Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard

“Highly readable…A marvelous trip through four centuries of English literary and theatrical history.”—Dallas Morning News

A unique addition to the Shakespeare canon, this book begins where most Shakespeare stories end, with his death in 1616. Jack Lynch has written the definitive biography of William Shakespeare’s afterlife—two hundred years during which he grew from a modestly successful provincial playwright to the lofty status of transcendent genius at the heart of English culture.