Customer Reviews

Shakespeare's World

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This well-researched, articulate, and richly detailed account describing the life, times, influences, and global society of one of the world's best loved & eternal writers is a must-have companion for students, professors, and bard-lovers around "The Globe." It is an exceptional complement to all of the mainstay texts in providing illumined treatment of Shakespeare's life and times uncommonly found in those staple works.

Beginning with the basic information of Shakespeare's life in chapters one and two, Johanyak aptly describes and characterizes his works in the chapters following while providing a synopsis of his professional progression. Later chapters pertaining to Elizabethan Society and social order, European and Christian influences, effects of the Renaissance, and European collonialism provide a detailed yet approachable vision of the Bard's time and place as an intersection of conflicting ideas, institutions, and motivations which probably influenced Shakespeare profoundly. Johanyak's treatment of this epochal intersection focuses on how Shakespeare perceived his society, how his society might or actually did perceive him, and the relevance of his global awareness. Paying meticulous attention to the details of his language in the best-known works, Johanyak proceeds to correlate Shakespeare's knowledge of the world, his viewpoints (subtle and obvious), and his keen, almost mystic, understanding of human nature within this idea intersection of his era.

Johanyak's piece is well-written, scholarly, but not mundane or prone to the stilted language which often characterizes other similar works. Geared toward the serious Shakespeare student, organization, or admirer, this book is still accessible to the casual reader, thereby demonstrating Johanyak's mastery of the complex subject matter and the sublime ideas inherent therein.

Johanyak's book offers a useful approach to Shakespeare by examining the world that influenced the culture in which his works emerged. As stated in the preface, _Shakespeare's World_ enlightens readers with information that illuminates the landscape of Shakespeare's creative genius. Chapters on the northern Renaissance, the Reformation, and European colonialism, for example, help us to understand "his" world--a world untouched by 21st century perspectives. The book also offers helpful tools, such as a list of referenced geographical regions in Shakespeare's works, simple plot summaries of the plays and narrative poems, and an especially helpful chronology of key period events that set the stage for Shakespeare's literary accomplishments.

This is a handy companion for literature students and general readers who may be curious about the early modern period and its influences on Elizabethan England's greatest playwright. The book utilizes a simple, approachable writing style accented by period artwork that should satisfy the hungry mind.

I would use this as a text for my students because of Johanyak's sweeping choice of texts from Shakespeare's time that give a fresh voice and explanation of the sixteenth/early seventeenth century.

My one quite serious quibble, however, is with the book's poor syntax (or perhaps poor editing). Explanations are often badly written, with some sentences either making little sense, grammatically incorrect, or in some cases just plain wrong. "Shakespeare's King Lear is set in an early period of English history and myth, evoking similar myths." Huh? "Hung" for "hanged","utilized" rather than "use". Her over-reliance on "impacted" for "affected" just got irritating. I have to wonder if the scope of her project (she mentions in an interview that the book was initially much larger), when reduced to its present size, left her little time for revising the explanatory paragraphs whose brevity is to be applauded, but whose poor editing is headache inducing.

It's also worth noting that her choices of early modern art are poorly realized by Pearson's evident parsimony on the production side. This is a shame, as she's chosen some genuinely gorgeous stuff. Moving, informative, beautiful - but frequently hardly discernable in their small, smudgy black and white reproductions.

It's a book that deserves re-visiting and re-editing.

I suppose referring to Shakespeare unironically as "the Bard" is a matter of taste: some people call Dickinson "Emily" and Whitman "Walt." Other choices in this low-level introduction are more irritating: Shakespeare's grandfather "was a tenant farmer who owned 60 acres . . ." (p. 17). The plot summaries are fatuous: in _Two Noble Kinsmen_ "Theseus tells Emilia to choose one; the other will die. She cannot choose so a date is fixed the following month" (p. 51); at the end of _Measure for Measure_ "The duke marries Isabella" (p. 44). Johanyak's bland assertion is both untrue to the script (no wedding) and concealing of a crucial point of 20th & 21st century direction: how does Isabella respond to the Duke's assumption that she'll marry him?--Well, W.H. Auden says that a bad book invites a reviewer to show off, so I'll stop.