We often imagine Shakespeare as a solitary genius. But the playwright’s dazzling imagination was enabled and inspired by the blazing charisma and unruly temper of his toweringly ambitious lead actor, Richard Burbage. Today, Burbage’s name is almost forgotten, but his presence haunts the history of theatre, and offers a new way to understand Shakespeare and his plays.

Burbage’s volatile, larger-than-life energy shaped some of the world’s most iconic characters – brooding, hero-villains such as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth and Richard III. These roles, each written especially for Burbage, are so dominant that they often account for over a quarter of their scripts. With a life stalked by drama and dispute that made its way onto the stage, Burbage was the celebrity megastar of his day, whose fame far eclipsed Shakespeare's own during their lifetimes.

Burbage’s audience understood his roles as his creations, not simply Shakespeare’s. Now, with celebrated scholar Tanya Pollard’s investigation, we can too. In the first biography of this creative marriage, she explores the ways in which these two restless artists challenged and drove each other’s imaginations. Like Lennon and McCartney, they pushed each other to artistic breakthroughs that neither could have achieved alone. Not Shakespeare alone, but Shakespeare-and-Burbage, put an indelible stamp on the tragedies that came to define Elizabethan theatre and change literature forever.

© Tanya Pollard 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027