Summer Reading: Will in the World

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt.

            I have been interested in Shakespeare’s works since I was nine years old and my father brought Much Ado About Nothing home from Blockbuster (yeah, way back then). I remember watching, asking questions, and quickly being taken in by the fiery wit and electric chemistry of Benedict and Beatrice within the first act. I enjoyed the antics that their friends played on them, fooling them into falling (or realizing they were) in love. I was only nine, but my heart broke for Hero as she was rejected on the morning of her wedding and rejoiced when she and Claudio were reunited at the end. I was hooked.

            I must have watched the VHS a few more times at least before my father returned it, my older sister and I starting to quote certain lines from memory.  A year later, VHS tapes were distinctly out of fashion and we had just acquired a brand new DVD player. My parents very diligently went about restoring our film library, replacing VHS tapes with their DVD counterparts, and acquiring new DVDs as well. Much Ado About Nothing must have been on sale in Target, because one day, my parents came home from a day of errands, and there it was on the coffee table in our living room. I very diligently went about learning the scene between Benedict and Beatrice by heart, and probably annoyed my parents to no end. Eventually my mother dug out her enormous copy of “The Riverside Shakespeare,” and suddenly I had endless stories before me.

            I was not initially involved with theatre and acting. I read, a lot. I read and I wrote, played soccer and took a couple dance classes. One summer, it seemed my mother thought I spent a bit too much time sitting in my room and reading, because she forced me to sign up for an arts summer school. The stipulation was that I could pick any 3 classes I wanted, but I also had to a take “Fitness for the Performer.” (I barely ate, I was not a chubby kid, to this day – the only justification I can see for this is that she thought I needed to expand my horizons and meet more people, and move.) One of the classes I chose was simply called “William Shakespeare.” I thought it would simply be able reading his plays and learning about his plays. I was wrong.

            We did learn about plays, but we also learned about Sonnets and scansion, verse and prose and iambic pentameter. I spent hours lying on my bed and repeating lines out-loud to memorize signs and monologues. The teacher recognized my young adoration of Shakespeare and singled me out as one of the ‘key performers’ in the class, presenting every time a ‘higher up’ or visiting parent came into the room. This stroked my ego, fired up a passion for performing that I didn’t even know I had and changed my life forever.

            Throughout high school, I stated that I was best with Shakespeare, and indeed I found the style easy and the plays – while sometimes a challenge, more interesting than the average Arthur Miller or David Mamet. In High School my mother gave me “Will in the World” as a birthday present, and while I found the first couple chapters enlightening – I was too lazy to read the entire book. This summer (almost ten years later) this is one of my goals: To actually forge ahead through this book and respond in this blog (daily), to one chapter at a time. I know it will speak directly to a lot of what I studied, read and wrote about in my dissertation for my Masters and I hope it will help me as I continue to contemplate the possibility of a PhD.

I spent most of 2014 researching Shakespeare, his time and using other pieces by Stephen Greenblatt as a reference – but this particular book never floated into my periphery. Now, over two years out of my Masters, I think this can serve as a perfect refresher and an interesting exercise for myself as an academic and a writer. So please – feel free to follow this journey of mine as I re-explore New Historicism and Shakespeare studies.