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"Sure, there's been enough Shakespeare biographies written to fill the old Globe Theatre. But not by eminent Harvard Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, who combines cultural history with a close reading of the bard's work to envision what Shakes's life might have been like....Why you should read it: It's the most detailed biography of the greatest poet in the English language." Anna Godbersen (read the entire Esquire review)
"Greenblatt's book is skillfully written, with spirit and verve. It gives a vivid picture of the Elizabethan world, and it has fine and illuminating things to say about particular aspects of Shakespeare....Yet much of the book is silly. It shows small understanding of how to weigh historical evidence; and its notion of the creative process, and of the relation between a writer's work and a writer's life, is naïve." Richard Jenkyns, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
"Greenblatt is an incisive thinker — not to mention an uncannily ingratiating voice on the page. When I first read him, as an undergraduate English major, I well nigh fell in love with him. His tragic flaw, were he a Shakespearean hero, would be not his practice but his theory....Greenblatt's life of Shakespeare represents the best of the New Historicist movement. But it does not represent the best we could hope for from Greenblatt, or the best we should demand in a biography of the Bard." Cristina Nehring, Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopses & Reviews
A young man from the provinces — a man without wealth, connections, or university education — moves to London. In a remarkably short time he becomes the greatest playwright not just of his age but of all time. His works appeal to urban sophisticates and first-time theatergoers; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety. How is such an achievement to be explained?
Will in the World interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright's life. We see Shakespeare learning his craft, starting a family, and forging a career for himself in the wildly competitive London theater world, while at the same time grappling with dangerous religious and political forces that took less-agile figures to the scaffold. Above all, we never lose sight of the great works — "A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and more — that continue after four hundred years to delight and haunt audiences everywhere. The basic biographical facts of Shakespeare's life have been known for over a century, but now Stephen Greenblatt shows how this particular life history gave rise to the world's greatest writer.
Review:
"This much-awaited new biography of the elusive Bard is brilliant in conception, often superb in execution, but sometimes — perhaps inevitably — disappointing in its degree of speculativeness. Bardolators may take this last for granted, but curious lay readers seeking a fully cohesive and convincing life may at times feel the accumulation of 'may haves,' 'might haves' and 'could haves' make it difficult to suspend disbelief. Greenblatt's espousing, for instance, of the theory that Shakespeare's 'lost' years before arriving in London were spent in Lancashire leads to suppositions that he might have met the Catholic subversive Edmund Campion, and how that might have affected him — and it all rests on one factoid: the bequeathing by a nobleman of some player's items to a William Shakeshafte, who may, plausibly, have been the young Shakespeare. Nevertheless, Norton Shakespeare general editor and New Historicist Greenblatt succeed impressively in locating the man in both his greatest works and the turbulent world in which he lived. With a blend of biography, literary interpretation and history, Greenblatt persuasively analyzes William's father's rise and fall as a public figure in Stratford, which pulled him in both Protestant and Catholic directions and made his eldest son 'a master of double consciousness.' In a virtuoso display of historical and literary criticism, Greenblatt contrasts Christopher Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Elizabeth's unfortunate Sephardic physician — who was executed for conspiracy — and Shakespeare's ambiguous villain Shylock. This wonderful study, built on a lifetime's scholarship and a profound ability to perceive the life within the texts, creates as vivid and full portrait of Shakespeare as we are likely ever to have. 16 pages color illus. not seen by PW. Agent, Jill Kneerim. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Greenblatt's book is startlingly good — the most complexly intelligent and sophisticated, and yet the most keenly enthusiastic, study of the life and work taken together that I have ever read." Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
Review:
"A Harvard scholar here sheds penetrating light on this enigmatic genius, teasing out the mystery of artistic transformation....A valuable resource for both professional and casual Shakespeareans." Booklist
Review:
"A speculative but rigorous biography....The result is thoroughly researched but casual feeling —
Will in the World is a successful attempt to be the layperson's Bard bio of choice for the next decade."
Chicago Sun-TimesReview:
"[P]rovocative and gracefully written....Among the book's many virtues are Greenblatt's accessible writing style and his ability to keep a careful balance between academic and popular appeal, no easy feat." Houston Chronicle
Review:
"[T]his fall's most readable and engaging book about Shakespeare for both the general and the academic reader. It is also one of the most persuasive reconstructions of Shakespeare's life and career I have encountered." St. Petersburg Times
Review:
"Greenblatt is at his best when he merges his gifts as a literary critic and scholar with his instincts as a biographer." Colm Tóibín, The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"As fiction...
Will in the World is not an unmixed success; its subject veers too much between Shakespeare's imagination and Stephen Greenblatt's own. Yet, as biography, it is not bookish enough, and shows contempt for its readers — as if toy history were good enough for them."
Alastair Fowler, The Times Literary Supplement (
read the entire Times Literary Supplement review)
Synopsis:
Greenblatt interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright's life. Readers see Shakespeare learning his craft, starting a family, and forging a career for himself in the wildly competitive London theater world.
About the Author
Stephen Greenblatt is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, editor of
The Norton Shakespeare, and prize-winning author of many academic books, including
Hamlet in Purgatory.
