"The most complexly intelligent and sophisticated, and yet the most keenly enthusiastic, study of the life and work taken together that I have ever read." -- Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker) "So engrossing, clearheaded, and lucid that its arrival is not just welcome but cause for celebration." -- Dan Cryer (Newsday) "Vividly written, richly detailed, and insightful from first chapter to last... certain to secure a place among the essential studies of the greatest of all writers." -- William E. Cain (Boston Sunday Globe) "A dazzling and subtle biography." -- Richard Lacayo (Time) "A magnificent achievement." -- Denis Donoghue (Wall Street Journal) "An exceptionally well-told tale, an engrossing page-turner, in fact." -- Robert Hurwitt (San Francisco Chronicle) "Greenblatt takes the bits we do know, nourishes them with a thorough understanding of the Elizabethan world Shakespeare inhabited, and then coaxes each bud of information to flower within our understanding of the plays.... Only a churl would be unpersuaded by it." -- Laura Miller (Salon)
