Michiko Kakutani
There are no obscure invocations of the French philosopher Michel Foucault in these pages, no pseudo-Marxist readings of Shakespeare's plays. Instead, in the opening sections of this book, Mr. Greenblatt succinctly and vividly conjures up the Elizabethan world in which young Will came of age, showing how the religious and political upheavals of the day, as well as contemporaneous aesthetic conventions, shaped his sensibility and his work.
— The New York Times
Arthur Kirsch
… Greenblatt has unusual talents. He is learned, he marshals an enormous amount of detail in the book, and he depicts the fabric of Elizabethan life, both its paranoia and festivities, compellingly. He is a masterful storyteller; his prose is elegant and subtle, if sometimes slippery; and his imagination is rich and interesting. When he focuses more exclusively on Shakespeare's texts, as he does in his chapter on the sonnets, he is a brilliant critic. One can see why Will in the World is a nominee for the National Book Award.
— The Washington Post
Time - Richard Lacayo
"Dazzling and subtle."
Boston Sunday Globe - William E. Cain
"Vividly written, richly detailed, and insightful from first chapter to last…certain to secure a place among the essential studies of the greatest of all writers."
Newsday - Dan Cryer
"So engrossing, clearheaded, and lucid that its arrival is not just welcome but cause for celebration."
Esquire - Adam Morgan
"Greenblatt’s masterful biography is like traveling back in time to see firsthand how a small-town Englishman became the greatest writer of all time."
Wall Street Journal - Denis Donoghue
"A magnificent achievement."
Laura Miller - Salon
Greenblatt takes the bits we do know, nourishes them with a thorough understanding of the Elizabethan world Shakespeare inhabited, and then coaxes each bud of information to flower within our understanding of the plays.... Only a churl would be unpersuaded by it.
Robert Hurwitt - San Francisco Chronicle
An exceptionally well-told tale, an engrossing page-turner, in fact.
Adam Gopnik - The New Yorker
The most complexly intelligent and sophisticated, and yet the most keenly enthusiastic, study of the life and work taken together that I have ever read.
Maureen Corrigan - "Fresh Air"
Greenblatt's revelatory book pays tribute to the glorious democracy of Shakespeare's art by the openness and elegance of his own writing style.
Charles Mee
At last, the book Shakespeare has deserved: a brilliant book written by a virtual eyewitness who understands how a playwright takes the stuff of his life and his world and makes it into theater.
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