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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sexy, Dangerous Shakespeare for the Summer, July 22, 2008
This review is from: My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare (Hardcover)
Often, historical characters in fiction are portrayed in the fullness of their achievement. In "My Name Is Will", Shakespeare is presented prior to his becoming a great and well known playwright; he is eighteen, just discovering his talent and starting to figure out his life. This can be a much more interesting period of a character's life I think than the later periods. In this case, it is made even more interesting because Shakespeare is portrayed as a Catholic actively involved with the Catholic underground in England. As Shakespeare is coming to understand his own character and getting to know the bonny maids of Stratford, he is also deeply involved in dangerous intrigues at a fascinating time in English history. All of which is quite a bit of fun.
Shakespeare's story is interspersed with the story of Willie Shakespeare Greenberg, a Master's student working on his thesis on Shakespeare and also discovering who he is. In parallel fashion, adroitly handled, both the historical and contemporary Shakespeares find themselves and get their lives going. I think this is one of the key narrative challenges of the piece -- making these parallel stories complement each other -- but it is adroitly handled and I would not want to give up the contemporary reflection of Shakespeare.
So...fun on many levels. The story of Elizabethan intrigue was very compelling and could have been a book in itself. The self-discovery of the lead characters was very well handled, making it a more personal and three-dimensional story. Winfield, who co-created and acted in the Reduced Shakespeare Company, has a flawless ear for Elizabethan language and punnery without which the book would not have worked; as it is, it does all come out perfectly, which greatly adds to the realism and charm of the work.
I recommend My Name Is Will to anyone who wants a little escapism, a bit of intrigue, a new look at Shakespeare and a lot of romance this summer.
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15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Looking at Will Shakespeare from another point of view, June 17, 2008
This review is from: My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare (Hardcover)
Meet Willie Shakespeare Greenberg - a struggling thesis-writer, small-scale drug user and future scholar. Meet also William Shakespeare - a womanizing youth, closeted Catholic and future bard. Two men, 300 years apart in time, but joined by name and history.
My Name Is Will is the story of two Wills who have more in common than one would think at a first glance, because really - isn't it almost sacrilege to suggest that a 1986's pothead and wanna-be thesis writer should have anything at all in common with the greatest bard in English history? At the surface, one would think so, but then, how much do we know about Shakespeare's life before he became. well, Shakespeare?
Isn't it very logical to assume that his life couldn't have been all smooth sailing for him to be able to write of such passionate love and dysfunctional families as we see in his plays and sonnets? Jess Winfield clearly thinks so, and manages to weave a fascinating tale where every second chapter follows William Shakespeare in the weeks up to his marriage to Anne Hathaway, and every second chapter follows Willie Shakespeare in his quest for knowledge about himself, and his famous namesake.
In the beginning one has to get used to the jumping back and forth in time as each chapter ends, but like in Peg Kerr's The Wild Swans, the transitions work and the two stories in one mesh together very well as I constantly found hints in one of what would happen (or had happened) in the other.
My Name Is Will is subtitled "A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakepeare" for a good reason. It is not very reverent, and Shakespeare lovers who are easily offended should probably stay clear of the book. However, I appreciated seeing even a fictionalized human side of the legendary bard. It is perhaps not a very scholarly read, but definitely a very enjoyable one.
Oh and yes, we are given at least a hint of an answer to the old and burning question: why did Shakespeare leave Anne his "second-best bed" in his will.
Armchair Interviews says: Learn and laugh at the same time.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's been years since a book's made me laugh this hard, April 23, 2010
This review is from: My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare (Hardcover)
"My Name is Will" is an extraordinary piece of written theater. It has a magical pacing, serious one moment, hysterically funny the next. Jess Winfield knows how to work an audience masterfully--if you haven't see the Reduced Shakespeare Comany, rent the DVD. His writing reminds me of Neal Stephenson (with a lot fewer pages and much tighter action) and Joe Quirk's brilliant and wonderful "Ultimate Rush." There are very few authors who make me regularly make me break out in big belly laughs and gleeful giggling. Over and again, I had to put the book down until I could focus again.
The humanity of William and Willie moved me, bringing me back to the struggles and challenges I faced when I was younger (I would have been a few years behind Willie, majoring in English and rebelling against Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs in the mid-80s). The brilliant puns and playfulness were perfectly balanced, not too much, and as often as not needing a double-or-triple take to catch (and I'm sure I missed as many as I found).
The wonderful details of William's life created a picture a a real person, having the real experiences that would allow him to write what he did: His sassy, smart, strong-willed girlfriend Rosaline; the apothecary; the witch in the woods; the merry band of amateur players . . . wonderful characters you could imagine young William meeting in 16th century rural England, and later turning into some of his most wonderful characters.
I checked the book out from the library, inhaled it, and just returned it. I wish I'd hung on to it, as now I want to read it again--I never do that! I'll be back for it in the morning.
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