Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis

"Speaking with the Dead" This chapter begins with a brief reference to the illness and death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet, and then discusses in depth the circumstances Shakespeare would have left behind in London when he went to Stratford to his son's funeral. One of these was the state of the particular theater in which Shakespeare's company performed and in which his plays were produced. The author recounts how financial and legal disputes between the businessmen and playwrights who ran the theatre led to an act of what some would call vandalism and others would call entrepreneurship. Under the cover of night, Shakespeare and other members of his company dismantled the theatre, took it to another location, and began to rebuild it. Legal attempts by the owner to get either the theatre back or a substantial financial settlement failed, because of...