Robert Nye
Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare?
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
By Stephen Greenblatt
Jonathan Cape 406pp £20 order from our bookshop
The Age of Shakespeare
By Frank Kermode
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 194pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 194pp £12.99
THE EFFIGY CARVED in the north wall of the chancel in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, depicts a man who looks like a successful pork butcher rather improbably in the act of poetic composition, with his fat right hand on a golden cushion and holding a golden quill. The first thing to say about Stephen Greenblatt’s William Shakespeare is that he would have written nothing with a golden quill, and that it is unlikely that he ever rested his hand on golden cushions.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Apparently if you’re a teenager and you send a declaration of love to someone heart emoji, heart emoji, heart emoji and they come back smiley face, that’s the worst.'
Thomas Blaikie tries to get his head round the language of the internet.
http://ow.ly/TU6d50xroRc
Don't forget to enter the competition to win a year's @royalacademy membership and a year's subscription to Literary Review.
Entries close on the 18th December.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/page/ra-competition-literary-review-2019
'Together the Marcoses established a new style of deluxe autocracy, one characterised by glitz and kleptomaniac graft.'
Peter Conrad on Lauren Greenfield's new documentary about Imelda Marcos, 'The Kingmaker'.
http://ow.ly/FFSg50xsH7D