HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became…
Loading...

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition) (original 2004; edition 2016)

by Stephen Greenblatt (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
3,411583,756 (3.88)121
OH WHAT A LOVELY BARD.

[Will in the World] - Stephen Greenblatt
[The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare] - Emma Smith
[Shakespeare's Language, Frank Kermode] - Frank Kermode.

Three books that might serve as an introduction to Shakespeare. All of them written with the general reader in mind, but all of them in my opinion would expect the reader to have some familiarity with the plays and the poetry.

[Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare] - Stephen Greenblatt
This seems to be one of the most popular books on Shakespeare with 2,768 people owning a copy and fifty reviews on Librarything. The preface to the book states that it aims to discover the actual person who wrote the most important body of imaginative literature of the last thousand years. This is a difficult task as there are no surviving contemporary biographies and as far as we know Shakespeare never wrote anything about himself. There are business transactions, there are playbills in which he is named, some petty legal affidavits, a marriage license, property transactions and a last will and testament, but nothing personal to the man. In addition to this there are a number of lost years especially in his youth when we know nothing about him at all. So what is there to write about? How do you fill up a book of 400 pages? Well! you do what other biographers have attempted in the past you mine the plays and the poetry for information, putting this in context with what is known about the milieu in which Shakespeare lived and worked.

One might think that the famous sonnet sequence might provide some information, but it would appear that Shakespeare did his best to keep his secrets even when he was writing sonnets about love. Shakespeare does not name the youth who he is encouraging to start a family, he does not tell us the name of the young man to whom he addresses the love sonnets or the dark lady to whom other sonnets are addressed, we might think that he kept these secrets on purpose. There are no authorial interventions in the plays giving us his personal viewpoint and precious few references to him that might give an inkling to his character by his contemporaries. All this means that attempts to discover the actual person must be pure conjecture and that is the problem with the aims of this book: the reader loses sight of the man himself, this is not to say that Greenblatt loses sight of his quarry, this is not the case at all, he writes endlessly on what he might have done, where he might have been and what he might have thought, but it is at the end of the day just educated guesswork.

The book does examine in some detail the relatively few facts that we know about Shakespeare, and more to the point it provides a contextual background to the protagonist. Greenblatt describes the world of the Elizabethan theatre, he describes the society, he fills in bits of history; all the time thinking about how these thing may have impacted on Shakespeare. He searches through the plays to find references to events that may have shaped the plots, the dialogue and the speeches of the characters. In particular he looks for events or incidents that Shakespeare may have witnessed and how they might have influenced what he wrote down for his characters to say in the play, but there is nothing very specific. An example is the burial of his son Hamnet in 1596 at Stratford-upon-avon. Greenblatt assumes that Shakespeare attended the burial and assumes that he was so deeply affected, that when he came to write his play Hamlet in 1601 the name of the central character so like the name of his son encouraged him to write with a new inward expressiveness. Critics do see Hamlet as a kind of turning point in the oeuvre, the play where Shakespeare began to illustrate the inner thoughts of his characters by their speeches and their actions and Greenblatt may be correct in his assumption but equally he could be way off the mark.

There are just too many 'what if' moments. What if Shakespeare was a closet catholic like his father may well have been, could he in those missing years between being resident in Stratford-upon-Avon and turning up as an actor in London have been a tutor in the north of the country, and if so could he have met with, or come under the spell of the Jesuit Edmund Campion who was preaching to the faithful in Lancashire in 1580-1. Would he then have been shocked and scared by the savage executions of Campion and his followers. There is not the slightest evidence for any of this, it is just pure conjecture and Greenblatt tells us so, but after erecting these edifices the reader could get the impression that Shakespeare was a man who may have been troubled with questions of faith.

The big plus in reading the book is that Greenblatt paints such a vivid picture of Elizabethan society and although little of this was new to me I still enjoyed the way the author wove this mine of information into his story. He occasionally gets seduced by the texts of some of the plays, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth for instance, but he always has something original to say about them. In an Afterword to his book Greenblatt says:

Shakespeare seems to have felt no comparable desire to make himself known or to cling tenaciously to what he had brought forth. The consequence is that it is not really necessary to know the details of Shakespeares life in order to love or understand his plays

That being said I still enjoyed Greenblatts adventurous ride through the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean era in pursuit of the elusive master playwright. I could not help, but to be carried along with it all and so 4 stars.

[The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare] by Emma Smith
This seems to me to be an introduction for the student approaching a deeper study of Shakespeare but the writing of Emma Smith is so lively and interesting that it could certainly be enjoyed by the more general reader. There are chapters on Characters and how Shakespeare approaches them, on performance and how actors can interpret the words in the script, a chapter on the texts in general, how they have come to us and how they have been edited, Shakespeares language: did anyone really talk like that? Structure of the plays, sources and history. Smith uses examples from the plays themselves to make her points often concentrating on one play per chapter. At the end of each chapter there is a 'Where Next' section that points to practical things to do to further appreciate the subject matter and books for further information.

There is an awful lot of information crammed into this book, but very little that is dull and boring. It is presented in such a way as to make the reader think on what is being presented. I found this to be an excellent read and so again 4 stars.

