Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) | Bill Bryson

Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) | Bill Bryson | typical Bryson--entertaining and informative

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Shakespeare: The W...

	Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) Bill Bryson Eminent Lives, 2007 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 72 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Shake it Up!

Bryson is funny - so there is no better choice of writers to explore a rather dull topic. I was hoping for some new bits of information. Basically, Bryson sifts through other historian's theories & research. Bryson avoids speculation, but doesn't present any new possibilities. The end result is what you'd expect: we really don't know much about England's most celebrated writer. Irony, the writrer himself has had so little written about him by his contemporaries. Regardless of the lack of new information or general excitemnet of the topic, Bryson adds in a bit if wit and fun and puts into prespective the world & daily life circling around Shakespeare.

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typical Bryson--entertaining and informative

Bill Bryson has become one of my favorite writers. Whether he is writing about his travels, the English language, or the world of science, he writes with wit and enthusiasm. Here, he applies his typical humor and zest for knowledge to a person about whom we know very little: William Shakespeare. I learned more about Shakespeare's age than about the writer himself, but that's not Bryson's fault. There's just not that much that we know about the Bard of Avon. The last chapter, in which Bryson debunks the "alternative author" theories, is the worth the price of the book alone.

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Stalking the Bard

Iowa-raised and presumably corn-fed Bill Bryson is perhaps best known for his humorous travel essays about such places as England (Notes from a Small Island), Australia (In a Sunburned Country), the Appalachian Trail (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail), rural America (The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America), and, well, just about everywhere you can think of (A Short History of Nearly Everything). His love of England, which I share, is what originally marked him as one of my favorite authors.

As one who obviously enjoys stringing words together and, moreover, has written books on the subject (The Mother Tongueand Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right), it's not terribly surprising that Bill has combined his affections for England and its language in a volume about its greatest (play)writer, SHAKESPEARE: THE WORLD AS A STAGE. And, of course they're both named William.

Bryson admits up front that there's very little in the way of hard facts about William Shakespeare. But, in Bill's hands, that plus what can be deduced or inferred expands to a very satisfying and entertaining volume even for the culturally destitute reader who may not be a aficionado of the Bard's stuff. Like myself.

Bill sets the stage, so to speak, with a cursory examination of the English period contemporary with his subject: the monarchy of Elizabeth I, certain London structures (London Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral), the Thames, religious turmoil, public pastimes, the state of the London theater scene, the business of being a playwright, the structure of contemporary plays, and the art of bookbinding. With those considerations functioning as a contextual backdrop, the products of Shakespeare's life that can be directly studied - his parentage, plays, poetry, written vocabulary, will, and other rare public records in which he's mentioned - serve to flesh out the man to the extent possible. There's even a final chapter on the historical and modern claimants to the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which claims some otherwise accomplished people take seriously. (Just as the current Royal Family had Princess Di murdered. You think?)

The author's paramount strength is the congeniality of his dialogue with his readers. He could, no doubt, make the description of fabricating wire hangers amusing, interesting, and instructive. SHAKESPEARE isn't Bill's best work, perhaps because the scope of the subject matter is so narrow, but it does deserve a place on the bookshelves of his fans.

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Bryson Does It Again

I really love his travel books, but Bryson brings a fresh approach to any subject!

Interesting Book

My wife and I picked this one to listen to together and talk about. Call me ignorant, but I was surprised to learn how little is/was known about Shakespeare (the man). The things I learned from this book are what it was like to live in 16th/17th Century England and how a series of improbable acts provide us the library of Shakespeare's work.

Having read or listened to two of Bryson's other books (A Walk in the Woods, A Short History of Nearly Everything), I have gained a respect for the diversity and complexity of topics he takes on.

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