It is always refreshing when the humanity of a genius such as Shakespeare is celebrated. His gift would not be as remarkable if he were somehow superhuman—it is his flaws and the fact that he was no more or less a man than anyone else that make his brilliance all the more astonishing and important. In the Shadow of the Globe mixes history and imagination, just as Shakespeare did, to create a portrait of a way of life, a community whose equal love for art and pleasure would be echoed later in the Golden Age of Hollywood and the heyday of the Beat poets. Michelle Cameron brings the theater world of Elizabethan London to life with vivid language and full characters, from the quiet longing of Mary Burbage, fictional sister of the Globe-founding Burbage brothers, to the brilliant energy of a young Shakespeare, channeling his passions into women, wine, and words. It is the women of this particular story that stick in one’s mind—Anne Hathaway and Mary Burbage are the most intriguing characters, both in their love for the poet who cannot give either of them what they desire, and their individual strengths that allow them to survive lives of little love or opportunity.

The poem traces these characters from their initial, “let’s put on a play!” enthusiasm to their later years, with Shakespeare analyzing his own fame and the mistaken image of himself that is already being created (“They pick the wrong characters / to pin to my shoulders”), and Mary reflecting on the death of the man she once loved and turning to “step out from under / the shadow of the Globe” and towards a future that is all her own. A meditation on the powers of art and love, In the Shadow of the Globe is a true homage to the very human spirit.