Between Two Worlds:

Shakespeare the Ordinary Man and Artist

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7431586

Jude Morgan’s novel, 7KH6HFUHW/LIHRI:LOOLDP6KDNHVSHDUH, is a work of biofiction that
deals with the playwright’s life from shortly before he met Anne Hathaway up to the year
1603, highlighting private aspects such as the relationships with his family and friends – and
even his rivals. At the same time, the novel offers an insight into the Elizabethan world in
which William Shakespeare lived and rose to fame, actually a pretext to bring to the
foreground timeless issues which characterise today’s world as well. The portrayal offered by
Morgan is, therefore, one that aims to reconcile the two personas of the Bard – the family
man and the poet and playwright. The present paper aims to analyse how those aspects are
put forward by the novel, relying on features of postmodernism and the biographical novel,
as the author attempts to fill in the gaps in Shakespeare’s life narrative. What is more,
emphasis is laid on the relative concept of ‘truth’ and how it is deconstructed in the shaping
of this particular version of Shakespeare’s story.