Soul of the AgeBy: Jonathan Bate Jonathan Bate's Soul of the Age brings us closer than ever to understanding what being Shakespeare was actually like. How did plague turn Shakespeare from a jobbing hack into a courtly poet? How did Bottom's dream rewrite the Bible? How did Shakespeare's plays lead to the deaths of an earl and a king? And why was he the one dramatist of his generation never to be imprisoned? Weaving a dazzling tapestry of Elizabethan beliefs and