Enjoyable lively … such a pleasure to read … renders the drama of Shakespeare’s contemporaries more than fringe entertainment’ Independent Shakespeare is one of the greatest of all English figures considered a genius for all time. Yet as this enthralling book shows he was at heart a man of the theatre one among a community of artists in the teeming world of Renaissance London – from the enigmatic spy Christopher Marlowe to the self-aggrandizing Ben Jonson from the actor Richard Burbage to the brilliant Thomas Middleton. By bringing Shakespeare’s contemporaries to life Shakespeare & Co throws fresh new light on the man himself. ‘Warm cheerful generous … Wells sketches a whole gallery of Shakespeare’s fellow playwrights … He brings each vividly to life making you feel that you’ve met them personally in some Blackfriars tavern’ Simon Callow ‘It was a time and place teeming with excitement anecdote and incident and Wells in this richly enjoyable work brings it to life with a novelist’s sense of the telling detail’ Dominic Dromgoole ‘Enthralling’ Observer ‘This is one of the most sane and exciting books on Shakespeare I have read for a long time’ Scotland on Sunday
