About this title: 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.
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780393327373ISBN:039332737X
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780224062763ISBN:022406276X
Description: Good in GOOD jacket. Good, clean condition book. Jacket Condition: Good. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Fine. Almost in new condition. Book shows only very slight signs of use. Cover and binding are undamaged and pages show minimal use. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393050578ISBN:0393050572
Description: Good. Cover and pages may have some wear or writing. Binding is tight. We ship daily Monday-Friday. Delivery Confirmation included on all domestic orders. read more
Description: Good. Light shelving wear with minimal damage to cover and bindings. Pages show minor use. Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read. Recycle and Reuse! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393050578ISBN:0393050572
Description: Good. Used Condition-GOOD can be a well cared for Book that is in great condition to a Book that may show some signs of wear. GOOD Books sometimes are permanently marked; have some spine or page creases; exibit signs of aging or an ExLibrary copy. ** Sometimes grease pencil or permanent marking on cover. May contain limited notes and or highlighting. 100% Satisfaction guaranteed on all purchases. ** SHIPS FROM USA-Domestic Delivery takes 5-14 days ** read more
"Greenblatt does well explaining how Shakespeare's known and possible past could have shaped success in an easy to read style. Essentially, the title tells you exactly what the book is about.
One critique of this book is my dislike of Greenblatt's long-winded side tracks. Yes, they were interesting and informative, but did not tell me much about Shakespeare. Another pet peeve has to do more with the type of criticism than anything else: sometimes fiction is just fiction. Just because a character in a Shakespearean play somewhat resembles someone alive during Shakespeare's time, does not necessarily mean that they knew each other or that the character is a "dig" on the real life person. Greenblatt gave this comparison between 1 & 2 Henry IV's Falstaff, and drunken playwright Greene.
I am glad I read this book. Knowing how life in London was in Shakespeare's time will help me better understand elements of the plays. Other than being long-winded, I find that Greenblatt did well with this book."
"Already a fan of Greenblatt, I quickly became one of this book. I think the writing is excellent, but was even more impressed with the exhaustive research that had to come before the writing. And unlike most biographies that use the subject's stages in life as the structure, Greenblatt geniusly makes the reading more interesting by grouping each chapter around a theme in Shakespeare's writings--all while staying true to the chronology. And one more note--Greenblatt seemed to be restraining his admiration of Shakespeare much like Richard Bushman had to do in Rough Stone Rolling. You sense it lying underneath, but they both maintain scholarly standards in their arguments."
"Every biographer has an angle when writing about someone as famous as Shakespeare--especially since so little is actually known about Shakespeare's life--and what is known has been exhausted by scholars for years. What I like about this biography is that instead of taking the bare facts and theorizing, Greenblatt looks at Shakespeare's life through the lense of the plays and sonnets, and places them in the historical context of both Elizabethan England and Shakespeare's personal background. This makes for a really imaginative and insightful look into what Shakespeare may have thought about things such as love or faith, and what may have inspired or motivated him to write what he did. And for me, the book never feels over reaching. Greenblatt states that his speculations are all a possibility or not--but his ideas are well grounded in both extensive research and sophisticated interpretation. The book is a great piece of literary analysis. I had forgotten how exciting Shakespeare's plays can be or how much I have always loved Hamlet--but it also made me realize how many of the plays I haven't read. So I'm off to read Macbeth and As You Like It (Because they are Anne's favorites and who loves Shakespeare more than Anne?)"
Every Shakespeare play I read from now on will be funnier, deeper, more moving and generally more of a joy because I read this.
What we know of Shakespeare's biography is notoriously fragmented, but Greenblatt fuses an extraordinarily depth of knowledge with the facts we do have, along with the extensive context of the strange, bloody and beautiful world of Elizabethan England. To that potent mix, he adds a passionate and lucid understanding of Shakespeare plays and his poetry.
I haven't read all that much in the world of Shakespeare investigators and biographers and all that, but it strikes me as uncommon for someone to bear such knowledge of the shocking range and depth of research into Shakespeare's life while also bearing a writer's sensibility to Shakespeare's writing.
I found myself zipping through a chapter on how Shakespeare interacted with the Protestant-Catholic intrigues that devastated his country. Likewise with the section on King James' weird relationship with witchcraft, and how it might've influenced the shaping of the Macbeth witches. In these chapters, I was hungry for the true story.
But at other points in the book, I was taking lessons on becoming a better writer myself. I found myself taking notes on Greenblatt's evaluation of how Shakespeare's later plays--beginning with Hamlet--achieve their power by the author's "radical excision of motive." That is, the lead character--be he Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, or Prospero, for example--might've been fitted with a motive as crystal sharp as Romeo's, or as the source material used by Shakespeare explicitly provided him in their fable-like tellings.
As Greenblatt shows, however, Shakespeare occluded such obvious intentions with enough skill to keep the play from sinking into confusion. Rather, the effect was to open interpretation tomany possible motives, or many at once. The uncertainty and multiplicity of motives translates into nuance: mutable modes of meaning. This harnesses the power of the plays. It brings movement. It brings uneasinesss. It invites contradiction. It is like life.
"Good idea," I was thinking as I scribbled notes to myself on how I might revise a story of mine. "'Radical excision of motive.' I should try that out."
There's a lot of power in Greenblatt's own book, and I'm hardly the first to discover it. Will in the World was a finalist for both the Pulitizer Prize and National Book Critics Circle award when it was published in 2004. It was named to just about every Best Books of the Year list (if not named the best book--as it was by at least five major publications).
It's an eminently persuasive book, certainly with a lot of open speculation, but Greenblatt is both honest in his conjectures and so well-informed that it's nothing to bristle at. I did find myself pulling away from Greenblatt's view of Shakespeare when he portrayed the playwright as grieving for his son when he died at age ten. In fact, Shakespeare barely knew the kid; he left him and his family behind in Stratford while he made his life in London. I believe the news probably hurt him. But I'm unconvinced, as Greenblatt is, that the death devastated Shakespeare. It rather seemed like Greenblatt hesitated to attribute unhappy characteristics to the guy who's understood to be the greatest talent of our age.
In all, though, this is a brilliant, wonderfully entertaining and engrossing book. I'm grateful to it for permanently enhanching my experience with Shakespeare's plays and poetry."
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