My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare (ISBN 0446508837)

Another encomium, but with one small caveat:
"My Name is Will"--not to be confused with the TV show starring Jason Lee--is the best "novel" about Shakespeare since Anthony Burgess' "Nothing Like the Sun," and that about says it all. Speculation about the Bard's private life has been a cottage industry for at least a couple of centuries, and Winfield appears to have woven practically every known legend, from Shakespeare's poaching on Thomas Lucy's estate to his leaving his wife their "second-best bed," into his narrative. That he also manages to interweave a companion tale (regarding a graduate student named Will and set in the 1980s) that is every bit as entertaining as the one about the poet is a testament to his invention. This is such a marvelously funny and life-affirming book that I hate to nitpick about mere trifles; however, as everyone else has done a fair job of praising the book, I'll just mention one sour note: One of Winfield's predecessors, in the tripped out, Keseyan, We're all Bozos on This Bus tradition, is surely Richard Farina, author of "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me." Farina died prematurely, in a motorcycle accident in the '60s, but not before marrying Mimi Farina (nee Baez), whose sister was the very Joan whom Winfield somewhat cavalierly trashes in his otherwise fine novel. Lampooning the hypocrisy of American presidents and their ministers is one thing, but lampooning Joan Baez is best left to Al Capp and his ilk. Having said that, however, I look forward to the sequel!

"Sex, drugs and Shakespeare, A sure path to Nirvana":
A bawdy and irreverent look at love and sex and drugs Shakespeare style this broadly humorous novel is a fascinating foray into the life of William Shakespeare and the world that he experienced in the 1580's where his happy family circle was constantly under threat from the dark religious forces of the time. It is the quest for identity and lots of good times that shape this narrative with two Will's - one real and one fictional -separated by time and place but not necessarily by life's experiences. Eighteen-year-old William Shakespeare lives in the once an openly Catholic town of Stratford-upon-Avon. His father, John Shakespeare is a suspected Catholic with marriage ties to the powerful Arden family. For a while now John and his wife Mary have hit upon hard times with the authoritarian Protestant reformers only to happy to see the many of the Catholics hang from the ropes. Indeed once a middle-class success story, the Shakespeares have descended into the realms of shadow and disgrace and are even forced to fawn and cower while they watch as priests are butchered and disemboweled in the public square. The young William is certainly not immune from the Anti-papist sentiment that is currently reaching throughout Elizabethan England. While teaching young students the art of English grammar at the Kings New School, he's shocked to discover that his catholic school master Thomas Cottom, a preacher in secret, had been arrested and taken to the tower of London for imprisonment and torture. It's a sign of what is to come as William himself ends up in a torture session at the hands of the anti-papist Sir Thomas Lucy, accused of trespass, for poaching of deer, and for public lasciviousness with a maiden, the beautiful, red headed and green-eyed Rosaline. Only at the vicious hands of Lucy does William learn first hand the supremacy of the new faith where all for the sake of their own lives are wise to embrace in public fashion. Many of the Catholics who had grown wealthy are suddenly set upon by levies and taxes, fines and enclosures and other impediments great and small. Meanwhile, almost 500 years later, UCSC graduate literature student Willie Shakespeare Greenburg is forced to become a drug runner while also trying to get permission from Clarence Welsh, his professor on the topic of his long overdue masters thesis. Even as Willie postulates whether Shakespeare was in fact a catholic, he's seduced amongst a dope-fuelled haze by the beautiful Dashka Demitra who is vetting the topic - the relationship between Shakespeare and Catholic Persecution in the 16 century - for Welsh while he's on a book tour. While a porn magazine and a hash pipe jump starts his sexy affair with Dashka, it is a giant psychedelic mushroom that becomes Willie's nemesis, when his friend Todd, promises hundreds of dollars if Willie will do a drug run to the Renaissance Faire. The offer comes just as the right time as Willie's father, who has been investing in his education and paying for his tuition, suddenly cuts him off after he realizing that his son's been sponging off him and buying drugs. Willie really needs the money and without money fast "he'll be caged in a prison of higher learning with three squares a day and a shared cell." In the intervening time, the real William is caught between the affections of the bonny maid, young Rosaline who is enamored of the stage, her own lap's garden, "hedged and trimmed like unto the fancy of a fairy's lawn," and his future wife Anne Hathaway whom he unwittingly gets in the family way. Slightly refined, slightly urbane, William is forced to plot a course through an comfortable social milieu, his basic traditions about Catholicism challenged, especially when he discovers his parents leanings. Unfortunately, reality lurks just beneath the surface when he and Mary attend a Catholic mass that is reviled amongst the practitioners of the new faith as wicked, idolatrous and debauched. It is here that William has a type of epiphany seeing all the hangings, dismemberments and burnings, and all of the countless smaller inglorious deaths in the name of religion. Author Jess Winfield has a raucous time disentangling the life of Shakespeare, dividing the text and tweaking history and conjecturing whether his literary hero was in fact a Catholic. Both time periods are significant, the 1580's for its religious divisions and the 1980's for Reagan and his divisive war on drugs and the "just say no" campaign with its mandatory prison sentences for first-time drug users. The author even adds a live appearance by legendry Timothy Leary and there's much talk of freedom of expression as Willie's dope addicted adventures hurtle along culminating in a brain frying mushroom trip at the Renaissance Faire. At the same time we get to see William meeting, the actor and theatre impresario James Burbage and the first seeds spouting of the Bard's amazing talent and creative genius. Weaving his intricate themes of creative expression throughout, the author's knowledge of Shakespeare, his language and his history, is always profound and he never loses sight of the playwright's propensity for showing the absurdities of life, both modern and Elizabethan. Willie and William are indeed spirited protagonists who face life's challenges with an intrinsic mix of mistrustful hysteria and intellectual prowess. While one is urged to protect one and all: "the priest, the box, family and faith" the other is constantly blindsided by the effects a giant fungus and paranoid panic. In the end, both seem to have boundless energy even as we are witness their entertaining journey towards artistic enlightenment. Mike Leonard August 08.

My name is Will:
If you are of the 1950-70 generations then you will relate to this book. I laughed until tears were streaming down my face. Very creative and very good introspect of the times.

Get thee to a bookstore!:
This delightful novel has two Shakespeares narrating: UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg in 1982 who is attempting to do everything but write his Master's Thesis on the Bard and 18 year old William Shakespeare of Stratford- upon- Avon in 1582 who is stuck teaching Latin and trying to avoid those who would hurt him for being a Catholic. Greenberg gets the odd chapters and Shakespeare the even, until their lives come together. "...You perform here, amongst this company, with seeming passion." "Seeming is our trade. And there's profit in it, too. There is an insatiable hunger in England for theater. In London especially. A man may make a pretty penny on the stage, if he will but commit to London nine months a year." (Shakespeare & Burbage)p.218 "Shakespeare... helped create the modern man, didn`t he, his influence is that pervasive. He held the mirror up to nature, but he also created that mirror: so the image he created is the very one we hold ourselves up to. It's almost like a time- travel paradox, isn't it?" p.252 Willie's thesis advisor A fun, fun, fun romp-- except where it's serious.

An amusing romp through Shakespeare's youth:
I bought this book because I saw a production of Reduced Shakespeare in London and loved it. Jess Winfield's humor is both intelligent and witty so I was looking forward to reading his novel. My Name is Will is two stories, one about young Shakespeare and one about a young graduate student working on his thesis about Shakespeare. The stories run parallel to each other. The Shakespeare story line is both factual and fanciful, and I suspect the graduate student story line is also rooted in fact. My Name is Will was a fun book to read, and reminded me of my own days as an English major/Master's candidate.