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How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
W. W. Norton & Company
October 2004
On Sale: September 30, 2004
386 pages
ISBN: 0393050572
EAN: 9780393050578
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
A brilliant reading of Shakespeare's world yields a new
understanding of the man and his genius. 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.
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