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The Book of Will
"Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know."
93 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
May 17, 2023
4.5, rounded down..
Gunderson reimagines (since we know little of what actually happened) how Shakespeare's plays found themselves preserved for posterity in the First Folio. For the most part, it's a spritely told tale, but there are some longueurs and one wonders whether any but the more ardent of the Bard's admirers would find all of this of much interest. The 2017 play is being revived in London currently to mark the 400th anniversary of that initial publication, to respectable reviews. Oddly, the playwright offers two different endings, the first far superior to the truncated second.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/202...
https://www.artsatl.org/review-gunder....
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...
Gunderson reimagines (since we know little of what actually happened) how Shakespeare's plays found themselves preserved for posterity in the First Folio. For the most part, it's a spritely told tale, but there are some longueurs and one wonders whether any but the more ardent of the Bard's admirers would find all of this of much interest. The 2017 play is being revived in London currently to mark the 400th anniversary of that initial publication, to respectable reviews. Oddly, the playwright offers two different endings, the first far superior to the truncated second.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/202...
https://www.artsatl.org/review-gunder....
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...
February 19, 2021
Okay, I’ll add in an extra star for the two belly laughs I got out of this—the only-Condell-likes-Pericles gag and the Love's Labor's Won gag. Shakespeare would definitely be happy. Otherwise, just ignore this snipping of a review; I’m clearly too much of a Shakespeare nerd to have too much fun with this.
It’s 1621 thereabouts and much of the world has forgotten William Shakespeare, dead now for a couple of years. Well, sort of—there are amateur troupes doing Hamlet (badly), from the Bad Quarto no less, which angers Shakespeare’s surviving theater colleagues, the celebrated actors Richard Burbage, John Heminges, and Henry Condell. With Burbage’s sudden death putting the fear of oblivion in them, Heminges and Condell get the idea of publishing Will’s whole oeuvre, a folio to precise. Thus they, with their excellent wives and womenfolk’s support, embark on the huge, gigantic challenge of publishing a first folio, gathering and scrounging up foul papers (first drafts), promptbooks, actor parts, a big enough press run by the seedy William Jaggard, who had illegally published Will’s plays in the past. All the while reminiscing on Will, whose personality comes through in fits and bursts throughout the work. Eventually the job is done, and the First Folio hits shelves in 1623 at a whopping one pound, duly presented lovingly by H&C to Will’s widow Anne at the end. Now, of course, it is considered one of the most influential books of all time and William Shakespeare’s name and fame has been 24-karat ever since. Theater bros are the best.
So this is obviously a doozy of a premise, rich and even poignant, with personal and historical significance. The importance of the First Folio can’t be overstated (in short, we would have lost Macbeth and Twelfth Night among others—ow, ow, my heart) and Heminges and Condell have ensured their own immortality with this project. This also shows a man’s impact on the world and his loved ones, his colleagues, and even his rivals, and how they contributed to the preservation of his legacy. It also shows how tenuous that legacy could be: a quarter of genius could have been forever lost to posterity.
But for all the grandness of the premise, Gunderson’s play feels small, in both execution and scope. It doesn’t help matters that emotional heavyweights like Emilia Lanier and Anne Hathaway—popular Dark Lady candidate and mysterious wife figure—are relegated to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos; they of course have nothing but nice memories of Will. Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s rival-friend, is only a fraction of the macho love-to-hate-him sonafubitch he was in real life, but he did have his moments. At least Burbage was appropriately big-hearted, but he only had one scene, alas, and his death plays out almost an intimate affair (in real life, his death was the most mourned and eulogized of all time, so much so that parody eulogies came out mocking the bathos).
