Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)

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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.

Customer Reviews: Read 67 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

In search of someone who "is at once the best known and least known of figures" November 1, 2007
84 out of 98 found this review helpful

Those who have read Bill Bryson's previously published A Short History of Nearly Everything already know that he has an apparently insatiable intellectual curiosity and derives great pleasure from sharing what he has learned. In A Short History, he explains why the human race may be the universe's "supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously." It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Bryson later set out in search of William Shakespeare, someone who "is at once the best known and least known of figures." To me, Bryson's quests for understanding "of nearly anything"become, for both him and his readers, adventures of discovery. That is certainly true of this, his most recent book, and yet....

As Bryson notes, Shakespeare (who never spelled his name the same way twice in the signatures that survive) remains "at once the best known and least known of figures" and that is one of the few conclusions that Bryson draws. What did Shakespeare look like? Almost immediately, Bryson acknowledges that those who wish to know "are in the curious position with William Shakespeare of having three likenesses from which all others are derived: two that aren't very good [Bryson explains why] by artists working years after his death and one that is rather more compelling as a portrait but that may well be of someone else altogether. 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." This is an example of Bryson at the peak of his game, addressing a basic issue, sharing what is (and isn't) known about it, and then moving on to another...and then another.

As historian George Steevens once observed, all that is known about Shakespeare "is contained within a few scanty facts: that he was born in Stratford-on-Avon, produced a family there, went to London, became an actor and writer, returned to Stratford, made a will, and died. That wasn't quite true then, and it is even less so now, but it is not all that far from the truth either." At an almost leisurely pace, Bryson works his way through a wealth of historical material, carefully constructing a frame-of-reference for those "few scanty facts." For example:

"After four hundred years of dedicated hunting, researchers have found about a hundred documents relating to William Shakespeare and his immediate family - baptismal records, title deeds, tax certificates, marriage bonds, writs of attachment, court records (many court records - it was a litigious age), and so on. That's a good number as these things go, but deeds and bonds and other records are inevitably bloodless. They tell us a great deal about the business of a person's life, but almost nothing about the emotions of it."

"Nearly everyone agrees that William Shakespeare's career as a playwright began in about 1590, but there is much less agreement on which plays began it. Depending on whose authority you favor, Shakespeare's debut written offering might be any of at least eight works" and "arguments would run far deeper were it not for the existence of a small, plump [700-page] book written by one Francis Meres called Paladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury" and published in 1598. It would be of little (if any) interest were it not for "an immeasurably helpful passage" first noticed by scholars more than 200 years after Shakespeare's death, in 1616. Meres praises Shakespeare as being "most excellent among the English" in both comedy and tragedy and offers the first published mention of his plays by title.

In the last chapter, "Claimants," Bryson responds to an accusation - expressed in more than 5,000 books and many more articles -- that the plays of William Shakespeare were written by someone other than William Shakespeare. If not Shakespeare, who? Those most often suggested include Francis Bacon, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford (Edward de Vere), Christopher Marlowe, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and William Stanley, sixth Earl of Derby. Bryson calmly rejects each of these nominees, for various reasons, noting that more than 50 candidates have been suggested as possible alternative Shakespeares, and then observes:

"The one thing all of the competing theories have in common is the conviction that William Shakespeare was in some way unsatisfactory as an author of brilliant plays. This really is 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. Shakespeare lacked a university education [such as it was then in the late-16th century], to be sure, but then so did Ben Jonson - a far more intellectual playwright - and no one ever suggests that Jonson was a fraud."

Bryson concludes this chapter and his book as follows: "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."

Earlier, I suggested that Bill Bryson possesses an apparently insatiable intellectual curiosity and derives great pleasure from sharing what he has learned in the various books he has written. His quests for gaining understanding "of nearly anything" become, for both him and his readers, adventures of discovery. That is certainly true of his biography of Shakespeare...or whoever he was.

