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Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
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Manufacturer: Eminent Lives
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Eminent Lives
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $13.57
You Save: $ 6.38 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Eminent Lives
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Eminent Lives
Average Customer Rating:
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Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) Description
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 822.33
EAN: 9780060740221
ISBN: 0060740221
Label: Eminent Lives
Manufacturer: Eminent Lives
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2007-11-01
Publisher: Eminent Lives
Product Release Date: 2007-10-23
Studio: Eminent Lives
Dewey Decimal Number: 822.33
EAN: 9780060740221
ISBN: 0060740221
Label: Eminent Lives
Manufacturer: Eminent Lives
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2007-11-01
Publisher: Eminent Lives
Product Release Date: 2007-10-23
Studio: Eminent Lives
Editorial Review 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.
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 of Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Bryson Does It Again
Review: I really love his travel books, but Bryson brings a fresh approach to any subject!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Interesting Book
Review: My wife and I picked this one to listen to together and talk about. Call me ignorant, but I was surprised to learn how little is/was known about Shakespeare (the man). The things I learned from this book are what it was like to live in 16th/17th Century England and how a series of improbable acts provide us the library of Shakespeare's work.
Having read or listened to two of Bryson's other books (A Walk in the Woods, A Short History of Nearly Everything), I have gained a respect for the diversity and complexity of topics he takes on.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: typical Bryson--entertaining and informative
Review: Bill Bryson has become one of my favorite writers. Whether he is writing about his travels, the English language, or the world of science, he writes with wit and enthusiasm. Here, he applies his typical humor and zest for knowledge to a person about whom we know very little: William Shakespeare. I learned more about Shakespeare's age than about the writer himself, but that's not Bryson's fault. There's just not that much that we know about the Bard of Avon. The last chapter, in which Bryson debunks the "alternative author" theories, is the worth the price of the book alone.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Showing how little we know about the Bard
Review: As Bryson points out repeatedly throughout this book, there is surprisingly little we really know about the life of William Shakespeare, apart from his writings. As a result, a fairly sizable amount of the contents of this book amounts to filler. Granted, it is interesting filler, providing plenty of detail about London, the theatre, politics, religion and much more during Shakespeare's lifetime. This information helps us understand what his life might have been like, but ultimately, as Bryson clearly points out, we simply can't know.
For the most part this book is competently written, but Bryson's usual wit seems to be lacking here. I found much of the historical information interesting, but ultimately I don't know much more about Shakespeare than when I started. The last chapter, which covers the various claims that Shakespeare's works were, in fact, written by others is well argued, relying on the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Last Chapter
Review: Bryson says that Shakespeare's lasting tribute is his love of language, and while one certainly senses his love and mastery of language, I think the lasting tribute is Shakespeare's characters, as other scholars such as A.C. Bradley and Harold Bloom have touched on. Bryson's own writing is accessible and erudite, which makes for pleasant and engaging reading, if not passionate dedication, except for the last chapter, entitled "Claimants," at last something amidst the fog of Shakespeare that Bryson can approach with clarity, and it sends the book out in a blaze of personality.
In the last chapter Bryson defends Shakespeare as the author of Shakespeare. If you've been curious about the playwright, I'm sure you've encountered theories about someone else being the author of the plays. Bryson levels them all, using many of his best lines in the book to do it: "Shakespeare 'never owned a book,' a writer from the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless, but it is probable that what is lacking is the evidence, not the apparel or the books" (182). And again on page 192 about Mary Sidney, one in a long line of potential Shakespeares: "All that is missing to connect her with Shakespeare is anything to connect her with Shakespeare."
But Bryson doesn't just show there is no evidence for a different author of Shakespeare, he gives evidence of Shakespeare's humble beginnings appearing in his plays and his existence as a "country boy." And one senses a personal connection here that Bryson bristles to defend. It's fitting that the book ends not only with more of Bryson's personality, but also with the eccentric men and women on the fringes of Shakespearean scholarship, as they are peculiar people with often beguiling personalities. And when one reads Shakespeare, personality exhilarates--it can be contagious, even maddening.
Review Summary: Bryson Does It Again
Review: I really love his travel books, but Bryson brings a fresh approach to any subject!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Interesting Book
Review: My wife and I picked this one to listen to together and talk about. Call me ignorant, but I was surprised to learn how little is/was known about Shakespeare (the man). The things I learned from this book are what it was like to live in 16th/17th Century England and how a series of improbable acts provide us the library of Shakespeare's work.
Having read or listened to two of Bryson's other books (A Walk in the Woods, A Short History of Nearly Everything), I have gained a respect for the diversity and complexity of topics he takes on.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: typical Bryson--entertaining and informative
Review: Bill Bryson has become one of my favorite writers. Whether he is writing about his travels, the English language, or the world of science, he writes with wit and enthusiasm. Here, he applies his typical humor and zest for knowledge to a person about whom we know very little: William Shakespeare. I learned more about Shakespeare's age than about the writer himself, but that's not Bryson's fault. There's just not that much that we know about the Bard of Avon. The last chapter, in which Bryson debunks the "alternative author" theories, is the worth the price of the book alone.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Showing how little we know about the Bard
Review: As Bryson points out repeatedly throughout this book, there is surprisingly little we really know about the life of William Shakespeare, apart from his writings. As a result, a fairly sizable amount of the contents of this book amounts to filler. Granted, it is interesting filler, providing plenty of detail about London, the theatre, politics, religion and much more during Shakespeare's lifetime. This information helps us understand what his life might have been like, but ultimately, as Bryson clearly points out, we simply can't know.
For the most part this book is competently written, but Bryson's usual wit seems to be lacking here. I found much of the historical information interesting, but ultimately I don't know much more about Shakespeare than when I started. The last chapter, which covers the various claims that Shakespeare's works were, in fact, written by others is well argued, relying on the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Last Chapter
Review: Bryson says that Shakespeare's lasting tribute is his love of language, and while one certainly senses his love and mastery of language, I think the lasting tribute is Shakespeare's characters, as other scholars such as A.C. Bradley and Harold Bloom have touched on. Bryson's own writing is accessible and erudite, which makes for pleasant and engaging reading, if not passionate dedication, except for the last chapter, entitled "Claimants," at last something amidst the fog of Shakespeare that Bryson can approach with clarity, and it sends the book out in a blaze of personality.
In the last chapter Bryson defends Shakespeare as the author of Shakespeare. If you've been curious about the playwright, I'm sure you've encountered theories about someone else being the author of the plays. Bryson levels them all, using many of his best lines in the book to do it: "Shakespeare 'never owned a book,' a writer from the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless, but it is probable that what is lacking is the evidence, not the apparel or the books" (182). And again on page 192 about Mary Sidney, one in a long line of potential Shakespeares: "All that is missing to connect her with Shakespeare is anything to connect her with Shakespeare."
But Bryson doesn't just show there is no evidence for a different author of Shakespeare, he gives evidence of Shakespeare's humble beginnings appearing in his plays and his existence as a "country boy." And one senses a personal connection here that Bryson bristles to defend. It's fitting that the book ends not only with more of Bryson's personality, but also with the eccentric men and women on the fringes of Shakespearean scholarship, as they are peculiar people with often beguiling personalities. And when one reads Shakespeare, personality exhilarates--it can be contagious, even maddening.