This biography is particularly valuable for the light it sheds on the 'university wits' that Shakespeare would have encountered in London at the end of the 1580s, and for the possible influence upon his work that such a dangerous, talented, élitist and arrogant coterie may have had. Readers looking for a biography that does more than simply retread the familiar documentary path and which tries to find some compelling connection between the life and work should take note.
Greenblatt's Will in the World joins Bate's Soul of the Age as a scholarly and inspiring contender for the 'definitive' biography for our times prize.
When done well, however, they add exhilarating new dimensions. Biographies of Shakespeare that are both enthralling and (relatively) fiction-free are understandably rare.
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