5 out of 5 stars

Much Ado about (virtually) Nothing October 27, 2007
75 out of 85 found this review helpful

A few years ago, as a companion piece to a series of study-guides to the plays of Shakespeare, I wrote a guide called "Shakespeare and His Times".
In it I explained that virtually nothing is really known about the Bard's life and proceeded to delineate that which was, in little more than a paragraph. Bill Bryson makes the same point at the outset of "Shakespeare: The World as Stage", and then, because he is the writer he is, takes close to 200 pages to cover it. One would think that 200 pages covering "nothing" would grow tedious. One would be wrong!!! (three exclamatio points, if you please.) So charmigly does Bryson write; so entertainingly does he explicate WHY nothing is known, and how to best understand that nothing, that the book is an unending source of knowledge and delight. ANY writer can write about SOMETHING. It takes the massive talents of the Thunderbolt Kid to write this well about nothing. He makes "Seinfeld" look loquacious.

5 out of 5 stars

The whole idea is that we don't know much about Shakespeare... but Bryson turns that into quite a bit. November 26, 2007
31 out of 32 found this review helpful

A tough assignment; write a book on a topic about which we know almost nothing, the life of William Shakespeare. Better yet, make the book about the fact that we know very little about the life of William Shakespeare. Let that book compete with thousands of others about Shakespeare. Doesn't sound like a recipe for a successful book, but Bryson has truly pulled it off.

Here's how.

First off, Bryson doesn't shy away from the fact that we know very little about Shakespeare, instead, he uses it to his advantage. After laying out the facts we do have about Shakespeare, Bryson turns to a description of the world in which Shakespeare lived to explain why we know so little about the man. He really brings 17th century England to life and paints a picture in which you can imagine Shakespeare operating. It's really well done and ends up being fascinating.

Second, Bryson addresses the speculation that has risen up around Shakespeare's life to fill the void of knowledge that we face. Using the information we do have about Shakespeare and the times in which he lived, he categorizes the various Shakespeare theories into more fanciful and less fanciful piles and explains why they belong there. It makes for really interesting reading.

My familiarity with and interest in Shakespeare are average to below average, and yet I found this book to be fascinating, readable and informative. It's made me more interested in Shakespeare.

Highly recommended even for those who aren't deeply interested in Shakespeare.

5 out of 5 stars

A WITTY, INFOMATIVE READ THAT IS FUN TO READ TO BOOT. June 28, 2008
18 out of 18 found this review helpful

I am one of those individuals who enjoy Bryson's work. When I read this author's books, I get the impression that he does not take himself all that serious, much in the same way I take myself. I can relate. This little volume on the individual who is probably and arguably the greatest of all our English writers is no exception. It, as others here have pointed out, is sort of a book about nothing. By that I mean, we know almost absolute nothing of the man, William Shakespeare. We don't even know for sure how he spelled his name due to the fact that he, himself, did not spell it the same all of the time. Bryson has taken nothing and turned out a work, 196 pages of work, of something. Now if you think that is easy, try it some time.

This is not a scholarly dissertation (thank goodness) which tries to pass itself off as the beginning and end of all that was ever written about the life of Shakespeare. It is a short study of just what we do not know about him, which we find, is quite a lot! I picked up absolutely dozens and dozens of facts as to what I did not know, and until I read this book, did not realize I did not know. In addition to this I picked up some wonderful trivia (and some information that was not trivial at all) concerning the era in which Shakespeare wrote, if indeed, he wrote during that era. I had no idea of the words and phrases, which happen to number in the hundreds, which were introduced to the English Language via Shakespeare. As one reviewer has pointed out, this is really not a biography, but rather a history lesson, a lesson of little facts that you would not normally be exposed to. Bryson has done his home work and we have all benefitted from his seemingly endless curiosity.

Now for those folks who are Shakespearian scholars. This probably will not be all that much help to you; of course picking up the book, noting that it has only 196 pages, should pretty well tip you off to that fact pretty quickly. If it doesn't, perhaps you might want to find some other line of work. This is a readable book, an interesting book, written for those of us who have not made the study of Shakespeare a profession or made it an obsession, which ever the case may be. It is not a book that you can use as a substitute for a sleeping pill, as so many hard core books on this subject are. It is for those of us who are curious, and who want to know bits of this and pieces of this and that. I will say though, that by reading this work, I have gained even further appreciation for the work of Shakespeare, which says a lot, as I had already admired him greatly.

