Living the Shakespearean Life: True Stories, edited by John Boe, is a collection of oral histories from eminent Shakespeare scholars, directors, and actors in England and America. They talk about the full range of their Shakespearean lives, including how they first became interested in Shakespeare, what they have learned from Shakespeare, what the Shakespearean is, what Shakespeare might have been like, and specific lines, plays, and characters. This book is for anyone who loves Shakespeare.

Includes interviews with:

Roger Allam • John Barton • David Bevington • Giles Block • Stephen Booth • Regina Buccola • Ralph Alan Cohen • Farah-Karim Cooper • Fran Dolan • Franchelle Dornn • Dominic Dromgoole • Barbara Gaines • Rupert Goold • Stephen Greenblatt • Andrew Gurr • Jean Howard • Nick Hutchison • Michael Kahn • Peter Lichtenfels • Russ McDonald • Barbara Mowat • Adrian Noble • Robin Goodrin Nordli • Bill Rauch • Hugh and Velma Richmond • Patsy Rodenberg • James Shapiro • Tiffany Stern • David Suchet • Ann Thompson • Zoe Wanamaker • Jim Warren • Stanley Wells • John Boe

From the introduction by editor John Boe:

You’re living the Shakespearean life when, as Dame Judi Dench puts it, Shakespeare is the man who pays the rent. While my Ph.D. dissertation was focused on Shakespeare, and while in my academic life I sometimes taught Shakespeare and wrote about him, I only began living a fully Shakespearean life in summer 2000 when I started teaching Shakespeare to American undergraduates in London. From then on, each summer was pretty much devoted exclusively to Shakespeare. I loved the experience and was changed by it. Much of my Shakespearean life centered at the Globe Theatre, the creation of the American actor Sam Wanamaker, who ended up in England because he had been blacklisted in the U.S. Thus the new Globe Theatre came about in part because of Joseph McCarthy.

Around 2010 I started wondering about how other people were changed by their Shakespearean lives and decided to do the interviews that led to this book … So every summer in England and the rest of the year in the States, I interviewed workers in the Shakespeare industry: actors, directors, scholars, and voice coaches. I developed some general questions, but they functioned more as prompts than as a script. Here is a short version of my basic ten questions:

1. When did you first encounter Shakespeare?
2. When did you get a sense of how important Shakespeare was going to be in your life?
3. Were any people or experiences particularly important to helping you find your Shakespearean life?
4. Is there a particular Shakespeare play that you have found problematic?
5. What are your favorite Shakespeare plays?
6. Can you talk about favorite and/or problematic characters or characters you especially admire or even can identify with?
7. How has Shakespeare been useful in your life? Has Shakespeare taught you anything about living your life?
8. What is “Shakespearean,” as opposed to Jonsonian, Stoppardian, or whatever?
9. Do you have any fantasies as to Shakespeare’s personality?
10. Is there a quotation from Shakespeare that you particularly like or identify with?