Best-selling literary writer Joseph Pearce presents a stimulating and vivid biography of the world's most revered playwright and poet. Unabashedly provocative and sure to be controversial, this work strives to separate historical fact from fiction about the beloved Bard, arguing the case with scholarship, insight, and keen observation. Famous, yet almost unknown, Shakespeare is not only one of the greatest figures in human history, he is also one of the most elusive. Who was he? What were his beliefs? Can we really understand his plays if we don’t know the man who wrote them? These are some of the questions that are asked and answered in this gripping and engaging study. Shakespeare the Catholic claims that books about the Bard have got him totally wrong. They misread the man and misread his work. The true Shakespeare has eluded the grasp of the critics. Dealing with the facts of Shakespeare's life and times, Pearce's quest leads to the inescapable conclusion that Shakespeare was a believing Catholic living in very anti-Catholic times.

Product Details

– 212 Pages
– 2019
– Paperback

About the Author

Joseph Pearce is Director of Book Publishing at the Augustine Institute, editor of the St. Austin Review, and the author of books on Shakespeare, Tolkien, Chesterton, and other Christian literary figures.

Praise for Shakespeare the Catholic

“Pearce has gone back in Shakespeare the Catholic” to this greatest of English Catholics, showing precisely how Shakespeare's greatness consists in his hidden Catholicism. This is a book that bodes well to proving a literary masterpiece.
— Peter Milward, S.J., Author, Shakespeare the Papist

“Pearce writes with historical insight on one hand and poetic imagination on the other. Perhaps our greatest living biographer, Pearce has the uncanny ability to get into the minds, hopes, fears, and motivations of his subjects.”
— Bradley J. Birzer, Ph.D., Author, J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth