Intimacies with Marlowe, entanglements in London with the mysterious dark lady, the probable fathering of an illegitimate son the mysteries of Shakespeare`s personal life have proven tantalisingly obscure.

In Shakespeare Revealed, acclaimed authority, Ren Weis, brings the man and his milieu to the fore in a compelling reassessment. Breaking with tradition, he reveals how theworks themselves contain a rich seam of clues about Shakespeare`s life, from his heretical dalliances with Catholicism to his grief at the death of his son Hamnet. If there is a code in his writing, Shakespeare always intended it to be broken.

This striking re-reading isconsolidated by scrupulous archival research. Through reconstruction of records of the age, Ren Weis builds a colourful picture of Shakespeare`s daily life: the bustling market town of Stratford, the spellbinding forests of Warwickshire, the pell-mell of London`s theatres. Above all hereanimates Shakespeare`s social scene: Stratford`s family affairs and neighbourly disputes and a dangerous London scene, peopled with shady spies, informers and torturers.

Reviews

‘Intriguing stuff’

The Bookseller

Praise for The Yellow Cross:

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‘A story with a powerful modern resonance, a story of treachery, betrayal, passion, greed, and heroism ... My book of the year’

Christopher Bland, Sunday Telegraph

‘Painstaking and passionate’

The Times

‘For the reader interested in the texture of life in the medieval world ... there can be few better guides than this beautiful book, which lets an almost forgotten people, even through the filter of time, speak once again for themselves’

Washington Post

‘Intriguing stuff’

The Bookseller