It seems incredible that one man—even a genius—could have written the world's greatest plays and its most magnificent poetry. Yet William Shakespeare, with only a grammar school education, did both. If he had produced nothing but Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, he would have joined the immortals.

Born in Stratford, England, in 1564, young Shakespeare was a dreamy, imaginative boy who hated working in his father's glove shop. In his spare time he wandered the forest of Arden, soaked up folklore and wrote verse. At eighteen he married pretty Anne Hathaway and struggled to support a growing family, earning a pittance as a law clerk. But the work was drudgery. Suddenly, compulsively, he joined a group of strolling players and went to London.

He took whatever minor jobs the stage offered, acting small parts and serving as a copyist for playwrights. Gradually he realized that he could rewrite dull scripts and make them sparkle. Humbly, with growing ambition, he conceived his first play. Working in squalid lodgings he created the fabulous Henry VI. It was an immediate success and established him as a dramatist.

The young Earl of Southampton became Shakespeare's patron and friend, and he soared to fame as Queen Elizabeth's favorite playwright. Then he met a beautiful "Dark Lady" and his sonnets to her still burn like candles in the dark. Her identity is one of the most fascinating mysteries of literature.

Shakespeare's story is as romantic and dramatic as one of his own plays. He lived in a time of war, plague and desperate intrigue. Unwittingly he was involved in a plot against the crown, and his friend the Earl of Essex was beheaded.

Miss Noble takes us backstage, recounting the incidents and emotions which inspired Shakespeare's plays, condensing the more exciting plots. Most compellingly she reveals the genius who even today continues to hold his place as the greatest dramatist in all literature.

From the book