Entertaining the Alien

45. Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt

This book lies in the gray area between historical fiction and straight non-fiction. And for that, I love it. Greenblatt takes the facts we do know about Shakespeare's life (which are surprisingly small, considering how much we know about some of his contemporaries) and, using what we also know about that particular historical period, extrapolates some possible incidents and relationships that went into making him the man and artist that he was. I've read various articles and reviews of the book, some agreeing with Greenblatt's ideas, some finding them implausible, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure where I stand on the matter either.

However, the book was thought-provoking to say the least, and entertainingly written. Not everything here is a new ground--in fact, some of the ideas he suggests I actually read earlier this year in a fluffy bit of historical fiction called Will--but the way he presents it is new, a book of what-if. Very much worth a read.