And then there are the little things. A big arc is Heminges’ hand-wringing doubts over the feasibility of such a project—of the two, he is the Debbie Downer. However, a folio compilation of a playwright’s works had been done before—by none other than Ben Jonson, at that. H&C are right to worry about money troubles, but this is by no means unprecedented. Also, as in the vein of even decently researched works like this one, there is that tell-tale edutainment Did You Know? exposition creep—most egregiously, H&C having to be reminded of the terrible fire that burned down the first Globe theater some years past (long story short, Heminges was literally there, referred to by a callous satiric ballad as “poor, stuttering Heminges,” hence the popular headcanon of Heminges’ speech impediment. More likely he stuttered out of shock or weeping at seeing his life’s work disintegrate before his eyes). There is also the ever-present Shakespeare-is-responsible-for-everything trope: Who got the idea of each actor receiving just their part and not the whole script so that it’d be harder to steal scripts? Will Shakespeare, of course! Never mind that professional theater had been established by the time he came into the scene. I know Shakespeare had big influence, let’s say post-1596, but come on.
And yet, despite the prevalence of clumsy exposition for the non-nerds, unanswered questions still proliferate: What about Shakespeare’s narrative poems and poetry? Venus and Adonis was still selling like hotcakes years after publication, and the Sonnets were published fairly recently in 1609. How did H&C arrive at the decision to leave those out? Who decided on the order of the plays, what was their rationale? If the plan was to exclude the co-written plays, then why include the likes of Two Noble Kinsman (Fletcher) and the Henry VI plays (Marlowe and others?) and not Pericles (Wilkins) or others? What was the rights situation with that? The play also portrays the decision to dedicate the Folio to the Pembroke brothers as a necessary PR move, even though the earls are clearly described by H&C as having shown support and favor to Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare himself. Not the most egregious of contradictions, but it does beg the question of patronage: why was the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, was not included in the dedication? Why the Pembrokes specifically?
Overall, this needed a lot more grandeur and mystery than the simple but narrowed scope we got, something more meet for such a mysterious, influential historical figure as Shakespeare. His personality should have definitely been revealed more to the spectator through the eyes of his theater colleagues and intimates; we are talking of professional and personal relationships of nearly twenty years, after all. The stakes should be through the roof. Instead Gunderson focuses on Heminges’ and Condell’s womenfolk. I liked Rebecca Heminges et al. fine (actually Becky IRL led quite a life; married at fourteen, widow via nasty duel, and then remarried with her dead husband’s theater buddy in an apparent love match), but they don’t do much except to cheerlead their menfolk and find some creative solutions here and there. That women contributed to the creation of Shakespeare’s oeuvre is appropriately zeitgeist-friendly, but did Gunderson really have only the settled, conventional theater wives to bring to life? I mean, in terms of women connected with Shakespeare, we not only have the sonnet femme fatale, but an Oxford mistress (plus possible illegitimate-son-turned-playwright!), a possible illegitimate daughter (much less certain, but fiction is fiction), a mysterious wife of arguably more interest than any mistress, and a badass/hardass female Puritan enemy of the theater and possibly of Shakespeare as well (the Countess of Bedford, look her up). Oh, and that mysterious Anne Lee that pops up in an arrest warrant along with Shakespeare in 1596. But y’know, Becky Heminges.
All in all, too vanilla for my taste, with way too many pulled punches and unexplored avenues, and a severely underwritten conflict. Writing-wise, it’s sad that fewer and fewer playwright are willing to write some Elizabethan pastiche or at least keep away from gross modernisms. A poetic sensibility is definitely wanting. Read only if you're in the mood for a pleasant, inoffensive Shakespeare-era offering or if that’s your thing to begin with. Also the gags.
It’s 1621 thereabouts and much of the world has forgotten William Shakespeare, dead now for a couple of years. Well, sort of—there are amateur troupes doing Hamlet (badly), from the Bad Quarto no less, which angers Shakespeare’s surviving theater colleagues, the celebrated actors Richard Burbage, John Heminges, and Henry Condell. With Burbage’s sudden death putting the fear of oblivion in them, Heminges and Condell get the idea of publishing Will’s whole oeuvre, a folio to precise. Thus they, with their excellent wives and womenfolk’s support, embark on the huge, gigantic challenge of publishing a first folio, gathering and scrounging up foul papers (first drafts), promptbooks, actor parts, a big enough press run by the seedy William Jaggard, who had illegally published Will’s plays in the past. All the while reminiscing on Will, whose personality comes through in fits and bursts throughout the work. Eventually the job is done, and the First Folio hits shelves in 1623 at a whopping one pound, duly presented lovingly by H&C to Will’s widow Anne at the end. Now, of course, it is considered one of the most influential books of all time and William Shakespeare’s name and fame has been 24-karat ever since. Theater bros are the best.
