Will

March 1616: William Shakespeare is dying, with his lawyer at his bedside. It is time to dictate his will. But how can a man put his affairs in order before he?s come to terms with his past? Acclaimed poet, novelist, and Shakespeare professor Christopher Rush has created an utterly irresistible figure whose voice rings true across 400 years?irrepressible, bawdy, witty, and wise, his every word steeped in the situations and phrases of his own plays.

Part literary genesis, part historical thriller, the latest from Rush (A Twelvemonth and a Day, etc.) brims with bawdy luridness and graphic violence as he channels the first-person voice of the world's greatest writer. As a bedridden Will Shakespeare dictates his will to a gluttonous lawyer, he recounts barbarous Renaissance times, from the plague-ridden streets of sweltering Stratford to gory slaughterhouse days before landing his first job at the Rose Theatre, through to the Bloody Mary burnings and tortures of the Counter-Reformation (the nipples crisped and torn off with white-hot pincers... tender tongue, sensitive as a snail, quivering in the vice, while long needles go savagely to work) and beyond. Rush takes on contentious areas of the Bard's life, including his anticlericalism, the connection to assassinated rival Christopher Marlowe, the mystery of his son and the why of a master dramatist's turn to sonneteering. Some moments are decidedly didactic, as when Will dissects his own Twelfth Night. Nevertheless, this ravenous soliloquy fairly bursts with life. (Sept.)
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