Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Startlingly good—the most complexly intelligent and sophisticated study of the life and work taken together that I have ever read. -- Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Product Description

"So engrossing, clearheaded, and lucid that its arrival is not just welcome but cause for celebration." —Dan Cryer, Newsday Stephen Greenblatt, the charismatic Harvard professor who "knows more about Shakespeare than Ben Jonson or the Dark Lady did" (John Leonard, Harper's), has written a biography that enables us to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life; full of drama and pageantry, and also cruelty and danger; could have become the world's greatest playwright. Bringing together little-known historical facts and little-noticed elements of Shakespeare's plays, Greenblatt makes inspired connections between the life and the works and delivers "a dazzling and subtle biography" (Richard Lacayo, Time). Readers will experience Shakespeare's vital plays again as if for the first time, but with greater understanding and appreciation of their extraordinary depth and humanity. A best book of the year: The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2004; Time magazine's #1 Best Nonfiction Book; A Washington Post Book World Rave ; An Economist Best Book ; A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book; A Christian Science Monitor Best Book; A Chicago Tribune Best Book; A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Best Book ; NPR's Maureen Corrigan's Best. 16 pages of color illustrations.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton (September 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039332737X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393327373
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #33,456 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for Shakespeare Neophytes, June 15, 2006

By	joerobguy (San Antonio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

Shakespeare's life is frustratingly beyond our sight. Aside from the plays (which, in many cases, come down to us in different versions), we have a slim scattering of legal documents, marriage and birth records, and vague secondary accounts.

As the world's preeminent Shakespeare scholar, Greenblatt has managed to assemble all these sources and, with a healthy dose of conjecture, arrive at something resembling a biography of the world's greatest dramatist. More than that, though, this work is a biography of the age in which Shakespeare lived and wrote---Elizabethan and Jacobian London---and how the major events of this time affected Shakespeare's plays. For example, the writing of King Lear may have been encouraged by a trial in 1603 in which two sisters tried to have their father declared insane so they could take control of his wealth and estate, while the youngest daughter (named Cordell) tried to stop them---a story uncannily similar to what is considered to be the Bard's greatest tragedy.

What impressed me the most about this biography is how ORDINARY Shakespeare seemingly was. He didn't seem pretentious or snobbish, as some people envision him. He was born to a humble family and lived frugally, despite dying a rather wealthy man.

Although Greenblatt's writing is clear and accessible, he makes the assumption that you have already read Shakespeare's plays, or at least are VERY familiar with them. I have read about two thirds of them and felt a little behind when he discussed plays I hadn't read, so if you haven't read more than, say, ten of his plays, the major ones, you need to crack open the Norton Shakespeare (of which Greenblatt is the editor-in-chief) before you approach Will in the World.

37 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfect Joy, September 16, 2005

By	Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Stephen Greenblatt has written one of the best books on William Shakespeare to come out in awhile (and it is truly a cottage industry). Will in the World is a book to be savoured slowly but when that proves impossible, it is best then to simply devour with delight. The author is best at setting a context for the both the man and his works. A great example among many is his examination of the tension between Prostentants and secret (sometimes less than secret) Catholics which is brilliant without getting bogged down in conspiracy theories stranger than the actual conspiracies around. Greenblatt realizes that Shakespeare and his time are interesting enough in the telling. Even simple domestic life becomes intriguing and charming in this wide-ranging book. This a history and a biography that will be treasured by readers for a long while to come.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars saucy doubts and fears, January 8, 2007

By	David A. Baer (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

When an historian treats a great figure of the past or touches upon the canon of literature, his or her speculative choices gain credibility to the degree that he or she controls the data.

Stephen Greenblatt's intensely speculative exploration of William Shakespeare is data-driven and anchored in a stupendous familiarity with the poet's historical moment and the documentary fund that allows us access to the time and place in which the Bard strode large across the land. Or at least across London, where his profession was and his family was not.

This is an intriguing, maddening, and informative work. Yet it's chief virtue is that it is utterly absorbing for anyone who knows Shakespeare's plays or has vowed once again this January 1st to read them.

Greenblatt's methodology is to inform himself of the minutae of Shakespeare's environs and then to canvass his works for evidence of alignment with those details. In this way, the author believes he can ferret out the influences, references, allusions, obligations, and opportunities to which 'Will' was responding with his unequalled artistry.

The result is maddening in those moments where the 'could haves' and 'might have beens' metamorphise into 'must have beens', but profoundly suggestive if one allows for a significant margin of error between Greenblatt's speculative insight and what we can actually *know*.

A lesser scholar would be entombed by the cumulative weight of his guesses. Greenblatt is elevated by them.

One glimpses through his daring and thorough scholarship possibilities for understanding this Moses of the English language that otherwise--alone and novitiate that we are--might never, must never have occurred.