The Greatest Obstacle To Pleasure Is Not

First Of All, There Was A Volcano Of Words, An Eruption Of Words That Shakespeare Had Never Used Before That Had Never Been Used In The English Language Before. It's Astonishing. It Pours Out Of Him.

First Of All, Shakespeare Is About Pleasure And Interest. He Was From The First Moment He Actually Wrote Something For The Stage, And He Remains So.

I Believe That Nothing Comes Of Nothing, Even In Shakespeare. I Wanted To Know Where He Got The Matter He Was Working With And What He Did With That Matter.

A Couple Of Years Ago I Picked Up New Yorker Writer Alma Guillermoprieto's "the Heart That Bleeds," Which Is Reportage From Latin America In The 1990s. You Can Predict That Some Books Will Give You A Thrill, But You Can't Predict The Books That Will Hit You Hard. It Is A Little Bit Like Falling In Love.

It Is Not That Shakespeare's Art Is In Technicolor And Fancy, And That Real Life Is Black And White And Tedious. The Life That Shakespeare Was Living Was The Only Life He Had, And He Had To Use It To Create What He Was Doing.