorbing and totally believable story...[Morgan] even follows Shakespeare's lyrical meter and phraseology in this biography that's as lively as a Shakespeare comedy and as human as one of his dramas. Truly a delight to read. ” ―RT Book Reviews

“An entertaining read.” ―Booklist

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00FCRLDH0
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press (April 1, 2014)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 1, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1154 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 465 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 101 ratings

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Jude Morgan

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Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
101 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Janetwhitten
5.0 out of 5 stars A sensitive interpretation
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2014
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I found this novelized biography of Shakespeare's life quite acceptable and human.
The facts we have are few. The author has fleshed out this stick-figure we have been given. Shakespeare comes across as a very mature insightful observer and participant in the life of 16th-17th century London. I was particularly impressed with the portrayal of his relationship with his wife. I am passing this book on to an old friend who is as passionate about the Bard as I am.
4 people found this helpful
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Andrew E. Schultz
4.0 out of 5 stars Authentic Shakespearean Novel
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2014
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Loved this book. If non-fiction is about facts and fiction about truth, I think the Secret Life of William Shakespeare gets pretty close to the truth. For my money, it captures the flavor of Elizabethan life better than just about anything I've read including my limited readings of the Bard himself. Plausible portrayals of Marlowe and Jonson, too.
The relationship with Anne, Shakespeare's wife, is also plausible, but largely imagined, I suspect, as is the backstory of other love interests. Well written and might be an interesting film.
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W. Lynn Joines
3.0 out of 5 stars It's Okay
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2015
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I lost interest pretty early one, but may go back to it. The best book Jude Morgan wrote was Passion, nothing else comes close to it.
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Lo-Ham
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2014
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Excellent, prompt service.
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sleepless
2.0 out of 5 stars Imagination or reality?
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2013
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I found the development of the story long and tedious. Written in the vernacular of the time, it requires concentration to follow the thoughts and emotions. Definitely not a light bed-time read.
3 people found this helpful
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Art Grandma
3.0 out of 5 stars Slow Reading
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2014
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Author moves from one character to the other frequently. I found it difficult to stay on track.
One person found this helpful
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sally tarbox
4.0 out of 5 stars Transports the reader into 1600s England
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2017
An extraordinarily rich, vivid novel, almost Shakespearean in style, which takes the reader from Will at 18 - son of a Stratford glover, fascinated by the strolling players who visit the town, falling for 'older woman' Anne Hathaway, through the next twenty years of his life.
By necessity imagining much, the author describes his relationships - with his siblings, his disapproving father, the wife who is effectively abandoned for long periods as he takes up the acting profession, and Shakespeare's mysterious 'Dark Lady'. Fellow writers and players are brought to life, the jealousy, the drink and casual violence, the aspirations to knowledge and the hints of homosexuality. But Will himself remains a rather vague and unknowable character:

"Follow the dark young player called Will when he leaves the Shoreditch tavern a little later.
Follow his rapid progress through the baffling noonday London streets, where breath is always on your face and human life is collision. Follow him precisely - the trail of his body-shape through the crowds - and you find that you touch no one; that somehow without slackening pace, he ripples and sidles and at every moment presents a slender fencer's breathed-in profile and reaches his destination as free of contact as if he had walked there across a gleaned field."

Written in the voices of Will, Anne and Ben Jonson, I was bowled over by this novel, though it's dense, verbose, poetic, and you need to read it slowly and savour it.
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DJ
3.0 out of 5 stars It is hard to imagine he had secrets.
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2014
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My spouse bought this.
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A Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Jude Morgan's best yet
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2012
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I can never fault Jude Morgan, and the Secret Life of William Shakespeare is masterful storytelling.
Disillusioned with life as a glove-maker's son in Stratford, and constant quarrels with his father; Will sets off for London (leaving behind his complex, beautiful, dutiful wife Anne and three young children) - as a player with the Queen's Men.
After initial struggles, things start to take off for Will as soon as he realises that a quill in his hand is far mightier than any prop-sword, and begins to write his first plays...
Will's story is cleverly interwoven with that of his wife, and of Ben Jonson, along with a dash of Marlowe and Burbage, and an assortment of finely-drawn supporting characters and backdrops.
You don't have to be a massive Shakespeare fan to appreciate this superbly entertaining book; the prose is intensely lyrical and readable.
As a study of a uniquely brilliant mind during a multifaceted period of history, it will grip you. As the story of an ordinary man struggling to realise his potential, it is as relevant today as ever.
5 people found this helpful
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Ralph Blumenau
4.0 out of 5 stars Felicitous inventions
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2013
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Another well-researched biographical novel by this author, who now moves from the 19th century ("Passion", about the Romantic poets; "Symphony" about Berlioz; see my Amazon reviews) to the 16th and early 17th. This means a change of language (not Elizabethan except for the occasional archaic words) and of style (actually more modern, more staccato, more mannered than in the other two, modishly using the historic present a great deal, and with - surely - unhistorical swearwords like b....r and f.....g. Many happy similes, though.)

