Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater

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White, Anne Terry and C. Walter Hodges. Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater. World Landmark Books, W-21. 1955.

Image Source: University of Oregon Rare Books Collection

“He was scarcely conscious of the great powers astir within him.” Anne Terry White’s fictionalized biography portrays the development of Shakespeare as a writer in ways that reflect the beliefs of her own time. Her story emphasizes the myth of Shakespeare’s natural genius: Shakespeare spontaneously speaks in the language that we know from famous speeches in his plays, rather than composing and revising them for the theater. White depicts a Shakespeare who shares the conventional wisdom of mid-20th-century views of his work. For example, White’s Shakespeare laments having to include clowning that diminishes the dignity of his drama and condemns the quality of one of his most popular plays in the Elizabethan period, Titus Andronicus: “not a good play, and Will knew it.” Images here show the "real" Shakespeare spontaneously speaking his own dramatic language, trying to break into the London theatrical scene as an actor, and parroting 20th-century distaste for Titus.

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