Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

By Stephen Greenblatt

Book Overview

A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039332737X
• ISBN13: 9780393327373
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: W. W. Norton
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.3" x 5.6"

Customer Reviews

What I Wish to Believe

I simply could not put this book down. I wished it would last for 1,000 pages. But, both during and after, I thought to myself, can it be really true? How much of it is fabrication based upon just minimal evidence? Well, it seems that in Shakespeare scholarship, minimal evidence defines the elusive terrain. I accept that there will always be an element of subjectivity. In this context, to me the first test is the test of...

Greenblatt illuminates Shakespeare's "walking shadow"

Reknowned civil war historian Shelby Foote has been eloquent in bemoaning the diffulties of the "lock picks" of biography. So much more so for William Shakespeare who, though he wrote so voluminously on the human condition managed to conceal so much about himself personally. Using basically tax and legal records relating to Shakespeare, his father John and mother Mary and Shakespeare's own considerable catalogue of writing,...

Joy in connecting the dots

As a lover of Shakespeare's work but a newcomer to Shakespeare biography, I savored every word of this deeply felt exploration. Will's world, both external and interior, was brought vividly to life. From gloves to Jews, from real estate to life after death, the tiny details and larger than life themes in the plays and sonnets now, for me, emerge from the life of a real human being. No, if you don't believe that Shakespeare...

A Perfect Joy

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...

A Work of Impressive Scholarship & Readability

I very much enjoyed Stephen Greenblatt's previous work on Shakespeare, Hamlet in Purgatory; therefore, I was very excited to see Mr. Greenblatt had decided to write a complete biography of Shakespeare. Fortunately, Mr. Greenblatt did not disappoint. Will in the World is one of the best Shakespeare biographies I have read. The problem for any biographer of Shakespeare is, of course, the minimal records left behind. Apart...