Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. They lead us through the available traces but leave us no closer to understanding how the playwright's astonishing achievements came about. The problem each one faces is the thin amount of material surrounding his life. There have, of course, been many biographies of Shakespeare. Will in the World is about an amazing success story that has resisted explanation: it aims to be the first fully satisfying account of Shakespeare's character and the blossoming of his talent. Norton, estimates that out of 200,000 copies in. Instead, Shakespeare had to engage with the deepest desires and fears of his audience. 'Will in the World,' the biography of Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt, was on this paper's best-seller list for nine weeks. The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares death. The key was not so much topicality - with government censorship and with repertory companies recycling the same scripts for years. Shakespeare had to make concessions to the commercial world, for the theatre company in which he was a shareholder had to draw some 1,500 to 2,000 paying customers a day into the round wooden walls of the playhouse to stay afloat and competition from rival companies was fierce.

Yet his plays were also intensely alert to the social and political realities of their times. The theatre for which Shakespeare wrote and acted was a cut-throat commercial entertainment industry.

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt