Clever-clever: Critiquing Anthony Burgess&#;s Shakespeare biography
Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare was published in by Jonathan Cape as a lavishly illustrated folio-sized volume. Burgess described his biography as a way of using up the research he had undertaken for a film about Shakespeare’s life that he&#;d written for Warner Brothers, commissioned in and cancelled three years later.
The UK hardback edition of is a vigorous, colourful, extravagant, even fanciful portrait of Shakespeare’s life and times, balanced by sharp observations about each of his plays.
In the second volume of his memoirs, Burgess notes that he &#;understood that the true Shakespeare scholars of Princeton thought little of the text, but that was to be expected.’ It is clear that he paid attention to the opinions of the reviewers.
Although the majority of American critics were positive about the book, Burgess notes that ‘disparagement came from my native country,’ and he quotes several negative reviews from the British press. As he writes in You&#;ve Had Your Time:
The Tablet, for instance, found ‘the captions … coy, clever-clever, or muddled. Plain factuality would have helped matters. Burge
Burgess and Shakespeare
Burgess and Shakespeare:
elcome to Anthony Burgess and Shakespeare.
Throughout his career, Anthony Burgess was fascinated by the writing and life of William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, and the story of his life, inspired Burgess to write novels, critical studies, a biography, a ballet, chamber music and a musical film. As a teacher, Burgess passed on his love of Elizabethan drama to his students through lectures and textbooks; and as a journalist, he celebrated Shakespeare’s language and his importance in our own time.
Explore these pages to find out about the influence of Shakespeare on Anthony Burgess, and the fresh interpretations Burgess brings to his work.
Listen to our podcasts on Anthony Burgess and Shakespeare (see below): we examine Burgess’s Shakespeare biography, his novel Nothing Like the Sun and his other imaginative fictional interpretations of the bard’s life, and hear some of Burgess’s Shakespeare music. as well as a newly-discovered series of Shakespeare lectures.
Get thee to: Greetings | Burgess and the bard | A talk about Shakespeare | Shakespeare podcasts | Another Shakespeare section (see links
During the years to Anthony Burgess was living in Chiswick, West London. He moved there with his first wife Lynne the year after A Clockwork Orange was published, and stayed there for five years, writing 6 novels, 3 books of criticism and several translations. A few months after Lynne’s death in March , Burgess left West London and England for good.
This period was a time of great creativity for Burgess. He wrote several novels, including his biographical novel about Shakespeare Nothing Like the Sun[1], thriller Tremor of Intent and the comic sequel Enderby Outside. He was also composing piano music at this time, and in he wrote the script, lyrics and music for an unmade Hollywood musical about Shakespeare, under the working title ‘The Bawdy Bard’.
was the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth in , and Burgess’s major contribution was the publication of his novel Nothing Like the Sun. He’d rushed to finish it the previous autumn it so it could be published in April to coincide with the Shakespeare anniversary; and he wanted to be in London to promote the novel.
Nothing Like the Sun is a fictional biography of Shakespeare. So
Anthony Burgess and Shakespeare
Anthony Burgess and Shakespeare:
Throughout his career, Anthony Burgess was fascinated by the writing and life of William Shakespeare. He wrote articles about Shakespeare’s language and reviewed books about Shakespeare for the Independent and the Observer; he wrote a speculative biography with lavish illustrations, Shakespeare (); he wrote a ballet suite, Mr WS, that told the story of Shakespeare’s life; he wrote a TV series on the same subject, and a musical (both of which projects were not produced); and Shakespeare appears as a character in his last novel, A Dead Man in Deptford (), about Christopher Marlowe.
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