William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today’s most … most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare’s plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world’s largest collection of First Folios is housed.
Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases (“vanish into thin air,” “foregone conclusion,” “one fell swoop”) that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else’s—the beneficiary of Bryson’s genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.
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I am a fan of Mr Bryson’s books and his sense of humor. His biography of Shakespeare was a surprisingly interesting read. This is a biography – not a scholarly treatise on the literary merits or character of Shakespeare’s work. Which is a tad problematic ‘cuz very little is actually known about Shakespeare’s life. But of course, this does NOT …
Bill Bryson assembles all the KNOWN facts about William Shakespeare and his life in this slender biography of the Bard. He notes in the first chapter that over the centuries much has been speculated about Shakespeare’s life without any way to confirm or corroborate any of it. His goal is to stick to the confirmed facts based on written records of …
Bill Bryson begins by acknowledging how very, very little we know about William Shakespeare. From these paltry facts, Bryson builds an entire, and entirely entertaining, biography. That said, given the few concrete pieces of information we have, I’m not sure I learned much new about Shakespeare. (Caveat: In addition to a mostly-forgotten …
I love Shakespeare to begin with, so I loved this entertaining book that’s basically just about how there’s so little we actually know about Shakespeare. Which sounds like a terrible idea, but it works well.
Always an engaging writing, Bryson covers the landscape of what we do and don’t know about William Shakespeare, which is a great deal. Along the way, he explains English politics, religion and theater at the time of the Bard–all of which could be dry as dust in the wrong hands, but Bryson keeps the pages turning.
As anything Bryson, a treat. I was especially interested by all the gaps, all the things that are lost to time.
What topic doesn’t Bill Bryson write well about? If you want to know more about the bard, read this book. Thoroughly enjoyable. Always learn something beyond the obvious in Bryson’s books. Well researched.
For any Shakespeare fan, this is a welcome, light, refreshing take.
I’m a great fan of Bill Bryson. This one on Shakespeare was mind-blowing for me. I’d no idea what we do know and don’t know about our most famous writer. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in Shakespeare and his times.
Bryson takes a topic, on which there is a paucity of reliable information, and tells it in an entertaining and informative way. Much conjecture is posted but the author uses what records are available to support his musings.
Not funny, but a good read.