I did enjoy the last chapter or so, as it addresses the many theories of the many rather odd individuals who have been obsessed over the years, trying to prove that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, or that someone else wrote his writings. These nut jobs seemed to have started from the beginning. The neat thing about it is, as Bryson so well points out, we know even less of the basis of their theories than we know of Shakespeare. Some of them are pretty funny though and worth taking a look.

Bryson does have a low keyed sense of humor and this fact shines through on ever page of this work. His style is easy on the eye, and in this work, there are no pretentions. It is sort of what you read is what you get. I enjoyed this one front to back and feel much richer for having read it. I did give this one five stars as I truly enjoyed it and felt, for me, it was a very worthwile book. Others may disagree with this, but hey, they can write their own review.

2 out of 5 stars

A Clever Writer maybe ... December 3, 2007
14 out of 33 found this review helpful

I was disappointed in this book because I never got the sense we were reading about the consensus Greatest Literary Genius of the last 1,000 years (Shakespeare), but only that we don't know much about him.

I'm not saying a biography has to be a hagiography, but I should get a sense for 'WHY' this person is considered so Great ... I found myself wondering if Mr. Bryson ever actually immersed himself in Shakespeare's work because I certainly didn't read anything which would reflect he had. I could see potential benefit in choosing a non-Shakespearean, non-dramatist, non-biographer, etc. (no preconceived luggage) to investigate Shakespeare, hoping some thinking outside the box would enlighten the subject, but it doesn't feel like Mr. Bryson understood the task at hand. He might have added to the mix, instead he just regurgitated Pedestrian-Common observations, with small wit and less insight than I'd hoped for. It appears 'Emminent Lives' just wanted to churn out another volume to help their numbers.

There is honestly no 'sense' of appreciation for Shakespeare's Genius in this book, there's hardly a Shakespeare quote to experience, no discussion of any plays beyond their titles. The longest quotes are the ridiculous Dedications to his long poems, akin to figuring out what Mr. Bryson is all about based on 'the fact' that when he went on his book tours, HE ALWAYS PUBLICLY thanked his agent and publisher. (Whoa.)

Mr. Bryson is well aware the First Folio EXPLICITLY challenges the Reader to know Shakespeare via his book; I suspect Mr. Bryson wanted it handed to him on a silver platter, or on a piccadills. Everyone knows we don't have (much) of a Public record to speak of wrt Shakespeare, but we do have his 'Works,' and it doesn't take a Brain Surgeon to tell us those works reflect the Man. Mr. Bryson should have actually cracked the book and put his sizable brain to making (qualified) inferences from 'Who' Shakespeare was. Personally, I'm much more interested in Shakespeare's thinking (and personality/character) than our current myopic curiosity about possible sexual preferences (which in a 'healthy' culture should be nobody's business). A task like this should have elicited a humbled and serious study, instead it's noteworthy Mr. Bryson's name is 3-times bigger than Shakespeare's on the cover. (Not that we should judge books by their cover, I in fact, read Mr. Bryson's book cover-to-cover.) It's not that it's a bad biography, so much as a Lost Opportunity. Pulitzer Prize winning Author Doris Kearns Goodwin spent 10 years 'living with' Lincoln so she could write 'Team of Rivals'; it seems Mr. Bryson may have decided he'd made it in New York ... but Shakespeare is much more than city nights and bright lights.

Mr. Bryson mentions Shakespeare's plays had to compete with entertainment where dogs attack a horse riden by a chimpanzee ... he mentions how Shakespeare had relatives whose heads ornated London Bridge (while not mentioning all available information shows it was near-arbitrary Abuse-of-Power) ... shouldn't we WONDER how this might affect a Genius like Shakespeare? I didn't get the impression Mr. Bryson ever thought deeply about Shakespeare himself, but only half-heartedly arranged the available data to his liking.

If you want a contemporary biography of Shakespeare, 'Will of the World' is many many times better and worth the effort to read.

Hope you find this review helpful.

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