Shakespeare: The World As Stage (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
This audiobook was a perfect companion for a long road trip. Bill Bryson, who has now written books on everything from the history of the universe to the origins of our domesticity to America in the 1920s and, perhaps most endearingly, stories of his various travels around the world, here turns his attention to William Shakespeare. In this relatively slim volume (it's less than 200 pages), Bryson researched what few facts are known about Shakespeare and synthesized them into chapters on his childhood, his "lost years" (1585-1592), his time in London, his plays, his fame, his death and, finally, the strange claims that Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him.Like most Americans, I was first introduced to Shakespeare in high school, when we read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and a few of his sonnets. I've read more of his plays since then, but until now I have never read a biography of the man himself. After reading Bryson's book, I feel like I know as much as any modern person can know, simply because so few facts have survived. One Shakespeare scholar told Bryson that "every Shakespeare biography is 5 percent fact and 95 percent conjecture."Even the few surviving portraits that are purportedly of Shakespeare cannot be verified. "The paradoxical consequence is that we all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don't really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: He is at once the best known and least known of figures."I liked reading the details of Shakespeare's life, but I think my favorite chapter was the last one on Claimants. Bryson thinks he has identified the person that started what he calls the anti-Shakespeare sentiment, an American woman named Delia Bacon. Bacon became convinced that Francis Bacon actually wrote Shakespeare's plays, and in 1852 she traveled to England to try to prove that Shakespeare was a fraud. Of course, there is no evidence of this, nor of any other claimants writing Shakespeare's works, but some researchers continue to come up with theories. Bryson picks apart the claims and shows what little merit there is to them."The one thing all the competing theories have in common is the conviction that William Shakespeare was in some way unsatisfactory as an author of brilliant plays. This is really quite odd. Shakespeare's upbringing, as I hope this book has shown, was not backward or in any way conspicuously deprived. His father was the mayor of a consequential town. In any case, it would hardly be a unique achievement for someone brought up modestly to excel later in life. Shakespeare lacked a university education, to be sure, but then so did Ben Jonson -- a far more intellectual playwright -- and no one ever suggests that Jonson was a fraud ... 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."I would heartily recommend this book to fans of English literature and history. It has Bryson's trademark dry wit and humorous phrasings, so Bryson fans should also be satisfied. The audio CD I had also included an interview with the author, which was delightful, as expected. On a more alarming note, I'm nearly out of Bryson books to read. Now that will be the winter of my discontent.
This is one volume in the series "Eminent Lives." After having read this book, I am interested in exploring this series further. William Shakespeare, of course, was a great playwright, whether of comedy or tragedy, and a fine poet as well. Bill Bryson, the author of this slender volume, notes how little we actually know of Shakespeare, when he says (Page 7): ". . .all we know about Shakespeare is contained within a few scanty facts: that he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, produced a family there, went to London, became an actor and writer, returned to Stratford, made a will, and died." After 400 years, the author observes, there are only about a hundred documents speaking to the Bard of Avon and his family. The book begins by exploring what little is known about Shakespeare's early years (by the way, one cool point in this book is the multiple spellings of his name over time; Shakespeare himself spelled it differently at different points in time). The introductory comments also note something absolutely amazing: zillions of plays were written and performed in Shakespeare's time. Of the total number, only about 230 texts still exist--of which 15% are by Shakespeare, a stunning percentage. We know more about his work than any other playwright of the era. The book is organized by time period. Chapter 2 examines the years from 1564-1585, Shakespeare's youth. The chapter begins with an effort to understand his father's life (John Shakespeare) as well as that of his mother (Mary Arden). We have little information on the Bard--his birth certificate, his marriage certificate (with Anne Hathaway), birth certificates for his children--during this period. From 1585 to 1592, Chapter 3 suggests, little is known about Shakespeare. Chapter 4 considers his early years in London. He began as an actor and turned, over time, into an author of plays. In 1592, he had even earned in a publication the scorn of a critic. By 1594, his theatrical troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, had become one of the major forces in theater, including leading actors of the day. Subsequent chapters consider his plays, his business success (he did well as a joint owner of the troupe and the Globe Theater), his sonnets, what little we know of his family life (his son, Hamnet, died in his early youth). He was successful under Queen Elizabeth and, after her death, King James I, who viewed many of his performances. A number of contentious issues are addressed, including Shakespeare's sexuality, his relationship with his wife and family. There is even a brief description of the debates over whether Shakespeare actually wrote the works attributed to him. Finally, the end game of his life. . . . If one wishes a brief introduction to the life of Shakespeare (with a dash of wit thrown in by the author), this is a good place to start. Nicely written and well done!
