Shakespeare and the Dream of Restoration

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.