Shakespeare and his work have inspired many books by literary scholars and historians throughout the century. What can we know about a man of whom nothing is known, except what he chose to let his characters say and do? Can there really be any certainty about Shakespeare’s opinions, thoughts, ideas, even on the most trivial matters? Isn’t this a dangerous confusion of person and fiction?
This essay will not try to find certainty among the many statements made about author and work over the years but try to relate some of Shakespeare’s ‘non-historical’ plays to contemporary politics – one part dedicated to the English Renaissance as a century of change and progress, the other part literary analysis of Shakespeare’s plays with consideration of this political zeitgeist. Shakespeare and his work have inspired many books by literary scholars and historians throughout the century. What can we know about a man of whom nothing is known, except what he chose to let his characters say and do? Can there really be any certainty about Shakespeare’s opinions, thoughts, ideas, even on the most trivial matters? Isn’t this a dangerous confusion of person and fiction?
This essay will not try to find certainty among the many statements made about author and work over the years but try to relate some of Shakespeare’s ‘non-historical’ plays to contemporary politics – one part dedicated to the English Renaissance as a century of change and progress, the other part literary analysis of Shakespeare’s plays with consideration of this political zeitgeist.

Manuela Sonntag, née Fonger, geboren 1983 in Aachen, lebt derzeit mit Mann und zu vielen Haustieren in ebd., wo sie Geschichte, Anglistik und Philosophie studiert hat.
Ihr literarisches Schaffen hat bislang eine wissenschaftliche Abhandlung über die historische Shakespeare-Analyse (William Shakespeare, Subject of the Crown?'), einen Roman ('Der Rosenfriedhof') eine ganze Reihe Kurzgeschichten und Gedichte (viele davon veröffentlicht in 'Perlen für die Säue' und der Anthologie 'B(r)uchstücke') hervorgebracht.
(http://jellylorum66.blogspot.de/)