Shakespeare: The World As Stage - Hardcover

Bryson, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060740221 ISBN 13: 9780060740221

Publisher: Eminent Lives, 2007

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

'A brilliantly funny and gently insightful travel guide to 16th century England. As an abbreviated tour around the world of Shakespeare, this could hardly be bettered.' Sunday Times

'Bryson is shrewd...and as funny as you'd expect...he sets down all the important bits of evidence, and assesses them in a measured scholarly way. He's good value too.' Daily Telegraph

'Measured, sensible and, at times, as wryly humorous as you'd expect.' The Times

'Fast paced jaunt through Bardolatry...wittily evokes Elizabethan England.' Sunday Times

'A work worthy of one of the greatest writers in the English language.' Daily Express

'Bryson uses an inimitably light touch and squeezes a vast subject down to manageable proportions...he is a warm and funny guide through the whole complicated morass of Shakespearean scholarship.' Financial Times

From the Back Cover:

Bill Bryson's Shakespeare pairs one of history's most celebrated writers with one of the most popular writers in the English language today. In this elegant, updated, illustrated edition, the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of one of the world's greatest poets are evoked through a series of full-color paintings, drawings, portraits, documents and photographs. Bryson also discusses the recent discoveries of the Cobbe portrait and the remains of Shakespeare's first theatre in Shoreditch.

The centuries of mysteries, half-truths and downright lies about Shakespeare are deftly explored, as Bryson draws a picture that includes many aspects of the poet's life, making sense of the man behind the masterpieces. In a journey down the streets of Shakespeare's time, Bryson brings to life the hubbub of Elizabethan England and delights in details of his folios and quartos, poetry and plays. He celebrates the glory of Shakespeare's language and his ceaseless inventiveness, which gave us hundreds of now indispensable phrases, images and words.

About this edition

• Publisher: Eminent Lives
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0060740221
• ISBN 13: 9780060740221
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 199