Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare - Softcover

Greenblatt, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393352609 ISBN 13: 9780393352603

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016

Synopsis

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

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 of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

23 illustrations

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen Greenblatt (Ph.D. Yale) is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Also General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, he is the author of eleven books, including Tyrant, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story that Created Us,The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (winner of the 2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize); Shakespeare's Freedom; Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; and Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. He has edited seven collections of criticism, including Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. His honors include the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize, for both Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England and The Swerve, the Sapegno Prize, the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale University Graduate School, the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, the Erasmus Institute Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley. He was president of the Modern Language Association of America and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

From AudioFile:

Greenblatt offers many facts about Shakespeare's times, many wild conjectures about Shakespeare's life, and many specious analyses about Shakespeare's art. Written divertingly, if not convincingly, the book is yet another critical exegesis on the Bard of Avon's life and times. What sets it apart is the engaging performance of narrator Peter Jay Fernandez, whose obvious relish for this material--especially the excerpts from the plays--is evident throughout. He is not the most insightful or graceful interpreter of the poet's writings, but he is by no means the worst either. He enjoys quoting the Elizabethan sources, and his relish is infectious. Those who may miss a British accent should be reminded that Shakespeare and his fellow players did not have what we today recognize as a British accent. Y.R. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0393352609
• ISBN 13: 9780393352603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464