How long does it take to read Shakespeare?
the biography
Shakespeare by Peter Ackroyd takes about 10 hours 29 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 29 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2005. 572 pages, about 157,300 words.
21 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 17 hours 29 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 29 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 33 minutes |
The page count is the median across 13 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Drawing on an exceptional combination of skills as literary biographer, novelist, and chronicler of London history, Peter Ackroyd surely re-creates the world that shaped Shakespeare--and brings the playwright himself into unusually vivid focus. With characteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us in sixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape--the industry, the animals, even the flowers--that would appear in Shakespeare's plays. He takes us through Shakespeare's London neighborhood and the fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor and writer. He shows us Shakespeare as a businessman, and as a constant reviser of his writing. In joining these intimate details with profound intuitions about the playwright and his work, Ackroyd has produced an altogether engaging masterpiece.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Subjects: English Dramatists, Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, Early modern