I have always found it odd that so little is known about Shakespeare (and not just because I’m in an era where you can stick a couple of pieces of information about a person into a search engine and usually find out a lot more about them).
What did the Bard own – a shredder?
Anyway, although I usually find infographics too twee, and do not often look at them, I’m hypocrite enough to glom onto one which is of a topic that fascinates me. I find this information about Shakespeare’s reading habits (and about books themselves) well worth the perusal.
DE
“Sir, he hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts… ” Love’s Labour’s Lost Act IV, Scene II
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Who was on Shakespeare’s bookshelf? [infographic]
Illuminating Shakespeare
George Bernard Shaw once remarked on William Shakespeare’s “gift of telling a story (provided some one else told it to him first).” Shakespeare knew the works of many great writers, such as Raphael Holinshed, Ludovico Ariosto, and Geoffrey Chaucer. How did these men, and many others, influence Shakespeare and his work? The process of printing a book in the 16th century was demanding and expensive, and a printing house’s products were only available to a fraction of the English population. We explore the English Renaissance reading environment in the infographic below.
– See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2015/10/shakespeare-reading-literacy-publishing-infographic/#sthash.L7LkU8xX.dpuf
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