[Shakespeare's Language, Frank Kermode]
This book examines how Shakespeares language developed throughout his career. It is aimed at the general reader rather than the scholar and Kermode is careful to explain the more technical terms that are used. Fifteen of the later plays are given a chapter each, while the earlier plays are covered in a part one that is given just a quarter of the book space. I am reading through part one of this at the moment and like very much how Kermode marshals his thoughts about the language of the plays. I will use this as a reference/introduction to the plays as I read them. ( )
3 vote baswood | Oct 16, 2019 |
English (55)  Spanish (1)  French (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (58)
Showing 1-25 of 55 (next | show all)
I don't necessarily agree with all of Greenblatt's arguments, but he creates here a worthy portrait and discussion to add to the vast database of information and theories on Shakespeare's life and times. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Interesting speculations about the life of Shakespeare and how he became a gentleman despite his humble beginnings. Relationships with other poets / dramatists, etc. are intriguing too. ( )
  kslade | Dec 8, 2022 |
Gosh, this is good. Greenblatt, as I think has been pointed out elsewhere, wears his erudtion lightly -- you could be excused for not recognizing this as the work of a highly-respected scholar: it's written clearly, engagingly, and is -- at least for this reader -- very much "compulsively readable" if that is synonymous with "hard to put down."

Is it speculative? sure, it has to be. It's not, as the "Oxfordians" and other conspiracy theorist-types might argue, that there is NO (or suspiciously little) evidence for the Shakespeare who wrote all those plays -- it's just that the bulk of the evidence is so mundane. It's there -- it just doesn't necessarily speak the way we might want it to. That said, I find Greenblatt's army of "may have been"s quite well-grounded, and at their best they do illuminate the works that we have. My favorite chapter might be "Laughter at the Scaffold" which goes into Shakespeare's eternally-discomfiting exploration of Jewishness in "The Merchant of Venice," playing it off his probable-rival Marlowe's roughly contemporary effort "The Jew of Malta" and demonstrating how much further Shakespeare went -- and why he might have done so.

As I'd hoped it would, this book is filling me with a strong desire to return to the plays, which at one time were the center of my world and certainly deserve to be there once again. ( )
  tungsten_peerts | Mar 26, 2022 |
Fascinating. Wish I had read it whilst I was teaching English lit. ( )
  PattyLee | Dec 14, 2021 |
Will in the World didn't entirely convince me that William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon is the author of the plays attributed to him. But it did convince me that he could have been, given Elizabethan education for males and the conventions for the theatre of the time. After all, genius can be found in people from all sorts of backgrounds.

Greenblatt found links between Shakespeare's life and the sonnets and plays that strike me as plausible. I'm not a Shakespeare scholar and I'm not familiar with all his writings. But I will note that actual facts about his life are scarce.

What I liked best about this book are the details provided about life in Elizabethan England. Greenblatt shares information on the religious upheavals, the views of women, and common, thoughtless violence of the culture. But in a lot of ways, their society was surprisingly modern. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in Shakespeare's plays or the historical period. ( )
  Library_Lin | Dec 13, 2021 |
Although interesting, it was not as good as I was hoping. ( )
  Chica3000 | Dec 11, 2020 |
OH WHAT A LOVELY BARD.

[Will in the World] - Stephen Greenblatt
[The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare] - Emma Smith
[Shakespeare's Language, Frank Kermode] - Frank Kermode.

Three books that might serve as an introduction to Shakespeare. All of them written with the general reader in mind, but all of them in my opinion would expect the reader to have some familiarity with the plays and the poetry.

[Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare] - Stephen Greenblatt
This seems to be one of the most popular books on Shakespeare with 2,768 people owning a copy and fifty reviews on Librarything. The preface to the book states that it aims to discover the actual person who wrote the most important body of imaginative literature of the last thousand years. This is a difficult task as there are no surviving contemporary biographies and as far as we know Shakespeare never wrote anything about himself. There are business transactions, there are playbills in which he is named, some petty legal affidavits, a marriage license, property transactions and a last will and testament, but nothing personal to the man. In addition to this there are a number of lost years especially in his youth when we know nothing about him at all. So what is there to write about? How do you fill up a book of 400 pages? Well! you do what other biographers have attempted in the past you mine the plays and the poetry for information, putting this in context with what is known about the milieu in which Shakespeare lived and worked.

One might think that the famous sonnet sequence might provide some information, but it would appear that Shakespeare did his best to keep his secrets even when he was writing sonnets about love. Shakespeare does not name the youth who he is encouraging to start a family, he does not tell us the name of the young man to whom he addresses the love sonnets or the dark lady to whom other sonnets are addressed, we might think that he kept these secrets on purpose. There are no authorial interventions in the plays giving us his personal viewpoint and precious few references to him that might give an inkling to his character by his contemporaries. All this means that attempts to discover the actual person must be pure conjecture and that is the problem with the aims of this book: the reader loses sight of the man himself, this is not to say that Greenblatt loses sight of his quarry, this is not the case at all, he writes endlessly on what he might have done, where he might have been and what he might have thought, but it is at the end of the day just educated guesswork.