So this is obviously a doozy of a premise, rich and even poignant, with personal and historical significance. The importance of the First Folio can’t be overstated (in short, we would have lost Macbeth and Twelfth Night among others—ow, ow, my heart) and Heminges and Condell have ensured their own immortality with this project. This also shows a man’s impact on the world and his loved ones, his colleagues, and even his rivals, and how they contributed to the preservation of his legacy. It also shows how tenuous that legacy could be: a quarter of genius could have been forever lost to posterity.
But for all the grandness of the premise, Gunderson’s play feels small, in both execution and scope. It doesn’t help matters that emotional heavyweights like Emilia Lanier and Anne Hathaway—popular Dark Lady candidate and mysterious wife figure—are relegated to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos; they of course have nothing but nice memories of Will. Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s rival-friend, is only a fraction of the macho love-to-hate-him sonafubitch he was in real life, but he did have his moments. At least Burbage was appropriately big-hearted, but he only had one scene, alas, and his death plays out almost an intimate affair (in real life, his death was the most mourned and eulogized of all time, so much so that parody eulogies came out mocking the bathos).
And then there are the little things. A big arc is Heminges’ hand-wringing doubts over the feasibility of such a project—of the two, he is the Debbie Downer. However, a folio compilation of a playwright’s works had been done before—by none other than Ben Jonson, at that. H&C are right to worry about money troubles, but this is by no means unprecedented. Also, as in the vein of even decently researched works like this one, there is that tell-tale edutainment Did You Know? exposition creep—most egregiously, H&C having to be reminded of the terrible fire that burned down the first Globe theater some years past (long story short, Heminges was literally there, referred to by a callous satiric ballad as “poor, stuttering Heminges,” hence the popular headcanon of Heminges’ speech impediment. More likely he stuttered out of shock or weeping at seeing his life’s work disintegrate before his eyes). There is also the ever-present Shakespeare-is-responsible-for-everything trope: Who got the idea of each actor receiving just their part and not the whole script so that it’d be harder to steal scripts? Will Shakespeare, of course! Never mind that professional theater had been established by the time he came into the scene. I know Shakespeare had big influence, let’s say post-1596, but come on.
And yet, despite the prevalence of clumsy exposition for the non-nerds, unanswered questions still proliferate: What about Shakespeare’s narrative poems and poetry? Venus and Adonis was still selling like hotcakes years after publication, and the Sonnets were published fairly recently in 1609. How did H&C arrive at the decision to leave those out? Who decided on the order of the plays, what was their rationale? If the plan was to exclude the co-written plays, then why include the likes of Two Noble Kinsman (Fletcher) and the Henry VI plays (Marlowe and others?) and not Pericles (Wilkins) or others? What was the rights situation with that? The play also portrays the decision to dedicate the Folio to the Pembroke brothers as a necessary PR move, even though the earls are clearly described by H&C as having shown support and favor to Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare himself. Not the most egregious of contradictions, but it does beg the question of patronage: why was the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, was not included in the dedication? Why the Pembrokes specifically?
