Dr Simon Forman: A Most Notorious Physician - Hardcover

Judith Cook

3.61

28 ratings by Goodreads

9780701168995: Dr Simon Forman: A Most Notorious Physician

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701168994 ISBN 13: 9780701168995

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2001

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Charismatic and ambitious, Simon Forman rose from a poor upbringing in Wiltshire to become one of the wealthiest doctors in London. This account of his life sees him denounced as a quack and an astrologer who used black magic. It covers his private life through deciphering his intimate coded diary.

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Review:

Simon Forman is best remembered as an Elizabethan doctor and astrologer who had the good fortune to record his impressions of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale as an avid theatregoer. As Judith Cook points out in her captivating biography Dr Simon Forman: A Most Notorious Physician, besides Forman's value to Shakespeare scholars, he has been described as "nothing but a quack and a charlatan, an astrologer who purported to practise medicine, a fellow of bad repute especially where women were concerned". However, after carefully studying the wealth of obscure diaries and manuscripts that Forman left behind after his death in 1611, Cook has built up a fascinating and very different version of Forman, who was by the standards of his day "a careful practitioner of medicine", and "a man of many parts: showman, caring doctor, womaniser, credulous with regard to the occult, yet always questing after knowledge". The result is a marvellous evocation of Forman's day-to-day life, from a poor background that denied him a university education, to his struggle with the Royal College of Physicians and ultimate triumph as one of the most respected and consulted doctors to Elizabethan London's rich and wealthy.

With great panache Cook moves from detailed accounts of Forman's medical and astrological practises, to his extensive womanising, recorded in his "halek notes", or record of sexual conquests, ranging from his first shadowy marriage, through his tragic relationship with the Catholic Recusant Avisa Allen, Emilia Lanier (thought by many to be Shakespeare's Dark Lady), and his young wife who bore him a son in middle age. This is a delightful study of one of the more colourful figures of the time, that wears its learning lightly and offers a fascinating account of everyday life in Elizabethan England. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

"Brilliant, written with wit and relish, packed with detail" (The Times)

"Judith Cook writes lucidly about Forman and his idiosyncrasies... Her knowledge of the period is extensive and places this strange and fascinating man convincingly in his dramatic times" (Daily Mail)

"An intriguing and lively study" (Independent on Sunday)

"Her research is thorough and intriguing... Her book enters teh Elizabethan world in media res so that th reader is immediately surrounded by it" (The Times)

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