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Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life
 
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Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life [Paperback]

Dominic Dromgoole (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Book Description

May 1, 2007

"Dominic Dromgoole is a fitting witness to the passage of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre from curiosity to respected showcase."-The New York Times

"A passionate, often very funny account."-The Economist

"A superbly written, infectiously high-spirited narrative. It is a bumptious, opinionated memoir crammed with fascinating anecdotes, finely tuned phrases, and genuine shafts of insight. A book hard to put down."-Terry Eagleton

William Shakespeare has always been part of Dominic Dromgoole's life. Here he recounts the story of his life through Shakespeare, and in turn shows us what Shakespeare can tell us about the world. In this freewheeling and passionate exploration of Shakespeare the artist, the man, the playwright, and the genius, Dromgoole explores why it is that he can enter our lives with such force and teach us so much about living.

Using his own encounters as a guide, Dromgoole shows how Shakespeare's words on war, love, death, drunkenness, family, friendship, and everything else reveal us to ourselves. This is the true nature of Shakespeare, a godhead of comic, sexual, sublime humanism, whose plays and characters have become a universal gateway to an understanding of the world.

A passionate Shakespearean practically since birth, Dominic Dromgoole is the new artistic director for the Globe Theatre, the playhouse Shakespeare made famous. He is a columnist for the Guardian and a regular contributor to The Sunday Times. His first book, The Full Room, was one of the most controversial and successful theater books in England of the last few years.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What are the life lessons we can glean from Shakespeare's characters? According to Dromgoole, the artistic director of London's Globe Theatre, Shakespeare is better than religion for interpreting the world. Unfortunately, Dromgoole, in spite of his background, isn't able to pull off the conceit. The first half of the book follows his childhood, then chronicles life in a touring company. En route, Dromgoole extracts monologues from Shakespeare's plays to underscore his point; in essence: forget the Bible, just read the bard of Avon. When not extolling the educative virtue of Shakespeare's characters, Dromgoole pays court to distinguished performers, such as Peter O'Toole and Judi Dench. He reserves special attention for Michael Bryant, who plays the smaller Shakespearean roles, proving there are no small roles in Shakespeare's plays. A purist, Dromgoole rails against directors' concepts that stand between the play and the audience. And while his affection and high regard for Shakespeare is obvious, he's too chatty for the academic reader and too self-involved for the general public. Chapter heads are both enigmatic and narcissistic. While an actor will garner insights into how to interpret legendary characters, the book has too much Dromgoole and not enough Will. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Dromgoole is in love with an older man: William Shakespeare. He fell for the Bard early and hard when his father reeled off long sections of Shakespeare to pacify him and his siblings while they were still, as he puts it, in the cot. Today he is, after stints with the Oxford Stage Company, the Old Vic, and the Bush Theatre, artistic director of the refurbished Globe Theatre, once Shakespeare's house. In these compulsively readable autobiographical pieces, he discusses his many and varied encounters with Shakespeare's work, starting in school productions in which he never played the roles he wanted to play and ending with an account of a seven-day walk he and three others made from the Stratford-upon-Avon church in which Shakespeare was christened to the Globe, in London. Each essay is a highly polished, newspaper-column-sized gem packed with insights about Shakespeare's plays and the challenges of performing them, perfect for lunchtime and bedside reading. Helbig, Jack

Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Pegasus Books (May 1, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1933648465
  • ISBN-13: 978-1933648460
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,754,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Remember, it is a memoir, July 8, 2008
This review is from: Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (Paperback)
The Publisher's Weekly reviewer of this book seems to completely forget, when he/she says "too much Dromgoole, not enough Will", that this book is a memoir--it says so as part of the subtitle. So, yes, this book is a memoir of English Director Dominic Dromgoole's life, as Shakespeare has influenced and in some ways "directed" it. It is not necessarily, or primarily, a book "about" Shakespeare--the author did not intend it as such. The first part, entitled "The Life" is a telling of Dromgoole's life, through various encounters with Shakespeare...through his family, his student days, his acting and his directing. Snippets from Shakespeare's plays are inserted to highlight and instruct various aspects of living one's life. I find this entertaining and appealing, not earth-shattering in new ways of reading or interpreting Shakespeare.
I found, though, even more engaging the second part of the book, called "The Walk", wherein Dromgoole sets out with his good friend Quentin (and at times, including others) on a sort of "pilgrimage" walk from Shakespeare's birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon to the Globe Theatre in London (where Mr.Dromgoole is Artistic Director). It is a partly humorous, but nicely descriptive travelogue, as well as a discussion of the "meaning' of Shakespeare. The conversations between Mr. Dromgoole and Quentin were entertaining to read, and on more than one occasion, did, yes, make me think a little myself about what the genius of Shakespeare really is. This book is certainly not an academic treatise on Shakespeare, but is in some ways more useful to readers as it is highly personal. And maybe this is how Shakespeare really should be presented--he was the most personal of writers, amongst everything else.
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5.0 out of 5 stars WILL & US, March 12, 2010
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This review is from: Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (Paperback)
Fascinating reading from the Artistic Director of London's Globe Theatre. Through the prism of Dromgoole's life on-and offstage, the depth and breadth of Shakespeare's genius is given vivid new color in this memoir. From his early provincial life through some exciting foreign intrigue as the son of producer/director Patrick, Dromgoole engages the reader in some heady and thought-provoking examinations of life as "walked" by one man in the shadow of two, ultimately finding his own accomplished path. An unexpected treat, compelling as both history and biography reminding us just how impactful and relevant Shakespeare's legacy is to our own experience.
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