Shakespeare and the Dream of Restoration
Program
We have by now many convincing biographies of Shakespeare. The problem
is that this life seems less than thrilling: a history of hard work. A
certain steadiness, in any case, rings true: it would be hard otherwise
to imagine how Shakespeare could have done what he did – learn his parts
and perform them on stage, help manage the complex business affairs of
the playing company, lend money at interest, compose exquisitely crafted
sonnets and long poems, and for almost two decades, write on average
two stupendous plays a year. But, of course, this dull, blank steadiness
only intensifies the longing for a genealogy, “a narrative,” as Bernard
Williams puts it, “that tries to explain a cultural phenomenon by
describing a way in which it came about, or could have come about, or
might be imagined to have come about.”
“Shakespeare and the Dream of Restoration” is an exercise in
Shakespearean genealogy: I am trying to imagine pieces of a life that
could possibly have issued forth in the works.
Stephen Greenblatt ist Professor of the Humanities an der Harvard
University und Permanent Fellow am Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
Neuere Publikationen (Auswahl): The Norton Shakespeare (General Editor),
New York u.a. 1997; Wunderbare Besitztümer. Die Erfindung des Fremden.
Reisende und Entdecker, Berlin 1998; Was ist Literaturgeschichte?,
Frankfurt a.M. 2000; Practicing New Historicism, Chicago 2000; Hamlet in
Purgatory, Princeton 2001.