All the World’s a Stage: The Worlds of William Shakespeare

We know so much about the world Shakespeare lived in--but so little about the man himself. (No one is positive what he even looked like.) This book--aimed at YA readers, though fitting for a general audience as well--presents the story of Shakespeare's life and writing within the context of his times and his poems and plays. The story follows Shakespeare from his birth in 1564 in a small English market town alongside the Avon River to the great city of London, where he became a celebrity playwright. Readers will learn about his most famous plays (HAMLET, MACBETH)--and about his much less known ones, too (TIMON OF ATHENS, KING JOHN). They will read about his love life, his successes and failures, his declining career, and his return to his home town, where he died in 1616. Shakespeare was a son and brother and husband and father, too, and readers will learn about his family members, one of whom became an actor in London. Readers will also learn about the "Shakespeare identity" question: Did Shakespeare actually write the plays and poems with his name on them? Or did someone else? But most of all, readers will discover the most important things that are now known about this most famous man, this most famous man whose words we know but whose life remains something of a mystery. Which, somehow, seems fitting.