The book does examine in some detail the relatively few facts that we know about Shakespeare, and more to the point it provides a contextual background to the protagonist. Greenblatt describes the world of the Elizabethan theatre, he describes the society, he fills in bits of history; all the time thinking about how these thing may have impacted on Shakespeare. He searches through the plays to find references to events that may have shaped the plots, the dialogue and the speeches of the characters. In particular he looks for events or incidents that Shakespeare may have witnessed and how they might have influenced what he wrote down for his characters to say in the play, but there is nothing very specific. An example is the burial of his son Hamnet in 1596 at Stratford-upon-avon. Greenblatt assumes that Shakespeare attended the burial and assumes that he was so deeply affected, that when he came to write his play Hamlet in 1601 the name of the central character so like the name of his son encouraged him to write with a new inward expressiveness. Critics do see Hamlet as a kind of turning point in the oeuvre, the play where Shakespeare began to illustrate the inner thoughts of his characters by their speeches and their actions and Greenblatt may be correct in his assumption but equally he could be way off the mark.

There are just too many 'what if' moments. What if Shakespeare was a closet catholic like his father may well have been, could he in those missing years between being resident in Stratford-upon-Avon and turning up as an actor in London have been a tutor in the north of the country, and if so could he have met with, or come under the spell of the Jesuit Edmund Campion who was preaching to the faithful in Lancashire in 1580-1. Would he then have been shocked and scared by the savage executions of Campion and his followers. There is not the slightest evidence for any of this, it is just pure conjecture and Greenblatt tells us so, but after erecting these edifices the reader could get the impression that Shakespeare was a man who may have been troubled with questions of faith.

The big plus in reading the book is that Greenblatt paints such a vivid picture of Elizabethan society and although little of this was new to me I still enjoyed the way the author wove this mine of information into his story. He occasionally gets seduced by the texts of some of the plays, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth for instance, but he always has something original to say about them. In an Afterword to his book Greenblatt says:

Shakespeare seems to have felt no comparable desire to make himself known or to cling tenaciously to what he had brought forth. The consequence is that it is not really necessary to know the details of Shakespeares life in order to love or understand his plays

That being said I still enjoyed Greenblatts adventurous ride through the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean era in pursuit of the elusive master playwright. I could not help, but to be carried along with it all and so 4 stars.

[The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare] by Emma Smith
This seems to me to be an introduction for the student approaching a deeper study of Shakespeare but the writing of Emma Smith is so lively and interesting that it could certainly be enjoyed by the more general reader. There are chapters on Characters and how Shakespeare approaches them, on performance and how actors can interpret the words in the script, a chapter on the texts in general, how they have come to us and how they have been edited, Shakespeares language: did anyone really talk like that? Structure of the plays, sources and history. Smith uses examples from the plays themselves to make her points often concentrating on one play per chapter. At the end of each chapter there is a 'Where Next' section that points to practical things to do to further appreciate the subject matter and books for further information.

There is an awful lot of information crammed into this book, but very little that is dull and boring. It is presented in such a way as to make the reader think on what is being presented. I found this to be an excellent read and so again 4 stars.

[Shakespeare's Language, Frank Kermode]
This book examines how Shakespeares language developed throughout his career. It is aimed at the general reader rather than the scholar and Kermode is careful to explain the more technical terms that are used. Fifteen of the later plays are given a chapter each, while the earlier plays are covered in a part one that is given just a quarter of the book space. I am reading through part one of this at the moment and like very much how Kermode marshals his thoughts about the language of the plays. I will use this as a reference/introduction to the plays as I read them. ( )
3 vote baswood | Oct 16, 2019 |
Some stretches based purely on literary interpretation, but overall enjoyable and thought-provoking ( )
  maryroberta | Jun 30, 2019 |
On June 29, 1613, the King’s Players put on Henry VIII at the Globe Theater in Southwark. Miniature cannons were fired during a scene representing Henry VIII attending a masque at Cardinal Wolsey’s house; some bits of wadding lodged in the thatched roof of the theater and set it on fire. Fortunately, the fire was slow, and there was plenty of time to rescue costumes, props, and manuscripts before the Globe burned to the ground. The rescued manuscripts included the only copies of Henry VI, Part 1; Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, King John, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. That’s how close we came.

Will in the World is an uneven but ultimately worthwhile biography of Shakespeare. The problem all Shakespeare biographers have – and what provides fuel for centuries of “Who Wrote Shakespeare?” theorists – is that other than the plays, poems and sonnets there is precious little documentation on the man. We know that he was baptized in Stratford on April 26, 1564 and that he was married, still in Stratford, sometime in late November or early December 1582. He had children in 1583 (daughter) and 1585 (son and daughter twins). Sometime soon after the birth of his twins he left Stratford and went to London, where there are sparse records of him; some business transactions, minor lawsuits, property tax receipts. He did well at his trade, amassing enough money to buy substantial properties in Stratford and a building in London. He retired to a comfortable manor in Stratford sometime between 1611 and 1616; he was buried in Stratford on April 25, 1616.

