Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition)
Title | Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition) PDF eBook |
Author | Stephen Greenblatt |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 441 |
Release | 2010-05-03 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0393079848 |
Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.
Shakespeare's Freedom
Title | Shakespeare's Freedom PDF eBook |
Author | Stephen Greenblatt |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 163 |
Release | 2010-11-15 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0226306682 |
Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes—of claims for the absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the young, and the gentle over the baseborn. With the elegance and verve for which he is well known, Stephen Greenblatt, author of the best-selling Will in the World, shows that Shakespeare was strikingly averse to such absolutes and constantly probed the possibility of freedom from them. Again and again, Shakespeare confounds the designs and pretensions of kings, generals, and churchmen. His aversion to absolutes even leads him to probe the exalted and seemingly limitless passions of his lovers. Greenblatt explores this rich theme by addressing four of Shakespeare’s preoccupations across all the genres in which he worked. He first considers the idea of beauty in Shakespeare’s works, specifically his challenge to the cult of featureless perfection and his interest in distinguishing marks. He then turns to Shakespeare’s interest in murderous hatred, most famously embodied in Shylock but seen also in the character Bernardine in Measure for Measure. Next Greenblatt considers the idea of Shakespearean authority—that is, Shakespeare’s deep sense of the ethical ambiguity of power, including his own. Ultimately, Greenblatt takes up Shakespearean autonomy, in particular the freedom of artists, guided by distinctive forms of perception, to live by their own laws and to claim that their creations are singularly unconstrained. A book that could only have been written by Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare’s Freedom is a wholly original and eloquent meditation by the most acclaimed and influential Shakespearean of our time.
Will in the World
Title | Will in the World PDF eBook |
Author | Stephen Greenblatt |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 460 |
Release | 2004 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 9780393050578 |
A portrait of Elizabethan England and how it contributed to the making of William Shakespeare discusses how he moved to London lacking money, connections, and a formal education and rose to became his age's foremost playwright.
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
Title | A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare PDF eBook |
Author | James Shapiro |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Pages | 620 |
Release | 2009-10-13 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0061840904 |
Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award What accounts for Shakespeare’s transformation from talented poet and playwright to one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this gripping account, James Shapiro sets out to answer this question, "succeed[ing] where others have fallen short." (Boston Globe) 1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen. James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare’s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.
Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics
Title | Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics PDF eBook |
Author | Stephen Greenblatt |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 208 |
Release | 2018-05-08 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0393635767 |
"Brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable."—Philip Roth World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright’s insight into bad (and often mad) rulers. Examining the psyche—and psychoses—of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, and Coriolanus, Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the disasters visited upon the societies over which these characters rule. Tyrant shows that Shakespeare’s work remains vitally relevant today, not least in its probing of the unquenchable, narcissistic appetites of demagogues and the self-destructive willingness of collaborators who indulge them.
The Age of Shakespeare
Title | The Age of Shakespeare PDF eBook |
Author | Frank Kermode |
Publisher | Modern Library |
Pages | 240 |
Release | 2004-02-03 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1588363481 |
In The Age of Shakespeare, Frank Kermode uses the history and culture of the Elizabethan era to enlighten us about William Shakespeare and his poetry and plays. Opening with the big picture of the religious and dynastic events that defined England in the age of the Tudors, Kermode takes the reader on a tour of Shakespeare’s England, vividly portraying London’s society, its early capitalism, its court, its bursting population, and its epidemics, as well as its arts—including, of course, its theater. Then Kermode focuses on Shakespeare himself and his career, all in the context of the time in which he lived. Kermode reads each play against the backdrop of its probable year of composition, providing new historical insights into Shakspeare’s characters, themes, and sources. The result is an important, lasting, and concise companion guide to the works of Shakespeare by one of our most eminent literary scholars.
The Book of William
Title | The Book of William PDF eBook |
Author | Paul Collins |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Pages | 256 |
Release | 2009-07-07 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1596911956 |
A history of the Bard's competitively pursued First Folio traces the author's travels from the site of a Sotheby auction to regions in Asia, throughout which he investigated the roles played by those who have sought and owned the Folios.