Will In The World

Have you ever wanted to read a certain book for a really long time, but just continue to never getting around to the actual reading of it?
Some sort of procrastinatory failure to begin, sets in?
← That’s how I have been with this book shown here.
Will In The World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt.
I’ve almost purchased the thing for about 27 years now!
But today’s the day. I realized it at about 2 p.m. [to pin down my exact moment of decision].
So, right after work I picked up the book and now I am sitting in a Starbucks, immersed in it.

I am fascinated by Shakespeare while being embarassed at how little of his work I have read. I’ve read maybe five or six of his plays, and much of his poetry.
But I intend to read so much more.
Reading Shakespeare thrills me in a way that no other reading does. Having said this, you may rightfully ask, “Why haven’t you read more of his stuff then, you pribbling puddle-puttock?”
It’s a good question. I honestly don’t know the answer.

As I turned this lovely book over and over in my hands, before tearing into it, I asked myself, “What is it about Shakespeare? Why is he so good?”
And immediately, the thought came to me that when I read Will Shakespeare, I am afforded the feeling that a Bible believer would feel, reading scripture.
As though, in the English language, nothing could be said better. His sentences can be revered, so good are they.
I sipped my coffee and opened the book.
Three pages in, Greenblatt echoed my thoughts, saying:
“The work [Shakespeare’s] is so astonishing, so luminous, that it seems to have come from a god and not a mortal, let alone a mortal of provincial origins and modest education.”
I very much tend to agree. My feelings exactly.
I’m excited about this book… it is difficult to stop reading long enough to tell you!

This is a book, then, about an amazing success story that has resisted explanation: it aims to discover the actual person who wrote the most important body of imaginative literature of the last thousand years. Or rather, since the actual person is a matter of well-documented public record, it aims to tread the shadowy paths that lead from the life he lived into the literature he created.
[From the Preface.]

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