Will in the World : How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

While I read this book, and it's pretty darn good by the way, I was constantly thinking about the imagination Greenblatt must have. The author perks up the bare facts of Shakespeare's life with some speculation about his parents' lives, his "lost years," his marriage. True, the hypotheses he presents to the reader about what might have happened in Shakespeare’s life leading up to and during the time he wrote his plays are all based on evidence he has uncovered, but the evidence is weak and full of holes, which if you know anything about Shakespeare (or “William ‘Billy Bob’ Shakespeare” as my high school class called him), you know this is inevitable. I suppose Charles Mee said it best, “A brilliant book written by a virtual eyewitness who understands how a playwright takes the stuff of his life and makes it into theatre.” (From the flyleaf).

Because this book makes reference to all of Shakespeare's plays, some of which I haven't read, I'm strangely inclined to read all 37 ("Thirty-seven?!" you say? Why yes, indeed-y) of his plays. I own two complete works, the Riverside Shakespeare and a facsimile Chris gave me a few years ago, and lots of individual volumes of some plays, including four translated into Italian (which makes the plays actually set in Italy all that more interesting). I like his work. He's good people.

If you enjoyed this book, please consider one of the following :
Fiction Recommendation : My Father Had a Daughter by Grace Tiffany. An ordinary girl seeks revenge on her celebrated father in this, a fictionalized "memoir" by the Bard's youngest daughter, Judith. When her twin brother Hamnet accidentally drowns, she is grief-stricken; when she finds her grief used as material for Twelfth Night, she blames her absentee father.
Fiction Recommendation : The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. In this ingenious literary thriller, the lives of two men (Jake Mishkin and Albert Crosetti) are changed forever by William Shakespeare and the letters of Richard Bracegirdle, a 16th-century English spy and soldier. Together, Mishkin and Crosetti travel to England in search of a previously unknown Shakespeare manuscript mentioned by Bracegirdle.
Nonfiction Recommendation : A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro. The year 1599 was crucial in the Bard's artistic evolution as well as in the historical upheavals he lived through. That year's output—Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and (debatably) Hamlet—not only spans a shift in artistic direction and theatrical taste, but also echoes the intrigues of Queen Elizabeth's court and the downfall of her favorite, the Earl of Essex.
Nonfiction Recommendation : Christopher Marlow: Poet and Spy by Park Honan. Marlow is yet another Elizabethan playwright who attracts intrigue (perhaps even more than Shakespeare) even up to the current year.