What do You think about Shakespeare: The World As Stage (2007)?
There's nothing wrong with Bryson's writing... but he just doesn't say very much, because there ISN'T anything to say. Apparently NOBODY knows anything interesting about Shakespeare's life or personality -- all we have are 3 bad portraits (one sketch from memory, one statue that was whitewashed of all detailed features, and one decent portrait that might be of someone else entirely); a few legal documents (with only 6 signatures, 3 of which may have been forged for him since he was too ill to write much then); almost nothing whatsoever about his wife (except her name and date of death); etc, etc... Nobody even interviewed his surviving relatives and friends about him -- the first biography came out a hundred years after his death and has been proved to be mostly wrong anyway.So you can't get any image of this guy at all, unless you read way too far into his plays/sonnets and assume that he's speaking as himself (which, if you try it, just gets you tons of contradictions).Oh, and even the plays/poems themselves -- there's no real definitive version: he never published his works himself, so all the versions we have are either heavily edited by his contemporaries or bad transcriptions by audience members. It almost seems useless to think of Shakespeare as a person -- he's more of a social construct, a general name used to link together "his" plays/sonnets.Finally, at least so far, Bryson has had very little to say about WHY Shakespeare is considered such a genius today. If we don't know shit about the guy and can't even agree on whether he wrote some of the plays he did, then please at least discuss why people think the plays themselves are so hot. But he just repeats the same general blurbage ("genius", "masterpieces", etc) without analyzing what's so great about it.PS -- there's an interesting book, Highbrow Lowbrow, that talks about how Shakespeare's plays used to be general popular entertainment (at least throughout the States, performed to cheering and heckling crowds, interspersed with cheesy stuff like minstrel music or trained animals between acts) before somehow they transitioned into their current state as some kind of delicate art that needs to be protected from the public, where you're barely allowed to cough during a performance, and where kids fall asleep to it in class. So it's always been "valued", just in different ways... I wish Bryson would have pursued how those ways have changed over time.
—Jerzy
This is a very strange and frustrating book: it reads like a lighthearted text book for teenagers - except that it has no index (a cardinal sin for any non-fiction book). It is about a wordsmith, but the first chapter focuses on what he may have looked like. Its mission and content is to tell us about Shakespeare, yet it tells us in exhaustive and repetitive detail that almost nothing is or can be known about the man ("a wealth of text but poverty of context").There are pages of disjointed facts about life in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Some of them are staggeringly banal ("At the top of the social heap was the monarch") and others are weirdly specific (e.g. the laws about hat wearing). All the way through, Bryson alternates between cataloguing all the unknowns of Shakespeare's life and trying to describe it; consequently, his text is heavily sprinkled with "probably" and even weaker caveats. It makes it all seem rather pointless and distracts from the few interesting insights he does have. He describes his subject as "ever elusive", despite stressing the fact that we know far more about Shakespeare than almost anyone else who lived at that time; equally contradictory is the claim that "More than for any other writer, Shakespeare's words stand separate from his life" - but surely we can't know that because, as Bryson keeps saying, we know so little about his life!Bryson identifies three options for researchers in the absence of hard facts: "pick minutely over legal documents... to speculate... or to persuade themselves they know more than they actually do". It's not clear which option Bryson took; as he says, "A devoted reader can find support for nearly any position he or she wishes in Shakespeare".The only really interesting points were that estimates of Shakespeare's vocabulary are usually huge overestimates because they include each variant of word form and spelling: take, takes, tak'n, taken etc. It's not the size, but what he did with it that mattered; his true skill was as a phrasemaker, demonstrated by the fact that 10% of the entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations are from his works.Fortunately this was a quick, easy read. I only read it at the behest of my father-in-law: I am not a big Bryson fan, rarely read biographies and am not a huge history enthusiast either. Reading it has not changed those preferences.
—Cecily
Bill Bryson is a master storyteller. Although mystery surrounds William Shakespeare's identification, let's face it, sometimes learning the facts can be a bit dry. Not so with this story. I found all the details uncovered by the author to be interesting and helped to explain how he came to his deductions.This book is not written for the scholarly scholar but the regular guy (me!) so as to fully understand and appreciate the reveal of who Shakespeare really was, along with information and history of his contemporaries and world.Recommend highly.
—Susan
