Will In The World

A vast shelf of biographies of the Bard exists, but this is the book I would take with me to a desert island

Jay Parini, Guardian

A work of wonderful erudition that can be read as an accessible introduction to the social and political milieu from which Shakespeare emerged, and as an elegant guide to the astonishing poems and plays themselves

New Statesman

Both insightful literary criticism and a gripping piece of psychological detective work … Stephen Greenblatt has few equals as a Shakespeare scholar

Metro

A delight, full of new insights and infused with a rich understanding of precisely why Shakespeare’s writing gives us such lasting pleasure … quite superb

John Simpson, Sunday Times 'Books of the Year'

One of the finest recent Shakespeare biographies

Robert McCrum, Guardian

Thought-provoking … full of unexpected touches … beautifully written

Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph

Riveting

Independent

Really gives a sense of being in touch with the man. Greenblatt’s knowledge of the plays and the times in which they were written is so encyclopaedic that he can assemble a convincing portrait of Shakespeare without resorting to smoke and mirrors

Sunday Times

Greenblatt’s fantastically readable biography of our greatest writer paints a riveting portrait of Elizabethan England

Daily Telegraph

Compulsively readable and deeply imaginative

Stanley Wells

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 theatre

Charles Mee

A tour de force … a book for artists and ordinary people as well as scholars and students

Tina Packer

A wonderful piece of work

Simon Russell Beale

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

Adam Gopnik, New Yorker