Overall, this needed a lot more grandeur and mystery than the simple but narrowed scope we got, something more meet for such a mysterious, influential historical figure as Shakespeare. His personality should have definitely been revealed more to the spectator through the eyes of his theater colleagues and intimates; we are talking of professional and personal relationships of nearly twenty years, after all. The stakes should be through the roof. Instead Gunderson focuses on Heminges’ and Condell’s womenfolk. I liked Rebecca Heminges et al. fine (actually Becky IRL led quite a life; married at fourteen, widow via nasty duel, and then remarried with her dead husband’s theater buddy in an apparent love match), but they don’t do much except to cheerlead their menfolk and find some creative solutions here and there. That women contributed to the creation of Shakespeare’s oeuvre is appropriately zeitgeist-friendly, but did Gunderson really have only the settled, conventional theater wives to bring to life? I mean, in terms of women connected with Shakespeare, we not only have the sonnet femme fatale, but an Oxford mistress (plus possible illegitimate-son-turned-playwright!), a possible illegitimate daughter (much less certain, but fiction is fiction), a mysterious wife of arguably more interest than any mistress, and a badass/hardass female Puritan enemy of the theater and possibly of Shakespeare as well (the Countess of Bedford, look her up). Oh, and that mysterious Anne Lee that pops up in an arrest warrant along with Shakespeare in 1596. But y’know, Becky Heminges.
All in all, too vanilla for my taste, with way too many pulled punches and unexplored avenues, and a severely underwritten conflict. Writing-wise, it’s sad that fewer and fewer playwright are willing to write some Elizabethan pastiche or at least keep away from gross modernisms. A poetic sensibility is definitely wanting. Read only if you're in the mood for a pleasant, inoffensive Shakespeare-era offering or if that’s your thing to begin with. Also the gags.
September 28, 2018
I FELT ALL THE THINGS AND IT WAS BEAUTIFUL.
February 6, 2021
This whole play is a beautiful love letter to Shakespeare ❤️
November 23, 2021
I need to do a better job of tracking plays I read, but I had to stop and log this one. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I am a Shakespeare lover so of course I adored the celebration of his work and legacy, but I think even for readers/viewers who are not, there is so much to love here: the characters and relationships are so full and real, the dialogue is brilliant, there's plenty of humor - I just loved it. It looks like Lauren Gunderson is turning into a playwright who's either a Big Hit or a Big Miss for me, but this one was absolutely a hit.
Also, this is one of those historical pieces where you can definitively KNOW how things turn out but still be on the edge of your seat wondering if/how they'll be able to pull it off!
CW: Grief
Also, this is one of those historical pieces where you can definitively KNOW how things turn out but still be on the edge of your seat wondering if/how they'll be able to pull it off!
CW: Grief
October 7, 2018
Thanks, Becky, for the idea of reading and highlighting Shakespeare's lines in my own copy of this wonderful play. I loved seeing it in July and will appreciate even more my second viewing of it tomorrow night!
May 13, 2024
Beautiful story, beautiful written
July 2, 2018
I saw this play performed in Ashland, Oregon. Excellently done. Picked up a copy of the written version to relish this play at home. It did not disappoint.
January 21, 2024
The Book of Will is a play; as such, it was written to be seen, not read. Of course, the actors and the stage crew must read it before they perform it. So here we are.
A thought: As a teacher of English (Composition, not literature), I was often privy to animated discussions about whether or not someone named William Shakespeare actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. One of the items of evidence that influence people's thinking is something along the lines of, "Why does the voice sound so different in so many of the plays?" I tackled this question by posing a trivia question to my students: How many of Shakespeare's plays were published in his lifetime? The answer, of course, is none. His plays were published some three years after his death, by his friends and former fellow actors. To explain: As a veteran amateur performer myself, I was often received scripts at the start of my theatrical journey that had only my lines, plus the cues that led both up to and away from the lines themselves. I did not know that this tradition began hundreds of years earlier, and took place as a defense against theft, or what we would today call plagiarism. No one got to know the stories as well as the performers. It was the performers who felt that Shakespeare's work must not die with him, so a small group of his contemporaries got together and cast into typeface the words that held audiences spellbound for years. The Book of Will is the story of the endeavor, as undertaken by two of his staunchest allies, John Heminges and Henry Condell. (Richard Burbage probably would have participated, but he himself died before the effort could get underway.) This would go a long way toward explaining the multiplicity of voices.
