Surprisingly entertaining, informative and just good fun, Nye collects the tales and legends that have accumulated behind the character of the greatest of English writers and attempts to pull together a narrative around them using a known associate of the Bard's stage days as narrator. Speculative in places, bawdy and almost scandalous in others, the result is in general just a lot of fun. Worth reading as an adjunct to the study of Shakespeare's works, as an anodyne to the classical, sometimes dry nature of Shakespearean studies. Thoroughly enjoyable even if you don't know Hamlet from Falstaff.

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