Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

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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...

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare | Will in the World

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