The Underground Shakespeare
Despite their obscurity, “The Rape of Lucrece” and “Venus and Adonis” were Shakespeare’s best-sellers. But why were these poems so wildly popular? Shadowplay, by Clare Asquith, 370 pages, PublicAffairs, 2018) In Shadowplay—her first book about the secret messages in Shakespeare’s plays—Clare Asquith explains what sparked first her imagination and then her research: In the early [...]