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Shakespeare

The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)

By Bill Bryson

(88)

| Hardcover | 9780060740221

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Book Description

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 tContinue

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 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.

Critics

  • Where there’s a Will . . .

    Shakespeare may be the man of the previous millennium, but he is doing pretty well in the current one, too. Always at the heart of literary academia (inspiring around 4,000 books, monographs and other published studies each year), he has of late reca ... (read full critics)

    spectator published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

  • Where there’s a Will . . .

    Shakespeare may be the man of the previous millennium, but he is doing pretty well in the current one, too. Always at the heart of literary academia (inspiring around 4,000 books, monographs and other published studies each year), he has of late reca ... (read full critics)

    spectator published on Mon, 13 Sep 2010

9 Reviews

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  • 1 person find this helpful

    What we really know about Shakespeare

    Bill Bryson has written this (by comparison) very thin book about William Shakespeare. The book is thin because he has focused on the things that we REALLY know about the bard. Which happens to be: not much. It's nice to know that all these big tomes by other authors about Shakespeare are made up of ... (continue)

    Bill Bryson has written this (by comparison) very thin book about William Shakespeare. The book is thin because he has focused on the things that we REALLY know about the bard. Which happens to be: not much. It's nice to know that all these big tomes by other authors about Shakespeare are made up of 10% fact and 90% conjecture.
    If you want to brush up on your Shakespeare the easy way, read this book!
    Apart from that, it´s also very funny.

    Is this helpful?

    Linda Wilke said on Aug 27, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • This thin book when compared with the flimsy facts that we know about Shakespeare is already great work. I started reading this book knowing very little about Shakespeare and finished reading it knowing barely a little bit more. However, everything about the historical backdrop is certainly very g ... (continue)

    This thin book when compared with the flimsy facts that we know about Shakespeare is already great work. I started reading this book knowing very little about Shakespeare and finished reading it knowing barely a little bit more. However, everything about the historical backdrop is certainly very good read!

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    Wing Wong said on May 11, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • The book contains some really interesting points. However, having read this book after Marchette Chute's "Shakespeare of London" , I found that most of the things treated here were developed too coincisely. To those who don't know much about Shakespeare this can be a good introductory book, but if ... (continue)

    The book contains some really interesting points. However, having read this book after Marchette Chute's "Shakespeare of London" , I found that most of the things treated here were developed too coincisely. To those who don't know much about Shakespeare this can be a good introductory book, but if you have read other essays and biographies on Shakespeare, this book will dissatisfy you, I believe.

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    Lilyofthevalleys2000 said on Sep 8, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • An entertaining chronicle of the Bard's life - or of the little that we know of it. Funny and interesting.

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    Marco Piva said on Feb 17, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Possibly the best book against the Authorship Conspiracy. Yes, the author of Hamlet really is William Shakespeare, not Roger Bacon.

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    pyridine said on Feb 12, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Shakespeare is as intriguing a character as the ones he portrays in his plays. No wonder an inquisitive and curious writer as Bill Bryson has decided to look into the mysteries of his life and has come up with a brilliant and intelligent summary of the enormous variety of the writings about the Bard ... (continue)

    Shakespeare is as intriguing a character as the ones he portrays in his plays. No wonder an inquisitive and curious writer as Bill Bryson has decided to look into the mysteries of his life and has come up with a brilliant and intelligent summary of the enormous variety of the writings about the Bard.
    It is difficult to add to the praise already mentioned on the back cover. I may just confirm that the best quality of this book is probably its readability, its clear and bright style, full of sympathy and humour - a pity this is one quality that is too often lost in translation - so reading in English is recommended.

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    Anmar08 said on Aug 16, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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9780060740221 Hardcover $19.95 $17.05 bn.com
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