Will in the World

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: Norton. 2004. Print.

First Sentences:

As a young man from a small provincial town -- a man without independent wealth, without powerful family connections, and without a university education -- moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkable short time becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. His works appeal to the learned and the unlettered, to urban sophisticates and provincial first-time theatergoers. He makes his audiences laugh and cry; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety....How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?


Description:

I picked up Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare knowing nothing about it,  just another reader interested in the mysterious background of William Shakespears and how he possibly could have lived and created his exequite body of historic, romantic, and thrilling works of literature after coming from a relatively small town with little education or travel. At least, those were the assumptions and subsiquent questions offered to me by many historians

Author Greenblatt, however, is different. He devles deeply into historical documents and social norms of the sixteenth century to postulate about the forces behind Shakespeare's life and the elements that affected his growth and decisions.

For example, Greenblatt reveals primary documents about Shakespeare's father, John, showing him to be an important municiple office-holder in Stratford who tryies to enforce laws between the Catholic residents and the incoming Protestent world enforced by the new Queen Elizabeth. Later a failed glovemaker who William worked for, John's life failed to excite his son.

Also, I didn't know Stratford was a fairly important city that drew traveling performers where William probably was exposed to the theatre and even helped with general chores for a short-handed company. There are records that he offered his services tothe traveling King's Company which found themselves short an actor after their leading player was killed in a drunked fight. Reviews from that period testified that William distinguished himself and possibly escaped Stratford with that company when it moved on toward London.

Other revelations included:

• Shakespeare likely attended King's New School in Stratford, reserved for children of means, receiving instruction from 7am - 6pm six days a week twelve months a year, mostly focusing on Latin "which clearly aroused and fed Will's inexhaustible craving for language." 

• At school "virtually all schoolmasters agreed that one of the best ways to instill good Latin in their students was to have them read and perform ancient plays";

• Anne Hathaway, his bride, was eight years older than the 18-year-old Will when they were hurridly married without the delay of publicizing banns. Church records showed their dauthter Susanna was baptized six months later. The couple soon had two other children, one of whom, Hamnet, died young. Anne was not mentioned in Shakespeare's will except that she would receive their "second-best bed," the majority of Shakespeare's wealth and property going to his daughter Susanna;

• Shakespeare in his early twenties left Stratford, wife Anne, and his three children for unexplained reasons. Greenblatt shows evidence that William might have been in trouble with the law for poaching deer on a wealthy estate near Stratford and was forced to flee;

• Later, during one of the frequent bubonic plague epidemics, all London theatres were closed. To earn income, Shakespeare accepted a commission to write many of his 154 sonnets. It is still unclear who financed him or to whom the poems referred to, whether his patron, a young man, or an unknown dark lady;

• When the ground lease for the theatre where they performed was not renewed by the owner (who controlled the land but not the structures), Shakespeare, his company, and their crew snuck onto the theater grounds one night in December, 1598, dismanteled the entire theatre, carted it across the frozen Thames river, and re-constructed it in the new location as The Globe. The new theater, financed by Shakespeare himself, was an octagonal building with a huge stage, and could seat over 3,000 people;

In London, William probably attended many theatrical performances of rival playwrights, including those of his chief rival Christopher Marlowe. He observed what playwrights presented that worked and what did and did not please audiences. Shakespeare moved away from the current broad morality plays, giving his own characters an intensified complexity and humanness rather than one-dimensional aspects. 

Shakespeare had to engage with the deepest desires and fears of his audience, and his unusual success in his own time in his own time suggests that he succeeded briliantly. Virtually all his rival playwrights found themselves on the straight road to starvation; Shakespeare, bu contrast, made enough money to buy one of the best houses in the hometown to which he eretgired in his early fifties, a self-made man.

I loved reading the original surce records that Greenblatt dug up, supporting or disproving theories about Shakespeare.  Each item is carefully examined, put into historical context, and then applied to Shakespeare's life to provide logical conclusions about the playwright and his influences.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.   

The absolute best and highly-readable deep dive into every Shakespeare play, with historical, literary, and cultural explanations to key words, phrases, and plots. So great I read it from cover to cover, and re-read it before watching any Shakespeare play to catch all the references and subtleties. Wonderful. HIghest recommendation. (Previously reviewed here)

  

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title.

(And also read an introduction to The First Sentence Reader.)