Will In The World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare - Softcover

Greenblatt, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847922961 ISBN 13: 9781847922960

Publisher: Bodley Head, 2014

Synopsis

The theatre for which Shakespeare wrote and acted was a cut-throat commercial entertainment industry. Yet his plays were also intensely alert to the social and political realities of their times. Shakespeare had to make concessions to the commercial world, for the theatre company in which he was a shareholder had to draw some 1,500 to 2,000 paying customers a day into the round wooden walls of the playhouse to stay afloat and competition from rival companies was fierce. The key was not so much topicality - with government censorship and with repertory companies recycling the same scripts for years. Instead, Shakespeare had to engage with the deepest desires and fears of his audience. Will in the World is about an amazing success story that has resisted explanation: it aims to be the first fully satisfying account of Shakespeare's character and the blossoming of his talent. There have, of course, been many biographies of Shakespeare. The problem each one faces is the thin amount of material surrounding his life. They lead us through the available traces but leave us no closer to understanding how the playwright's astonishing achievements came about. The real-world sources of Shakespeare's language - of his fantasies, passions, fears, and desires - lie outside the scope of these earlier books. Will in the World will set out to recover the links between Shakespeare and his world and with them to construct a full and vital portrait of the man. Its purpose is to know the magician himself, as well as his magic tricks, and to experience the touch of the real. It is a journey that centres on the perils and pleasures of Shakespeare's unfolding imaginative generosity - his ability to enter into others, to confer upon them his own strength of spirit, to make them live and breathe as independent beings as no other artist who ever lived has done.

About this title

Review:

Why should we read Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World? There have been innumerable biographies of William Shakespeare, but the greatest of all writers remains the great unknowable. We know about the petty business dealings, the death of his son, his career as a man of the theatre, and (of course) the seemingly contemptuous bequeath to Anne Hathaway of his ‘second best bed’. But any biographer is left scratching for much more than that--apart, of course, from adducing what can be read of the man's characters from his work (an enterprise fraught with danger). Shakespeare is not Hamlet, Lear or Benedict--though, of course, he is also, in a real sense, all three.

What makes Greenblatt's account the most valuable in many years (literally so, since famously massive advances were paid for it) is the synthesis of incisive scholarship, immense enthusiasm for the subject and an unparalleled ability to conjure up the Elizabethan world with colour and veracity. If the author's conclusion's about the genius at the centre of his narrative are open to question, Will in the World is none the worse for that--Greenblatt enjoys provoking the reader, and the result is an energetic conjuring of a brilliant man and those around him (Christopher Marlowe and Ben Johnson are evoked with enviable skill, as are such figures as the prototype for Falstaff, Robert Green).

With something of the vigour of the Bard’s writing, Greenblatt takes us through the bawdy, teeming Bankside district (centuries before it became a tourist destination), and the Machiavellian, dangerous world of the court--in fact, all the splendour and misery of the Elizabethan age--and at the centre of it all, its greatest artist. The Will we meet here may owe much to Greenblatt’s very personal interpretation, but the portrait is fascinating.--Barry Forshaw

Review:

"A vast shelf of biographies of the Bard exists, but this is the book I would take with me to a desert island" (Jay Parini Guardian)

"A work of wonderful erudition that can be read as an accessible introduction to the social and political milieu from which Shakespeare emerged, and as an elegant guide to the astonishing poems and plays themselves" (New Statesman)

"Both insightful literary criticism and a gripping piece of psychological detective work ... Stephen Greenblatt has few equals as a Shakespeare scholar" (Metro)

"A delight, full of new insights and infused with a rich understanding of precisely why Shakespeare’s writing gives us such lasting pleasure ... quite superb" (John Simpson Sunday Times 'Books of the Year')

"Thought-provoking ... full of unexpected touches ... beautifully written" (Andrew Marr Daily Telegraph)

"Riveting" (Independent)

"Really gives a sense of being in touch with the man. Greenblatt’s knowledge of the plays and the times in which they were written is so encyclopaedic that he can assemble a convincing portrait of Shakespeare without resorting to smoke and mirrors" (Sunday Times)

"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 New Yorker)

"One of the finest recent Shakespeare biographies" (Robert McCrum Guardian)

"Greenblatt’s fantastically readable biography of our greatest writer paints a riveting portrait of Elizabethan England" (Daily Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Bodley Head
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1847922961
• ISBN 13: 9781847922960
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432