RODNEY BOLT

A gloriously playful retake of the biographies of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Working with hard facts and a healthy dose of conjecture, History Play questions the purpose of biography in a stunning narrative of the imagination. 'About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong. ' T. S. EliotMark Twain likened writing the biography of Shakespeare to reconstructing the skeleton of a brontosaurus -- using 'nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris'. ...