I don't necessarily agree with all of Greenblatt's arguments, but he creates here a worthy portrait and discussion to add to the vast database of information and theories on Shakespeare's life and times. ( )

Interesting speculations about the life of Shakespeare and how he became a gentleman despite his humble beginnings. Relationships with other poets / dramatists, etc. are intriguing too. ( )

10/25/21

3/30/22

Gosh, this is good. Greenblatt, as I think has been pointed out elsewhere, wears his erudtion lightly -- you could be excused for not recognizing this as the work of a highly-respected scholar: it's written clearly, engagingly, and is -- at least for this reader -- very much "compulsively readable" if that is synonymous with "hard to put down."

Is it speculative? sure, it has to be. It's not, as the "Oxfordians" and other conspiracy theorist-types might argue, that there is NO (or suspiciously little) evidence for the Shakespeare who wrote all those plays -- it's just that the bulk of the evidence is so mundane. It's there -- it just doesn't necessarily speak the way we might want it to. That said, I find Greenblatt's army of "may have been"s quite well-grounded, and at their best they do illuminate the works that we have. My favorite chapter might be "Laughter at the Scaffold" which goes into Shakespeare's eternally-discomfiting exploration of Jewishness in "The Merchant of Venice," playing it off his probable-rival Marlowe's roughly contemporary effort "The Jew of Malta" and demonstrating how much further Shakespeare went -- and why he might have done so.

As I'd hoped it would, this book is filling me with a strong desire to return to the plays, which at one time were the center of my world and certainly deserve to be there once again. ( )