This is all author Stephen Greenblatt has to work with; he has to fill it in with assumptions, hearsay from contemporaries and near-contemporaries, and, of course, inferences from the writings. Some of the assumptions, hearsay, and inference is reasonable; some is more speculative. Greenblatt goes furthest out on a limb trying to figure out what Shakespeare was doing as a child and young adult. There was a school in Stratford, and it’s reasonable Shakespeare attended it; he had to learn his small Latin and less Greek somewhere. He may have had some sort of run-in with a noble neighbor over poaching. His family fortunes seem to have declined; his father John, a glover, worked up gradually through public positions (one of his jobs was official ale taster) until he was bailiff (essentially mayor) of Stratford and then gradually loses prominence until he’s no longer mentioned in public records. Shakespeare’s marriage has provided a lot of material for speculation; he put up a £40 bond to avoid having the banns read and seems to have had marriage licenses for two different women (the question is if the William Shagspere licensed to marry Anne Hathwey on November 28 1582 is the same as the William Shaxpere licensed to marry Anne Whatley on November 27 1582, and if Anne Hathwey is the same as Anne Whatley; i.e., are there two, three, or four different people involved). The marriage question is one of the places I’d like to see some numbers; Greenblatt notes that the £40 bond represented a huge sum of money; two year’s salary for the Stratford schoolmaster. However, although he explains why the bond was necessary (you were supposed to read the banns on three successive Sundays to see if anyone objected, and Anne Hathaway was already three months pregnant) he doesn’t say how common this was; were such bonds routine or rare?. Similarly he proposes that the name “Shakespeare” in its numerous orthographic variants was common for the place and time, to provide a possible explanation for the multiple marriage licenses, he doesn’t say how common; are there a couple of other Shakespeares, or a dozen, or tens, or hundreds? Given the scanty evidence, Greenblatt accepts the relatively common position that Shakespeare and his wife didn’t really get along. The general idea is that her pregnancy made it a fowling-piece marriage; her family was relatively well-to-do and would have pressured the Shakespeares to do the right thing. They did have children, of course; however after the twins were born in 1585 there aren’t any more, even after Shakespeare’s only son died in 1596. There’s no evidence that Shakespeare even visited Stratford between 1586 and his retirement to there in 1611 or after. A lot is made of the fact that all he left to Anne was his “second best bed”; in fact Greenblatt notes that nothing was left to her in the original will at all; the bed bequest was added in a later codicil, as if Shakespeare had to be nudged to remember her with something.

Greenblatt doesn’t know quite what to do with Shakespeare in between his wedding and his arrival in London (or even exactly when that arrival was). Was he working as a glover, working as a tutor in some noble household, wandering around the country, or what? There’s a whole chapter, based on sparse to nonexistent evidence, suggesting that Shakespeare was up in the north of England working in some capacity (presumably tutor) for a cryptoCatholic family. Not impossible but not well supported either.

Once Shakespeare’s in London, Greenblatt can start using his writings as evidence for various hypotheses. The catch, of course, is Shakespeare’s writings are like the Bible; if you are sufficiently determined and willing to disregard context you can find support for just about anything you want. Thus the questions Catholic/Protestant, misogynist/philogynist, straight/gay/bi are all discussed with support for one position or another drawn from the plays/poems/sonnets but there’s no real conclusion.

Still, there’s a lot of good stuff here – background on the religious controversy in England; James I’s fear of witchcraft, and the role of actors in contemporary life (I learned that “role” is derived from “roll”; because play manuscripts were bulky and scarce, actors were given a roll of paper with only their lines and entry cues rather than the whole play). I also discovered there are several “unknown” Shakespeare plays floating around; Sir Thomas More, which exists in a single manuscript copy penned in multiple hands (Hand “D” is supposed to be Shakespeare); The Tragedy of Gowrie, banned after two performances and with no extant copies; The Two Noble Kinsmen, a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher; and the lost (maybe; might be a play renamed as The Second Maiden’s Tragedy) History of Cardenio, another Fletcher/Shakespeare collaboration.

Worth it, then, just to see the range of speculation available for the Bard of Avon. ( )
2 vote setnahkt | Jan 1, 2018 |
I am no Shakespeare scholar, not by any stretch, so my response is that of a novice. I have read books about the general period though, e.g. about Giordano Bruno. So I have some prior vague ideas about the context.

This was a bit of a frustrating book... not the author's fault of course. We just don't have that much direct evidence about Shakespeare's life. Mostly everything is could have, might have, etc. But Greenblatt corrals a wonderful collection of tales from the whole length of Shakespeare's life. The book is mostly a chest of gems, bits of English history that line up with bits of Shakespeare's writing. We don't get a fabric - Greenblatt doesn't really follow paths beyond the Shakespeare link. Where were Ben Jonson's plays performed? We only hear about such matters if Shakespeare is acting in one.

It's a very nice chest of gems. For me probably the best aspect was how they reflect on Shakespeare's writing. I am certainly inspired to go read more of Shakespeare with this new source of illumination in mind! Curiously, this book doesn't really inspire me to go read more about e.g. the succession from Elizabeth to James. Yet I know that is a fascinating bit of history. That's just more evidence of the narrow focus of Greenblatt's book. It's a reasonable choice for an author. But that's the choice he made here. ( )
1 vote kukulaj | Dec 3, 2017 |
It's an odd one; I can't say I entirely enjoyed this work, but the last chapter in particular raises enough questions that I wish the rest of the book had focused on that instead. ( )
  Dez.dono | Aug 8, 2017 |
William Shakespeare, widely considered the greatest writer in the English language, lived from 1564 to 1616. This book, by the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and editor of the The Norton Shakespeare (2015) is a book about what life was like in the time and place in which Shakespeare lived and worked. Some of it also speculates about what Shakespeare himself thought and felt, mostly based on common themes in his plays, sonnets, and narrative poems, since there is not much documentation on Shakepeare’s actual life.

