Will

Rating:
Summary: A Superb Read
Review: I loved Tiffany's first Shakespearean novel, My Father Had a Daughter, so I had high hopes for Will. I was not disappointed. Tiffany vividly explores the complex personal and historical forces that shaped Shakespeare's life and work, including his contact with fellow playwrights, his relationship with his wife Anne, etc. I was struck by Tiffany's uncanny ability to sketch the bard as an ordinary yet inspired--and inspiring--man. Though it's possible that Will may irk the Marlowe enthusiasts who give Marlowe credit for Shakespeare's plays, I found its account of the competition and friendship between Renaissance playwrights subtle and convincing. I also appreciated how Tiffany's second novel provides us with Shakespeare's perspective on events reported by his daughter in My Father Had a Daughter. Wonderful!

Rating:
Summary: Historical Fiction at Its Best
Review: If you are not a fan of Elizabethan London, reading this excellent work by Ms. Tiffany may make you one. Shakespeare's view of events is both entertaining and believable. More than a study of the man, it is an insightful view into human nature. I look forward to Ms. Tiffany's next book!

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating interpretation of the world (and mind) of Will
Review: Ms. Tiffany has blessed us with a vision of Williams Shakespeare that is very well researched and imaginatively fleshed out. Her Will is full of ambiguity, self-doubt, mistakes, brilliance, desire, and above all - an obsessive need to write the works that we still love.

The joy of meeting Will and so many of his contemporaries made me run back to my bookshelf to re-read the plays. I have used this book in my English classes this year to fire up my students' imaginations and it has worked!!! Our department members enjoyed the book so much we went out and purchased it for the school libary, considering it a must-have!

Rating:
Summary: Where is Will ?
Review: The author has some peculiar ideas about Shakespeare, contrary to accepted ideas; she suggests that it was Marlowe who stole good ideas from Shakespeare instead of near-certainty that it was the other way around; the characters think like modern Americans; the coincidences are bizarre; and the writing is stilted.
If you want to learn about Shakespeare, read "Will in the World". If you want a mediocre historical romance, surely you could do better than this. But don't be snookered into believing you will learn anything about the real Shakespeare by this silly tripe. Ain't gonna happen.

Rating:
Summary: Shakespeare Comes to Life
Review: There are a lot of books about William Shakespeare, but none brings him to life so vividly as does WILL by Grace Tiffany.

In WILL, Tiffany focuses on Shakespeare's rise to fame and his running feud with the angelic looking Christopher Marlowe, for a time, much more popular in London than was Shakespeare, himself.

WILL looks closely at the personal life of William Shakespeare, but WILL is no dry and boring biography. It's a novel, and Tiffany, a Shakespeare scholar, mixes fact and fiction brilliantly. Not only did WILL bring the Bard wonderfully to life, it also brought Kit Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Queen Elizabeth I to life as well as Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's loving, long-suffering, but not so loyal (in some ways) wife.

If Tiffany's characterizations are wonderful (and they are), her evocation of place is just as good. I really felt like I was in Elizabethan London and Stratford. WILL is a book that really transported me to another place, another era, doing exactly what I wanted it to do.

I'm glad Tiffany didn't stick rigorously to historical fact in WILL. The blanks and spaces she's filled in for us make her novel richer and more complex and bring Shakespeare, Marlowe and company to life far more vividly than any "strictly historical" rendering could have ever done.

WILL begins, not when Shakespeare is a well-known and respected playwright, but when he's a schoolboy and one who's in trouble more often than he's out of it. We're with Will Shakespeare through his years of study, the times when he steals away to write poetry, during his years of struggle and the founding of the Globe Theatre, during his marriage and the birth of his children. We get to know him as a man, rather than just becoming familiar with his works. We feel his desire and need to go to London and make a name and reputation for himself, but we also feel his guilt at leaving his young family at home in Stratford despite the fact that, eventually, he's able to buy them the largest home Stratford can offer. We also learn what probably inspired Shakespeare to write "Romeo and Juliet," "Richard III," "Hamlet," "Macbeth" and one of my "Shakespeare favorites," "The Winter's Tale."

WILL is filled with wonderful detail and little known, but true, information about William Shakespeare. I would certainly recommend it to any lover of Shakespeare or to anyone who wants to read a wonderfully written and beautiful period piece. And, for those who want a "different" perspective on the life of William Shakespeare, take a look at Tiffany's debut novel, MY FATHER HAD A DAUGHTER: JUDITH SHAKESPEARE'S STORY. It's wonderful, and wonderfully written, as well.

Rating:
Summary: Great read!
Review: This is a great read! It is informative, funny, and moving, and hard to put down. Alas, it is too short -- brevity is not the soul of historical novels. We are shown much of Shakespeare's London and meet Marlowe and other real characters. We are shown a glimpse of Shakespeare writing in passages that remind me of the scenes from Amadeus in which Mozart composes his Requim. Finally, the reference to the Earl of Oxford, claimed by some to be the real author of Shakespeare's work, is very funny.

Rating:
Summary: Page turner!
Review: This is a great read! It is a page turner that presents a vivid picture of Elizabethan London. I especially enjoyed the subtle comparison between the way Will sees an event and his daughter's view of the same event as described in Tiffany's earlier novel about Shakespeare's daughter, Judith. Also, the reference to the Earl of Oxford is very funny. (The Earl's descendant's claim that he wrote Shakespeare's plays.) We do not exactly enter Shakespeare's mind, but we can see something of how he observed human nature and how the words flowed to paper and stage. (It reminded me of the scene in Amadeaus in which we see Mozart writing his Requiem.) Brevity may be the soul of wit, but this book is too short. More pages next time please!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Page turner!
Review: This is a great read! It is a page turner that presents a vivid picture of Elizabethan London. I especially enjoyed the subtle comparison between the way Will sees an event and his daughter's view of the same event as described in Tiffany's earlier novel about Shakespeare's daughter, Judith. Also, the reference to the Earl of Oxford is very funny. (The Earl's descendant's claim that he wrote Shakespeare's plays.) We do not exactly enter Shakespeare's mind, but we can see something of how he observed human nature and how the words flowed to paper and stage. (It reminded me of the scene in Amadeaus in which we see Mozart writing his Requiem.) Brevity may be the soul of wit, but this book is too short. More pages next time please!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Great read!
Review: This is a great read! It is informative, funny, and moving, and hard to put down. Alas, it is too short -- brevity is not the soul of historical novels. We are shown much of Shakespeare's London and meet Marlowe and other real characters. We are shown a glimpse of Shakespeare writing in passages that remind me of the scenes from Amadeus in which Mozart composes his Requim. Finally, the reference to the Earl of Oxford, claimed by some to be the real author of Shakespeare's work, is very funny.

Rating:
Summary: A Believable and Likable Shakespeare
Review: Unlike with fictional Shakespeares created by other, more famous writers, I could actually believe this fictional Will wrote the great man's plays. He is complex, warm, insightful, funny, ambitious, innocent and sophisticated at once. One can imagine him having penned Shakespeare's greatest lines, yet he doesn't walk around spouting iambic pentameter. The story of his relationships with contemporary playwrights, including Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, and their alternately friendly and bitterly competitive rivalries is spellbinding, as are the political subplots. However it is the story of Will's relationship with Anne Hathaway, and the way his plays themselves are shown to reflect his growing maturity and his eventual return to his marriage and his "real" life, that is most compelling and profound. Dr. Tiffany gives us a convincing and extremely entertaining portrait of Shakespeare and the personal and cultural context in which he wrote. Read the first few pages on "Look Inside" and you'll be hooked!