These musings shine a brighter light on Bate’s mind than on Shakespeare’s. Instead of charting the greatness of his subject or infecting readers with a refreshed passion for Shakespeare, he aims to advertise the scope and diligence of his scholarship. In so doing he reminds us that all dons are potentially bores because the same sin defines them. They know too much about too little.

This is not to say that this biography will lack readers. It comes with a stirring endorsement from Simon Russell Beale, and it will prove invaluable to those fretful actors who like to clamber ritualistically into a chronological bathoscope and dive, dive, dive into the dimmest depths of the Elizabethan era before stepping on stage in a Shakespearean role. Bate also enjoys a high reputation among the parchment-wranglers and Bard-hunters of the universities, and this biography will land with a heavy thump on many a professorial doormat. For those academics it will become a true classic; a book no one wants to read and everyone feels they ought to.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP