Shakespeare and co - Stanley Wells

'Enjoyable, lively
such a pleasure to read
renders the drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries more than fringe entertainment'
Independent

Shakespeare is one of the greatest of all English figures, considered a genius for all time. Yet as this enthralling book shows, he was at heart a man of the theatre, one among a community of artists in the teeming world of Renaissance London - from the enigmatic spy Christopher Marlowe to the self-aggrandizing Ben Jonson, from the actor Richard Burbage to the brilliant Thomas Middleton. By bringing Shakespeare's contemporaries to life, Shakespeare & Co throws fresh new light on the man himself.


'Warm, cheerful, generous
Wells sketches a whole gallery of Shakespeare's fellow playwrights
He brings each vividly to life, making you feel that you've met them personally in some Blackfriars tavern'
Simon Callow

'It was a time and place teeming with excitement, anecdote and incident, and Wells, in this richly enjoyable work, brings it to life with a novelist's sense of the telling detail'
Dominic Dromgoole

'Enthralling'
Observer

'This is one of the most sane and exciting books on Shakespeare I have read for a long time' Scotland on Sunday