I read this immediately after reading "My Father Had a Daughter" by the same author because the first book piqued my interest in Shakespeare and his times. I enjoyed it, but didn't like it as well as "My Father Had a Daughter." In the story of Shakespeare's daughter, the author created a more fully-realized character and explored Shakespeare's life through that character's perspective.

When the prespective shifts to Shakespeare telling his own story, he becomes a less interesting figure. Authors of biographical fiction about iconic figures (like Shakespeare) are constrained by both the historical facts of that person's life and that person's reputation in popular culture, which leaves a very narrow margin in which an author can devleop the characters and plot that make a novel more fun to read than biography. ( )

I really appreciated this author's view of Shakespeare. She turned the legend into a man, and made him realistic, believable, and true to the history that we can discern about the age and the man.

The book was somewhat difficult to read, though; Grace Tiffany uses a language similar to that spoken in the historical period, which makes the novel considerably less accessible, though her effort is definitely appreciated. At the same time, the plot is sparse and little seems to happen, making it hard to retain interest while reading. It all comes together in the end, but it seems to be more of an interpretation of Shakespeare's life rather than a novel. In effect, this novel should really only be read by those interested in Shakespeare's life and times and willing to put up with a bit of slow reading. ( )

Grace Tiffany's WILL is a solid testimony to the rising and flourishing of one of the greatest playwright and poetry in history. The legend of a master began in the library of Will's recusant uncle, whose collection ranged from Ovid's Metamorphoses to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, greatly enthralled the school-aged Shakespeare. Uncle Edward's adamant denial of the Protestant and his audacious refusal to the Queen's Protestant faith had ineluctably, and inveterately imbued in Shakespeare the staunch conviction to speak against the absurdity of monarchy.

The time was 1588 in London, a dark and grim period in which a plague decimated the city at the backdrop of an imminent war. The Catholic Spain, without its stupendous fleet and navy power, threatened to sail its gunboats up the Thames. Struggling Puritans and papists dared to defy the Protestant Queen Elizabeth who relentlessly executed her enemies and pinned their heads on the pikes of London Bridge to rot. With an amazing gift of words and iambic meter, Shakespeare deftly deflected his mocking against the Queen to his poetry, which he embellished with parodies, nuanced words and satires couched in rich metaphor. It was with the pulchritude of poetry's doubleness and roundness that Shakespeare's jests against the reign was left unnoticed, though many of the lines were no less provocative than the incendiary jests spun by the seditionist. Even if the Queen herself might have sensed that he hovered just out of her sight and whispered those lines to her beneath his breath, she found no evidence of treason in his plays.

The making of a master did not come about without a catch. Whether it was really flesh that had intervened, Shakespeare's tight grip of his dream took a toll on his marriage. Anne was plaintively sure that he did not love her when the plague closed the theaters in London and he never came home to Stratford, but instead went to Southampton to write poetry for earl Henry Wriothesley. His prolonged absence from home put as much a strain on his marriage as in his relationship with three children. His beloved son Hamnet, who had always drawn and held his gaze during his brief stay, died in a mishap that sprang from the child's longing for his father. His daughter Judith, who bore the guilt of the death of her brother, yearned to say the verse in order to seek redemption from her father through speaking on a stage. Midsummer's Night Dream yet again shows the playwright's success is fueled by his private tragedy.

Shakespeare's tour-de-force in writing and his gifts in probing his audience won his a fellowship of players, a band of brothers. This blessing inevitably also invited jealousy, rivalry and feud. The baby-faced Christopher Marlowe was one perfect example. He snobbishly jeered at Shakespeare's lack of a university education and stigmatized him as being a mere dishlicker of learning. A thieving knave on Marlowe's part enraged Shakespeare and caused them to be at enmity with one another. Marlowe had the effrontery to steal Will's tit-for-tat idea and used it in his own play. He even buried bribed Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose Theater, not to show any of Will's plays to the players. Was it not for the phenomenal success of Henry VI, Will's two comedies that were buried at the bottom of a pile of scripts would never be performed at the Rose.

WILL is well-researched, well-written, engrossing, and beguiling novel of a master in the making during a turbulent time. It is a testimony to how indefatigably a man followed his heart to fulfill his dream with an indomitable passion. He took minor parts when suddenly asked, stayed around the theater to watch the plays even when he wasn't. When he played he completely melted into his part and left no vestige of him. He had a knack to grab accurately and pull his audience's heartstring. WILL enlivens the life of London during Shakespeare's time and etches a portrait of a man whose public success of his plays is fueled by his private tragedy. ( )