Occasionally I thought Greenblatt’s speculation went a bit too far, especially about Shakespeare’s childhood. But still, it showed what a childhood in that period may have been like, even if it did, or did not, necessarily apply to Shakespeare. And I greatly enjoyed learning about the history of that era in Elizabethan England. Greenblatt highlighted the religious wars of the time, the fears over the sometimes harsh laws, the ever-present threat of recurring bouts of Bubonic plague, and the variety of entertainments available to the populace for escapism.

I have seen two main criticisms of the book. One is that, of course, much of the content about Shakespeare’s life is conjecture. But the author clearly identifies it as such, and adduces much evidence for why it could have, or might have, been true. In any event, all the historical information about the period is well documented, and is very interesting.

The second is that the author seems to fall into the “apologist” camp for “The Merchant of Venice,” focusing on Shakespeare’s addition of humanizing aspects to Shylock, the reviled Jewish merchant. While it is certainly true that Shylock is perhaps (incredibly enough) the most humane portrayal of a Jew from that time period (c.f. Christopher Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta”), there is in fact a good reason why “The Merchant of Venice” was a favorite in the early Nazi era between 1933 and 1939, during which time it was produced about 50 times. In any event, Greenblatt’s analysis is thought-provoking, and also teaches us about the sensational (at the time) case of the suspected treason, trial, and execution of Queen Elizabeth’s physician, Rodrigo Lopez, who may have been an inspiration for Shylock.

I listened to this engaging book on audio, and I think that medium added immeasurably to my enjoyment. To demonstrate the points he makes, the author quotes at length from many passages in the plays and sonnets. Here is where an audio version shines, especially with this narrator, Peter Jay Fernandez, an acclaimed Shakespearean actor. Not only does he read the passages beautifully, but through his intonation, provides meaning often missed just be reading the text. (In addition, the author adds explanations for the context and meaning of Shakespeare’s words that greatly add to the reader’s (or listener’s) understanding and enjoyment.)

If you love Shakespeare, you will love the book, and if you aren’t as familiar with Shakespeare, you may become a new fan. ( )
1 vote nbmars | Feb 6, 2017 |
Really interesting and fun. In describing events, conflicts, and culture in Shakespeare's world, Greenblatt freely admits at many points that he is speculating when he makes connections between events which may have occurred in Shakespeare's life or may otherwise have made an impression on him, and aspects of his work as a poet and a playwright. Even when the connections seemed particularly tenuous (such as whether Shakespeare worked briefly as a tutor in a wealthy Catholic household), the history was interesting to me, and even without a direct connection, I suppose someone as alive to his times as Shakespeare was would probably have been affected to some extent by what was “in the air.” The only chapter when Greenblatt's “supposings” seemed to get out of hand was the one on the sonnets. I found his arguments here inconsistent and unconvincing – he admits, for example, that Shakespeare's intentions regarding the order and relations between the sonnets cannot be known, not to mention the extent, if any, to which they were “personal” rather than imaginative (and commercial) art, and then he goes on to build an elaborate story based on his preferred interpretation. Still, he more than makes up for this in the chapters where he treats Elizabethan antisemitism and witchcraft, both of which were particularly well done and will add to my enjoyment next time I read “The Merchant of Venice” and “Macbeth.” Definitely worth a look for those who enjoy Shakespeare! ( )
1 vote meandmybooks | Jan 16, 2017 |
This whole book is like sucking on a needle. And then tops off with him basically saying ' Shakespeare was an asshole ' in chapter 11. ( )
  Baku-X | Jan 10, 2017 |
Nature Abhors a Vacuum: “Will in the World – How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare” by Stephen Greenblatt Is there a Shakespearean lover who does not know that there is precious little actual information about Shakespeare and as a result there are all these theories speculating about who he really was? I’ve read a few of them, and I’ve always considered these to be crap that show us more about the enthusiast of the theory than they do about Shakespeare. I have read many books about Shakespeare, but none have provoked a more mixed and reaction in me than Greenblatts’. There are some great weaknesses. Read on.
 
As I was reading this what came into my mind was that celebrated statement, I think by AL Rowse that he was prepared to stake his reputation on the claim that all the Dark Lady from the sonnets 127-154 was in fact Emilia Lanier. Never mind that it’s never been clear that Lanier was a dark lady, let alone the Dark Lady – or indeed, whether or not there was a real Dark Lady at all in real life. By Jove, what if Shakespeare actually made the whole thing up? What if Greenblatt wanted to give Rowse a run for his money when it comes to reinventing Shakespeare’s life? I’m quite astonished that it found a publisher at all let alone that someone paid close to a million dollars to have it published. I’m not talking about being littered with spelling mistakes or grammatical errors; the worst is the utter lack of scholarly accuracy (e.g., Shakespeare hating Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s Anti-Jewishness, the meeting in Lancashire between Edmund Campion and the teenage Shakespeare, Falstaff as being a tribute both to Robert Greene and to Shakespeare's own father, the attempt at simplifying and normalizing the complex sexuality of Shakespeare, etc.).
 
If you're into Shakespeare, read on. ( )
  antao | Dec 10, 2016 |
Interesting surmise, but stretched too thin. ( )
  Helenliz | May 30, 2016 |
I think that Greenblatt did a fantastic job of showing Will in the world as reflected in his plays and long poems. The only thing that I can fault him on is not mentioning the influence of classic theatre on Shakespeare. He repeatedly says that main characters in his big tragedies are not given motivation. He sees it as making them more human, more ambiguous. What I see is that he neglects the influence of big Greek tragedies and ' fatal flaws'.
"Hamartia, also called tragic flaw, (hamartia from Greek hamartanein, “to err”), inherent defect or shortcoming in the hero of a tragedy, who is in other respects a superior being favoured by fortune."