Some folks might make the same mistake about this story that people commonly make about Shakespearian plays: IIt sounds dull and incomprehensible. Not so. The characters bring much joy and vitality to the tale, and it's worth every syllable.
A thought: As a teacher of English (Composition, not literature), I was often privy to animated discussions about whether or not someone named William Shakespeare actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. One of the items of evidence that influence people's thinking is something along the lines of, "Why does the voice sound so different in so many of the plays?" I tackled this question by posing a trivia question to my students: How many of Shakespeare's plays were published in his lifetime? The answer, of course, is none. His plays were published some three years after his death, by his friends and former fellow actors. To explain: As a veteran amateur performer myself, I was often received scripts at the start of my theatrical journey that had only my lines, plus the cues that led both up to and away from the lines themselves. I did not know that this tradition began hundreds of years earlier, and took place as a defense against theft, or what we would today call plagiarism. No one got to know the stories as well as the performers. It was the performers who felt that Shakespeare's work must not die with him, so a small group of his contemporaries got together and cast into typeface the words that held audiences spellbound for years. The Book of Will is the story of the endeavor, as undertaken by two of his staunchest allies, John Heminges and Henry Condell. (Richard Burbage probably would have participated, but he himself died before the effort could get underway.) This would go a long way toward explaining the multiplicity of voices.
Some folks might make the same mistake about this story that people commonly make about Shakespearian plays: IIt sounds dull and incomprehensible. Not so. The characters bring much joy and vitality to the tale, and it's worth every syllable.
did-not-finish
February 9, 2023I stopped reading this about halfway through because I was simply so bored and I didn’t want to go on. I thought some parts of the play were rather comedic. It was interesting to see all these playwrights that I’ve studied in classes interact with one another. The play is also written for a niche group of people who know a lot about theatre and Shakespeare. While I don’t know a lot about that topic yet, I am part of that niche group of people who at least find it interesting. However, it was extremely
difficult to differentiate the characters. I think this would be solved if it was put onstage because I would be able to see who is speaking hear how they’re saying it. However, I don’t know how many people would appreciate the story to its fullest potential. I think a lot of people could enjoy the story on its surface, but there are many jokes and sections that most audiences wouldn’t understand. There was probably a lot of things in there that I didn’t understand simply because I don’t know a lot about the characters. I think it could work, but only in very specific settings.
difficult to differentiate the characters. I think this would be solved if it was put onstage because I would be able to see who is speaking hear how they’re saying it. However, I don’t know how many people would appreciate the story to its fullest potential. I think a lot of people could enjoy the story on its surface, but there are many jokes and sections that most audiences wouldn’t understand. There was probably a lot of things in there that I didn’t understand simply because I don’t know a lot about the characters. I think it could work, but only in very specific settings.
October 15, 2023
Shakespeare’s First Folio celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2023, and I confess that most of what I know about its creation I learned from Lauren Gunderson’s play The Book of Will, the 2017 stage comedy that depicts the efforts of King’s Men actors John Heminges and Henry Condell to gather and publish all of Shakespeare’s plays in one extraordinary volume. Happily, I can now report that Shakespeare’s Book, Chris Laoutaris’s handsome and informative new nonfiction account of the same events, confirms that Gunderson got much of it right.
To read the rest of my review, go to my essay at the Folger Shakespeare Library's "Shakespeare & Beyond" blog. https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespe...
To read the rest of my review, go to my essay at the Folger Shakespeare Library's "Shakespeare & Beyond" blog. https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespe...
June 22, 2023
An AMAZING play about the creation of the Shakespeare Folio. Beginning with a recitation of the Hamlet soliloquy from a bad quarto, the story follows Henry Condell and John Heminges as they work tirelessly to bring Shakespeare's plays together into one volume. The significance of their work is that 18 plays would be lost without the folio (Julius Ceasar, As You Like It, Much Ado... and Macbeth!) and Gunderson portrays their story (based on historical fact where she can) with genuine love and care. I've seen this play several times - it is a joy (and really cool for us bardolators!).
