description: The theatre for which Shakespeare wrote and acted was a cut-throat commercial entertainment industry. Yet his plays were also intensely alert to the social and political realities of their times. Shakespeare had to make concessions to the commercial world, for the theatre company in which he was a shareholder had to draw some 1,500 to 2,000 paying customers a day into the round wooden walls of the playhouse to stay afloat and competition from rival companies was fierce. The key was not so much topicality - with government censorship and with repertory companies recycling the same scripts for years. Instead, Shakespeare had to engage with the deepest desires and fears of his audience. Will in the World is about an amazing success story that has resisted it aims to be the first fully satisfying account of Shakespeare's character and the blossoming of his talent. There have, of course, been many biographies of Shakespeare. The problem each one faces is the thin amount of material surrounding his life. They lead us through the available traces but leave us no closer to understanding how the playwright's astonishing achievements came about.
language: English
title: Will in the World : How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
titlecomplete: Will in the World : How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
characters: William Shakespeare
genres: Literature, Books About Books, History, Drama, Theatre, Biography Memoir, Literary Criticism, Biography, Nonfiction, British Literature
ratings_count: 10290
places: United Kingdom, England
awards: name: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Nonfiction
publisher: Jonathan Cape