Shakespeare does not adhere strictly to that idea, and makes his characters sufficiently human, but I think that each of his tragic hero does possess a tragic flaw at the core of his being.
I am wondering why Greenblatt doesn't even mention it even once. Maybe because it was pointed out before, maybe because there is no evidence of Shakespeare reading Greek tragedies, maybe because he is trying very hard to show that Shakespeare had limited academic education and went for provincial rather than intellectual. Which is all true. Marlowe was way more intellectual than he was, but Shakespeare was not a country bumpkin, and he was very well read in everything that was available at the times, even if no books were found in his dwelling for tax purposes. Anyway, that's a mystery for me.
I liked the organization of the book, maybe because I do like literary analysis, and Greenblatt is looking very intently at the literary works and trying to learn about Shakespeare the man from them. I really liked that.
I wouldn't say it's a definitive work on Shakespeare, but it's a nice slant on his life and his work. ( )
1 vote Niecierpek | Apr 21, 2016 |
A great read. Imagining Shakespeare. I'm always interested in biography. So this really pushes at the edge of the genre. There is so little "fact" to go on with Shakespeare beyond the majestic fact of the writing, the word.
  idiotgirl | Mar 6, 2016 |
This book is a wonderful exploration of Shakespeare the person based on the few facts we actually know along with a lot of speculation from the plays. It is very readable and Shakespeare really does come across as a real person - not always admirable but always interesting. A great read. ( )
  rosiezbanks | Jul 19, 2015 |
Greenblatt has written a biography of Shakespeare, a man of whom there is little known besides his work, by using his plays to delve into his psyche. This is an interesting and appealing idea, but for me it didn't work very well. In some ways I found the book very interesting. I learned a lot about the general time period - education, religion for the common person, the life of actors/playwrights, etc. - and I enjoyed that. There is also a lot of analysis of the plays spattered throughout the book that I found interesting and entertaining. The problem for me was that I didn't really buy that you can analyze Shakespeare's plays to discover his personality or decipher his life decisions. It seems to me that Shakespeare wrote on so many topics from so many different points of view, that you could find multiple examples to back up any personality trait or life decision that Shakespeare made. In the end, I felt that it could have been true, but maybe not, and I don't feel that I have a clearer picture of Shakespeare than I started with after finishing this book.

I also think this book was a little above my knowledge level of Shakespeare. I think it will mean more to someone very familiar with his plays. I would say I'm only conversant about roughly 6 or 7 of his plays. To someone who has a deeper knowledge of his work, this book would probably be more meaningful and interesting.

I don't want to come off too negative here, because I actually did like this even though I wasn't totally convinced by the premise. There is still a lot of good information and it opens up some curiosity about what Shakespeare might have been like and what his motivations were. Shakespeare buffs should definitely give this a try. ( )
2 vote japaul22 | Nov 22, 2014 |
This whole book is like sucking on a needle. And then tops off with him basically saying ' Shakespeare was an asshole ' in chapter 11. ( )
  BakuDreamer | Sep 7, 2013 |
Shakespeare’s genius and enduring legacy, frequently leading many to speculate that one man could not possibly have written such clever, nuanced, politically astute, but timelessly wise creations, is always of interest to someone, especially if there is a fresh angle. His reputation alone frequently strikes terror in the hearts of high school or middle school readers assigned to read Shakespeare for the first time. With a little explanation (modern translation?) though, teenagers are frequently delighted by his timeless observations on life and love, as well as his naughty wisecracks. Is it any surprise that so many books, papers and articles have been written about this brilliant man?
There is no question that Stephen Greenblatt is familiar with the writings of Shakespeare as well as his contemporaries, especially Christopher Marlowe. Stephen Greenblatt raises interesting questions about the nature of the bard’s love/hate relationships with his literary peers, and he does this using Marlowe's own words. The life and times of these young men, as well as their early demises, makes for an interesting comparison to today’s pop icons.

Shakespeare's father is a mysterious and interesting man, more so than he might be for simply being the sire of a great man, due to his rising and falling fortunes. Stephen Greenblatt seems to quickly dismiss Shakespeare’s father’s financial troubles as all being attributable to alcohol, but I have to wonder about this: Was it only substance abuse, or might it also have been political assassination, or maybe a lack of interest in groveling low enough to the self-important local officials of the day that gave Will’s father these ups and downs in life? Certainly the senior Mr. Shakespeare had beliefs conflicting with those of the men he served and served with.

