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Historical Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber $20 / Pantheon Books / 2005 Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt $26.95 / W. W. Norton / 2004 Though penned by different authors-and in no sense intended to be complementary- the books Shakespeare After All and Will in the World work delightfully as companion pieces. The first is a scholarly but accessible analysis of Shakespeare's plays; the second, a judiciously and skillfully drawn portrait of the Bard. In Shakespeare After All, Harvard professor Marjorie Garber discusses the symbolism, parallels, and paradoxes of Shakespeare's works. Written by a master of the human psyche, Shakespeare's works are so complex that one can scarcely believe such nuances were not read into them by earlier literary analysts. But Garber's exposition is so explicit and logical that it is impossible not to conceive that the Bard's touches were unwitting. Garber's discussion, for example, of Romeo and Juliet juxtaposes the play's differently structured acts against each other, pointing out the changes in language which signal the play's move from possible comedy to inevitable tragedy. Her discussion of the mutual words spoken by the two lovers at their first meeting ("If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine...") makes its sonnet form meaningful. In like manner, Greenblatt takes the cliché out of "bringing Shakespeare to life" by providing readers with such historic detail and atmosphere that Elizabethan London might as well have been one's own hometown. His research is minute, and though his discourse occasionally becomes bogged down in period trivia, his style is never stagnant. Greenblatt does occasionally makes leaps of logic on less than a secure foundation (such as his assumption that in his early years, Shakespeare was a traveling player), but even such shaky conclusions can be justified by his sheer depth of scholarship. All in all, these two volumes are some of the best new works on the Bard and his oeuvre. Together or singly, they are worthy reads, both for those who study Shakespeare indepth and those who simply want to get to know the Bard and his works better. —Anjuli MacDonald of Clanranald

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