Will in the World (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Stephen Greenblatt
- First Published: 2004
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1564-1616
- Setting: Stratford, Lancashire, and London, England
- Principal Characters: William Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway, John Shakespeare, Mary Arden Shakespeare, Hamnet Shakespeare, Judith Shakespeare, Susanna Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wriothesley, Elizabeth I, James I
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Authors or writers, Poetry or poets, England or English people, Seventeenth century, Sixteenth century, Drama or dramatists, Shakespeare, William, or Shakespearean plays, Reformation, Plays or playwrights
- Locales: London, England, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, Lancashire, England
In Will in the World the eminent Shakespeare scholar Stephen Jay Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, seeks to explain how a young man from the provincial market town of Stratford-upon-Avon became the greatest playwright not only of his own age but of all time. The question has exercised people's imaginations since at least the eighteenth century, when bardolatry began. To some, including Mark Twain, the feat was impossible: Surely the author of such moving sonnets, captivating narrative poems, profound tragedies, and lyrical comedies must have...
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