Authors are always quick to speculate about Shakespeare’s relationship to his wife Ann Hathaway, and the author of this book is no exception. Stephen Greenblatt does not seem to read as much into the relationships of Shakespeare’s characters to their fathers as he does the men to the women, the subjects (or should I say the objects?) of any given character’s desire. His explorations and musings are worthy of Freud, but as Freud was famously supposed to say, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, and sometimes a fictional character is just fiction, not a true reflection of any existing reality. I suppose we will never know with certainty, but sonnet 145 convinces me that there was affection between the couple, at least in the beginning. Much has been made of the early shotgun wedding, the years of living in London without her, the sonnets and the supposed slights in his will. Contrary to popular belief, a search of the records at this time in England and shortly thereafter in the American British colonies confirms that a large number, possibly even a majority of brides, gave birth to their first child before the requisite nine months elapsed since the ceremony. The author states that romantic love, idealized love, was already known and widely in acceptance, but my research does not bear this out at this place and time. Certainly it was not an unknown concept, and there were those, particularly men working in the arts and in other countries who accepted this ideal, but in 16th and 17th Century England, what I see in the records were more practical considerations: marriages of two fortunes in the upper classes and marriages of compatibility in the lower classes, either financially, or for the skills and compatibilities of the team in the two-person yoke of everyday life that comprised most marriages of the day. Matrimonial prospects, more than a sudden discovery of great beauty and love at first sight, had choices limited by social class as well as by geography (most brides could be found within five miles of their eventual mate prior to the wedding). This is not even to mention the lack of cosmetic and dental enhancement in the appearances of average people that we have today. Authors frequently mention that Shakespeare did not have his family with him during his working life, but London ca. 1600 was a dangerous place to live. If the frequent rounds of the bubonic plague didn’t get you, the politics would. If I was making my living in London at the time, I would not want my family exposed daily to the disease that frequently reduced populations by double-digit percentages, nor would I want them to witness the rounding up of suspects, public executions, and collection of piked heads, particularly when the mummified heads were of distant kinsmen whose crime was only to practice the religion that we shared. I would want to know that my family was safely billeted in the countryside, where I could go to escape from time to time, from constantly being on my guard, in word and in deed, lest I make some fatal mistake and be hauled up before the authorities, or in the case of twenty-nine year old Christopher Marlowe, suffer a very premature death under questionable circumstances.

I was greatly interested in the fact that there is reason to suspect the Shakespeare family of being secret Catholics, and the fear and guardedness (or at least the nebulous meaning) that can be found in both his writing and his personal associations. There are those that accused Shakespeare of being secretive in the extreme, and this probably goes along with having a belief in a religion that was unpopular with the powers that be, especially when one is afraid to drop these tenets and commandments as this would displease the Almighty (Damned if you do and dead if you don’t). As a writer with a professional interest in this subject and time period, I know that the tortures inflicted on the body before death finally came were nothing less than gruesome and truly a shameful embarrassment to our species. Not content with virtual ownership of bodies, the monarchs and state-sanctioned churches of the day demanded full ownership of each mind and soul as well.
Homosexuality, as well as being a believer in the “wrong” religion, was also punishable by death, and speculation on William Shakespeare’s sexual orientation, especially in regards to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, might be difficult to establish in either direction beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Who would alienate a rich and powerful man if mere flirtation could promote one’s career? Certainly there is enough evidence that Shakespeare found women as attractive as they found him, but there has been no discovery of any long-term mistress. Still, one wonders about the all-male casts where frequently half are female characters and if the flirtation might ever have gotten out of hand, particularly when Shakespeare was certainly one of the principal actors on the stage every night.

Of more interest to me, and only casually mentioned, is the mysterious John Robinson, tenant, witness to Shakespeare’s will, and possibly the only witness to be with him when he died.
Who was he? He must have been someone very trusted to be a third witness, in addition to Shakespeare’s attorney and daughter, especially since only two witnesses were needed.
Could he have been a lover? An illegitimate son? A co-religionist? Someone who guarded the secrets of Shakespeare’s recently purchased Blackfriars Gatehouse, rumored to have secret passages where priests and Catholics could meet and quickly be hidden from searching authorities?
Shakespeare’s trusted and respected daughter kept the tenant on for years after her father’s death so surely she knew why, unless he was simply very prompt with his rent payments. The signature on the will indicates that John Robinson was an educated man, although some historians claim that he was only a tenant, a laborer, but this is highly unlikely since such a man would not be able to sign his own name. The unusual transaction to purchase the property, late in his life when one would think that Shakespeare would not have need of it, since he rented rooms in London during the whole of his working life, putting several men on the purchase transaction without having need of their monetary contribution, does seem likely to serve a purpose other than a financial one, perhaps designed to keep the house from falling into his heirs’ hands, in particular his wife, who came from a Protestant family. This would keep it from being quickly and easily sold after his death, having the use of it changed, or having the tenant turned out.
Shakespeare shows a caginess in drawing up his will, and this may only be another time, in addition to his purchase of the Blackfriars property, when his business savvy, perhaps honed through his imaginative writing, enabled him to find a way to circumvent his undesirable son-in-law’s spendthrift tendencies and prevent him from getting his hands on Shakespeare’s younger daughter’s legacy during a time when women were historically at the legal mercy of their husbands.
Regarding the second best bed left to his wife, I have seen many wills of this era and there is frequently a common theme that runs through them: The best bed is always given to the oldest son and the second best bed is frequently given to the wife along with the use of a portion of property until and unless she remarries, at which time her “temporary” use of the property would go to the children of the marriage. This was one very good way to keep your widow from remarrying, or at least ensuring that she would marry someone with a better bed (and better fortune) than the one she already had. In this case there was no male heir, and Shakespeare’s eldest daughter was his primary heir, his only son having died years before as a child.
It may be that Shakespeare’s living away from home for so long had created a distance between husband and wife. Maybe Ann already had a relationship with someone and marriage after the bard’s death was already a foregone conclusion, although this is not seen in the records.
Maybe he liked his wife well enough, but thought little of her as a business woman.
Whatever became of Ann Hathaway Shakespeare? She lived with her in-laws, Shakespeare’s parents, for most of her life, so there was at least understanding and cordiality, if not affection between them. Shakespeare makes no stipulation as to the use of the bed, or that she must adhere to any conditions, which is really a very generous action for a man of the time, given that there were no strings attached to her use of it.
Stephen Greenblatt comes to some conclusions that I am not ready to accept, but he has examined some very interesting aspects and given us more food for thought on the life of a man who has held our fascination for so long, a man whose thoughts and beliefs are still a mystery to us, even after Shakespeare’s having written thousands of words examining the human condition. Another wonderful book, “Shakespeare of London” by Marchette Chute, gives more details, and “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe, is an excellent book to read for confirmation on why anyone who cared about their family would not want them living in London at this time if there was any other choice. Stephen Greenblatt’s book wanders at times and doesn’t always convince me, but it is well worth spending some time to read it. ( )
1 vote PhyllisHarrison | Jun 1, 2013 |
Why should we read Stephen Greenblatts 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 Ôsecond best bedÕ. 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 BardÕs 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 GreenblattÕs very personal interpretation, but the portrait is fascinating.--Barry Forshaw
  Roger_Scoppie | Apr 3, 2013 |
Srsly dude, how have you not read this yet? Greenblatt is awesome.
  AlCracka | Apr 2, 2013 |
Will in the World – How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. 2004. Read in December, 2009.

