Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bill BrysonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10
ISBN: 0061673692
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
Book Review: Manditory Introduction to Shakespeare
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, it's important to understand what this book is, and what it is not. A lot of reviewers have criticized it for not being something Bryson never intended it to be in the first place.
"Shakespeare: The World As Stage" is not a work of serious scholarship. It suggests no new theories about Shakespeare's life or work. Nor is it a deep examination of Shakespeare's artistic output; it is history and biography, not dramatic criticism.
"Shakespeare: The World As Stage" IS the most concise, entertaining, convenient, realistic, and humbling volume on Shakespeare's life that I am aware of. It's less than 200 pages, and written with Bryson's signature subtle wit; it pulls together threads of Elizabethan history and Shakespearean historiography to provide a complete, if thin, portrait of the man and those who study him; and it reminds us that any biography of Shakespeare is limited by how little we know about the man.
I am college acting student with an interest in Shakespeare, so I already knew a good deal about the plays when I read this book and still thoroughly enjoyed it. It is not useful only for neophytes.
Bryson's book bears comparison with another Shakespeare biography often mentioned by reviewers: Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World." WitW is nearly twice as long. Most of that extra thickness is filled with conjecture: what MIGHT Shakespeare have been doing at this or that point in time, what MIGHT he have been like? It quickly becomes frustrating, because you realize you're learning less about Shakespeare and more about what Stephen Greenblatt imagines Shakespeare to have been. Bryson's book covers most of the same topics, provides most of the same hard facts, but does so in a more entertaining style and with far less hot air.
If you want a Shakespeare biography to READ, not for scholarly research, and you have to choose between Bryson and Greenblatt, choose Bryson.
Finally, a note on anti-Stratfordism: several reviewers have complained that Bryson does not give due consideration to anti-Stratfordism, or the idea that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. These people are complaining because Bryson disagrees with them. In fact, the final chapter of the book is a convincing, and highly entertaining, debunking of each anti-Stratford theory in turn. Like the rest of the book, this chapter doesn't delve into scholastic-level depth--although I don't think it needs to, since anti-Stratford theories are easily debunked--but it provides a useful overview of the various forms of anti-Stratfordism, and how they began.
Summary of Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
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. 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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