August 7, 2019
I saw this play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in July 2018 and fell in love! I decided to go to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in July 2019 to see it again and compare performances. I loved it all over again. It was fun to read the play and be able to picture the scenes as I saw them on stage. If you're a Shakespeare fan and want to know more of the story behind the First Folio, seek out a performance of this play. Wonderful!
September 16, 2019
We saw this play at American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and I had to buy a copy, as I loved it so much. It focuses on the creation of Shakespeare's First Folio, so the history is interesting, but it is also a play about the power of relationships, of story, and of the obligation to preserve words that sing beyond the grave.
June 2, 2022
Yes, obviously the Shakespearean subject matter is right up my alley(!), but I really think I'd find this play delightful regardless. A colorful cast of characters, clever references, well-handled split scenes, amusing running gags (Pericles!), thoughtful meditations on art and legacy, and moments of cutting emotion. It would be wonderful to see this one performed.
November 14, 2024
I read this for a book club. I was not sure what to expect but was impressed at the pacing and the way the narrative weaved in and around Shakepeare's life and work. It is a great read for fans of Shakespeare and newcomers to him as well. You do not need to know a lot about his work to enjoy this. It is a really interesting play and the book brings the staged version to life on its own.
August 3, 2025
Right after reading a biography of Shakespeare I thought this show would be apt to read and my goodness it was. I absolutely love Lauren Gunderson. That first scene after act two is a masterclass of poetic writing that still feels real and heartbreaking. It is a beautiful and hilarious play with some great scenes for multiple actors. It would be a great choice for a collegiate production.
March 26, 2019
Without which there would have been no "Shakespeare." Or the trials and tribulation of Heminges and Condell. Or how the First Folio came to be.
Really a fascinating play about how we nearly lost the plays of Shakespeare and how we didn't.
Really a fascinating play about how we nearly lost the plays of Shakespeare and how we didn't.
April 27, 2019
Brilliant book about the genesis of Shakespeare's collected works, ubiquitously known as the First Folio of 1623. However, there is also a postmodern subplot involve, which readers will find wonderful. I highly recommend this piece of drama.
April 18, 2022
A few good men AND their wives work to gather and print the first folio of Shakespeare. Gunderson combines research, anecdote, conjecture, history and great stories-telling. She is one of our most important modern dramatists and her celebration of the people behind the word is wonderful theatre!
August 5, 2022
Although about Shakespeare, this play is more about legacy and ensuring the proper legacy of a dear friend is secured. What a great play that in addition tackles a wide range of different themes in a fun way.
January 24, 2023
The underlying message, that we only have Shakespeare because of his friends dedication to him after death, is touching. The play has some really cute moments and it would be super fun for the right cast.
April 16, 2023
Clever, funny and ultimately quite moving account of Shakespeare good friends who, after the playwright's death, decide his plays must be contained in a folio. Gunderson is a fine playwright, quick witted and wise, enlivening this period comedy with a fresh sense of the contemporary.
September 8, 2024
This was the most phenomenal modern play that I have ever read. The characters were aptly portrayed, Henry's speech in Act 2 was glorious, and the brotherhood and camaraderie were fabulous. Truly, no modern Shakespeare play can top this.
March 8, 2025
This play is beautifully written. The characters are well-developed, the dialogue is natural, the jokes are spunky and the heartfelt moments stir you in the best ways. What a gorgeous ode to the Bard and the lives he impacted, then and still today.
March 19, 2025
A woman literally wrote this but you'd think it was written by a man with how these female characters are represented. Thank you, next. This one was a major sleeper. The only real one in the entire cast was Burbage...
February 21, 2019
My college put on a performance and I LOVED it.
August 4, 2021
A heartwarming, laugh-out-loud tribute to Shakespeare and the men and women who fought to preserve his legacy. A must-read for any theatre history nerd (like me :))
November 13, 2022
The night scene at the Globe is great. The rest doesn’t know what it’s trying to do.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews