Shakespeare's Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects
*Starred Review* Shakespeare may never have owned a Cristallo-glass goblet made by the craftsmen of Venice. Yet by contemplating such a seventeenth-century object, MacGregor enters the world the Bard creates in Othello and The Merchant of Venice. Just as he did in A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010), MacGregor repeatedly converts fascinating objects into talismans transporting readers across time and geography. In this volume, 20 well-chosen artifacts open perspectives on both Shakespeare’s literary art and his historical circumstances. Readers examine, for instance, a seventeenth-century dagger and suddenly find themselves beside the doomed Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet—and among the reckless roughnecks roaming the streets of Elizabethan London. Readers likewise scrutinize a brass-handled iron fork recovered from the Rose theater, an implement amplifying Falstaff’s cry in The Merry Wives of Windsor for skies that rain potatoes and prompting reflections on the oysters that groundlings ate at Elizabethan plays. Readers even peer at a reliquary containing the eye of Catholic martyr Edward Oldcorne, a grim reminder of the cruel blinding Gloucester suffers in Lear and of the brutal real-world executions carried out scant yards from the Globe Theater. Visually splendid, intellectually stimulating, a must-buy for any library with patrons who still care about the Swan of Avon. --Bryce Christensen