Lost Years

Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide - Nick Groom, Piero 2013

Lost Years

Will may then have spent another two years teaching Latin as a schoolmaster for the Hoghton family in Lancashire. These are Shakespeare’s “lost years”. There is no reliable record of his activities, although the scholarly detail in his early plays might suggest a brief teaching placement. Many academics (being teachers themselves) support this theory, but there are others.

The wit and diplomat Duff Cooper wrote a book just after the war called Sergeant Shakespeare (1949) ...

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… ABOUT MY SUPPOSED LIFE IN THE ARMY.

The canoeist William Bliss imagined that Shakespeare circumnavigated the world with Sir Francis Drake ...

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… BEFORE BEING SHIPWRECKED ON A LATER VOYAGE.

Shakespeare’s life has many blank passages in it, in which critics and biographers are liable to see their own reflections as clearly as they can - or not, as Anthony Burgess wrote in his biography of Shakespeare …

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BEING MYOPIC MYSELF, I SUSPECT THAT SHAKESPEARE WAS MYOPIC.

There are studies presenting Shakespeare as a Catholic, a Puritan, a Royalist, a Republican, etc., etc., but there is no firm evidence for these beliefs, just lines taken from the characters who speak in his plays. Shakespeare’s own faith and politics are not evident from his writing.