The first part of the book is about young Shakespeare wooing Anne Hathaway; a loving marriage was hastened by her becoming pregnant. The reactions of their respective families are very well done, as indeed is the their household setting.

Already the young man is enthralled by players who come to Stratford, and we have rather more about the relationship between the players than I found really interesting. But eventually, after a struggle within himself and with his family, Will joins them in London and on tour. Whenever he returns later to be with his family for a while, he has to cope with his sour and resentful father.

In London he has a hard time of it in the beginning. He is thrilled by Marlow's writing; but when he gets to know his hero, their relationship is very edgy. He is an only moderately good actor, but he begins writing his own scripts. When he comes to Richard III, Morgan begins to convey something of the creative process as Shakespeare works with Burbage on the play and as the chronicling of the Henry IV plays turns into the absorbing portrayal of character.

In due course, and with the help of his patron, the young Earl of Southampton, he becomes prosperous enough to buy a house of his own in Bishopsgate and at last, after some persuasion, he brings his wife and three children to join him there. But poor Stratford Anne is a fish out of water in London, and can stand it for only a season. That chapter is headed 1595/1596. Those dates are not Shakespeare's famous "lost years" (1585 to 1592); and as I can find no reference elsewhere to Anne and her children having moved to London, I take it that this is part of the "Secret Life" that Morgan has invented. But it is well invented: I found it the first chapter that is really involving. There was already a gulf between Mary and Will because he spent so much of his time in London; but the (real) tragedy that occurs at the end of the chapter deepens it further, and Mary's unhappiness is always very well and touchingly described.

Another invention is Morgan's presentation of the famous "Dark Lady" of the sonnets: she is not one of the several women we find in the speculations of other scholars. Though Shakespeare's love for Anne had gone cold, he did not want to cheat on her. But the hold the Dark Lady had over the normally self-controlled Shakespeare is well done. There is also a delicate portrayal of Shakespeare's feelings for the pretty Matthew Hollingbery, one of the boy actors who plays women's parts in the company. I think he is another invention - the part he plays in the imagination of the Dark Lady and of Mary and in the moving climax at the end of the book certainly is very much the kind of untangling with which Shakespeare ends some of his comedies, though with an emotional complexity that the comedies rarely have.

In parallel with Shakespeare's story is that of Ben Jonson, escaping from brick-laying to become an intellectual playwright himself, eight years Shakespeare's junior. It is more than half-way through the book that they meet and become friends. Jonson, unlike the self-contained Shakespeare, will be in frequent hot water, ready to quarrel with everyone except with Shakespeare. And a similar great sorrow befalls both men.

Morgan vividly brings out the difference between crowded, bustling, unruly, foetid, pestilential Elizabethan London and the fresher air of the fields outside it and of country townlets like Stratford.

I found the first half of the book disappointing, the plot lacking in drive and vitality, and I was set to give it a poor rating. But in the second half I really began to feel for the characters and what they go through.
4 people found this helpful
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Linda Ann
3.0 out of 5 stars Difficult
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2023
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I found it difficult to get into as the speech is of it's time.
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Jane Montez Nurse
5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, I never want it to end...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 2012
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I'm almost half way through The Secret Life of William Shakespeare, and already I know I will be bereft when I finish it. I've never read a book that makes me feel the way this one does, and I've read so many hundreds of books...And I've certainly never written a review of a book before I've even finished reading it.

My review could never compare with the beauty of Jude Morgan's work, so all I'll say is that this book fills up my heart. The words make me want to bathe in them. I want to read books like this forever.

If you love and value the English word and you want to be carried off into another time; if you want to feel that every line is a piece of poetry, this is the book to read.

Simply stunning.
One person found this helpful
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MR RICHARD HAIGHTON
1.0 out of 5 stars Diappointing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 11, 2012
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Have not reached the end of this book yet - which is a sure sign it's a duffer. It's getting better but I think life maybe too short to actually finish this one. Sorry.
One person found this helpful
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