"Shakespeare was born in Stratford on 23 April 1564 and died in the same English country town on the same date in 1616. His Stratford friends were his friends for life. He worked in the theatre, acting in the early London Playhouses and touring and writing plays for a series of companies including The Queen's Men, The Lord Chamberlain's Men and The King's Men." "Peter Ackroyd places him within the landscape of his time. He walks with the reader through sixteenth-century Stratford and sixteenth-century London like a native of that century. He is enthralled by the theatrical world, as if he were sitting with the Elizabethan audience and seeing the plays at the instant of their first performance. He writes about Shakespeare the actor, playwright and poet, and also about his circle of patrons and managers, actors and fellow writers, and about their 'unity of feeling'. He not only conjures up the texture of Shakespeare's time, but also imparts an immense amount of detail about place, period and background."--BOOK JACKET.