While the
past week and a half, serving as the advent of my summer vacation, have allowed
me to fully recover from the horror of Finals Week, and celebrate the end of my
freshman year at the University of Washington. Hooray! And yet, I find that I
am still mildly hungover on the subjects of Spring quarter... most
particularly, the ENGL 274 class I took on Shakespeare, Post 1603.
The class itself was not terribly stimulating; if anything
it was a class I very rarely attended (And that's not an exaggeration). Still,
I ended up getting a 4.0 in the class, because it was a subject that interested
me greatly. While the in-class discussions were
nothing to bother about, the three main papers we had to turn in struck me as
most important, and while I ended up getting excellent grades on all of them
(96, 98, and 100 percents, and yes,
I feel fully entitled to brag), the one that was the most fun for me, was, of
course, a book review. (It received, ironically, the worst grade of the
three).
We had to select and review a book on the Bard, and the
winner, for me, was Stephen Greenblatt's Will
in the World, which offered an in-depth analysis of the people,
landscape, art, and culture that shaped William Shakespeare, from one of the
many sons of a rural glove maker and town figure, into one of history’s most
iconic Londonites, and the most prolific playwright in the world. Traveling
through the personal history of this iconic man - from the Latin-centric
educational system that taught him to appreciate and manipulate words in equal
measure, and the religious turmoil that might have played a part in his
aversion to theology, to the monarchs that would write his paychecks and pave
his career, and the city that would make his name synonymous with the stage -
Stephen Greenblatt unearths the more complete origins of the distinctive
literary voice of Shakespeare from historical quagmires of murky facts and
probable theories, resulting in a more complete understanding of an
exceptionally talented member of the echelons of England’s literary history.
Will in the World is unique among the many, many non-fiction works based
around the life of the playwright, being that, while it does adhere to the many
previously existing facts known about his life, it also clarifies the unknown,
dark portions of blank history, without adding in some recently unearthed
factoid, document, or piece to the puzzle: no new information on Shakespeare
has surfaced in the writing of this book, and yet, it serves to elaborate on
pre-existing knowledge of who this mysterious man was, by exploring not deeper
personal connection, but the context in which Shakespeare himself presented his
work, and the culture that shaped his perceptions of love, art, family, nature,
comedy, and drama.
In some areas, such speculation detrimentally affects the
validity of Greenblatt’s claims; for instance, a chapter on the possibility of
a friendship between him, and English Catholic martyr and saint Edward Campion,
came off as widely theoretical and boldly claimed, with almost no proof to back
it up, these events having “potentially” occurred during what are Shakespeare’s
lost years. However, even such theoretical musings served a greater purpose: to
provide a greater understanding of the wider context of the religious climate
in England at the time of Shakespeare’s formative years, and explaining what
background he had in the conflicting principles (and royal governances) of
Protestantism and Catholicism.Thereby does the unique approach, of filling in
Shakespeare’s history with supposals and potentialities, unburden the
Shakespeare scholar with the boundaries to his personal life of which to
strictly pertain, and granting a less limited amount of source material, to
explore the context and construction of the stories behind his plays, as well as William, the
man.
Overall, Will in the World has fared well with readers, both on the wider
market scale, as well as in the opinions of critical reviewers. It currently
averages 3.92 out of 5 stars on popular book-sharing site Goodreads, and also
garnered some very favorable personal opinions within that same forum. Its printed
media supporters include the likes of Time,
Newsday, The New York Times, and The
New Yorker, as well as The Guardian,
from Shakespeare’s own home base across the pond. It was also on the New York Times Bestseller List for
Nonfiction for nine weeks straight, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize the
same year it was published (which would be 2005).
I was so inspired by this incredibly interesting book, that I used it as inspiration for this past Wednesday's "Looks from Books" for College Fashion, as well! Here's the link:
Hope everyone's enjoying the beginning of their summer! :) I know I am.
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