Superb, Simply Superb | Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)

All the Non-Scholar Needs to Know | Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) | Bill Bryson

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	• 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

Bill Bryson Fan

I'm not typically a biography reader, nor am I a scholar of Shakespeare, but I've always enjoyed Bryson's ability to "edutain", so gave this book a shot. I've read almost everything Bryson has written, and this did not disappoint! It was a quick, fun read, and I learned something in the offing. I may pick up other Eminent Lives titles in hopes that they are equally good, but I will certainly continue to read Bill Bryson's books as fast as he can write them.

Superb, Simply Superb

This book had me glued to my seat, as they say. What a fascinating subject, and who better to investigate it than Bill Bryson? For those who might be put off by academic prose, the writer has an easy answer: Shakespeare's life, and the story of the search for just what that entailed, is rendered in that highly intelligent yet breezy and unaffected style that has made Mr. Bryson one of the finest writers of our time. The sheer volume of researh he has done and wittled down to presentation is wholly impressive. And his depictions of Elizabethan and Jacobean England - just for starters - are perfectly executed. The final chapter, entitled Claiments made me miss my subway stop, so bound up in the "story" had I become.

Although Shakespeare's life is really just largely a series of sightings that we may garner from signatures (some of which might not actually be his), it made me (obviously) think a great deal more as to who the person, Shakespeare, actually was. I wasn't aware that he was "a country boy," for example, or that he was "naturally learned." This is the book that should supplement the teaching of Shakespeare in, say, high school. Despite the fact we know very little about the man, oddly you feel as if you know a great deal about him by the final page, and that is no small accomplishment on behalf of the author. And of course, you'll want to revisit the bard's works. I know I will when I get the chance. I liked Bryson's A Short History of Everything quite a lot, but I must say I liked his Shakespeare even better. Six Stars.

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All the Non-Scholar Needs to Know

Unless you are a scholar of Shakespeare and feel you must delve obsessively into anything and everything about the great playwright, Bryson gives you all there really is to know about the man's life. The book is short (only 196 pages) and enlivened by Bryson's sense of proportion and good humor. Get this book and a good modern edition of the plays, and you have just about all you need for the Shakespeare section of your bookshelf. Bryson doesn't give you an exegesis of the plays; there are more than enough books of that stuff already if you feel you really must have one. (The plays were, after all, much appreciated originally by groundlings who came to performances to be entertained and moved and didn't need someone to explain what they were seeing.) You certainly don't need to bother with any of the fringe folk who insist that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and nominate a varied field of others as the real playwright. Bryson briefly points out the flaws in the lives of the various claimants and neatly dismisses the lot them when he writes, "In short it is possible, with a kind of selective squinting, to endow the alternative claimants with the necessary time, talent, and motive for anonymity to write the plays of William Shakespeare. But what no one has ever produced is the tiniest particle of evidence to suggest they actually did so," and he concludes, "When we reflect upon the works of William Shakespeare it is of course an amazement to consider that one man could have produced such a sumptuous, wise, varied, thrilling, ever-delighting body of work, but that is of course the hallmark of genius. Only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give us such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratford was unquestionably that man --- whoever he was." If you love Shakespeare's work, give yourself a little extra treat with Bill Bryson.

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useful & entertaining

Bryson, in this short book, covers just about every fact, legend and misconception about Shakespeare and does so with grace and wit. For scholars, this book is useful; for students, it is indispensable. It's also a lot of fun.

A humorous and informative look at Shakespeare and the times he lived in

A good history of what was generally going on in London and England during Shakespeare's lifetime. From laws to diseases as well as the popular plays and theatres of the time. Also included are the words and phrases that are commonly used today which Shakespeare first coined.

Bryson makes short thrift of what is presumed and what we can count as fact at the same time dispelling rumours humorously.

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