The book represents my first meeting with Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt. It has proven to be a fruitful acquaintance and I often use Greenblatt's analyses in my texts these days.
There are three (at least) strengths in Greenblatt's approach to this book: he is a materialist historian with a profound knowledge of the period, he is a profound Shakespearean and he is a very good writer.
It's fun to read this book, which is jam-packed with historical details. He opens the book with one of them, the first two lines of a nursery rhyme Shakespeare's mother might well have sung to him, “Pillycock, pillycock, sate on a hill/If he's not gone – he sits there still.” This emerges some thirty or so years later, Greenblatt tells us, in King Lear when Poor Tom sings “Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill” (p.23).
Shakespeare is placed squarely in his time in this book, a time of violence, hierarchy, disease and poverty but also a time of great change and excitement. One of the paradoxes of this society “ - art as the source both of settled calm and of deep disturbance – was central to Shakespeare's entire career...” and “he was simultaneously the agent of civility and the agent of subversion” (page 48).
The book seems to cover everything. On the speculations on Shakespeare's religious beliefs the conclusion is: “If his father was both Catholic and Protestant, William Shakespeare was on his way to becoming neither” (page 113). On the question of love, Shakespeare's view on “intense courting and pleading and longing” is shown to be “one of his abiding preoccupations, [and] one of the things he understood and expressed more profoundly than almost anyone in the world” (page 119). In relating the very complex and generally negative view of marriage in the plays to Shakespeare's own marriage to Anne Hathaway, Greenblatt lands on a very unhappy interpretation which was later refuted by Germaine Greer in her Shakespeare's Wife and I will reserve comment until I get to that book.
But we're still only halfway through the book. Another example. On the anti-antisemitism of Shakespeare's day and the difficulty some modern readers have in reading The Merchant of Venice, for example, Greenblatt writes that “”something enabled him to discover in his stock villain a certain music – the sounds of a tense psychological inwardness, a soul under siege” (page 272) and “he wanted at the same time to call laughter into question, to make the amusement excruciatingly uncomfortable” (page 278). Even though Shylock is indeed a nasty character, “the play gives us too much insight into his inner life, too much of a stake in his identity and fate, to enable us to laugh freely and without pain” (page 286). Maybe I'm emphasizing this because Hal and I are in the middle of reading The Merchant of Venice right now, but these words I find applicable to almost all of Shakespeare.
I really must stop writing or I'll end up making this review as long as the book itself but Greenblatt's ending chapter, “The Triumph of the Everyday” must be mentioned. Shakespeare chose to live out his life far from the glamor and excitement of the London theater world and retired to Stratford for his last years. We don't know why but Greenblatt gives us a reasonable explanation, found in the plays themselves. Yes, Shakespeare loved the exotic, the dramatic, the fantastical and imaginative. But what makes him still read and loved is what he shows us of the everyday, “the ordinariness in the midst of the extraordinary.” Interspersed amongst his kings, queens, nobles, arch-villains and superheros we find the “small talk, trivial pursuits, and foolish games of ordinary people”. He returned home to his wife, his remaining children, his grandchild, his neighbors, as he so often had throughout the years, for the “strange, slightly melancholy dimension, a joy intimately braided together with renunciation...[the] strangeness that hides within the boundaries of the everyday” that characterizes all of his plays, and “that is where he was determined to end his days” (pages 388-390).
This book is vital for anyone interested in Shakespeare and his world.
First posted on rubyjandshakespearecalling@blogspot.com ( )
3 vote rubyjand | Oct 28, 2012 |
Showing 1-25 of 55 (next | show all)

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.88)
0.5 1
1 7
1.5 1
2 25
2.5 1
3 72
3.5 26
4 204
4.5 28
5 96

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

W.W. Norton

2 editions of this book were published by W.W. Norton.

Editions: 0393050572, 039332737X

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,211,885 books! | Top bar: Always visible