My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare by Jess Winfield is a comic novel about two William Shakespeares, living centuries apart, told in alternating chapters. I've read a few Shakespeare-themed books in the past year, so I thought I'd give it a go.Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is a UC Santa Cruz grad student in the mid-1980s, trying (albeit not too hard) to write a thesis about Shakespeare as a closet Catholic. Desperate for cash, Willie agrees to deliver a single giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector at the Renaissance Faire in Marin County and becomes a target in Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs.
William Shakespeare is, yes, the Shakespeare. Not yet a playwright, Shakespeare is a young, unknown Latin teacher when a stranger asks him to deliver a package from Rome to an adherent of the "Old Faith," at a time when Catholics are being hunted and hanged as traitors.
You get the idea: parallel lives.
Winfield knows his Shakespeare. Under his original name, Jess Borgeson, he was a founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company and a co-creator of the show The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Expect plenty of wordplay.
Winfield also knows his adolescent-male-fantasy-totally-unsafe sex and drugs, too. Don't expect much foreplay.
In sum: Amusing. A funny, raunchy, clever way to recycle an obviously vast store of Shakespeare knowledge. Recommended especially for those who remember their Shakespeare and Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Marin in the '80s.
