At first, it honestly felt like Mr. Bryson was begrudgingly completing a college research paper and, becoming exasperated by the lack of factual information, instead presented a (very interesting) history of Elizabethan London! Bryson’s book includes nine named and enumerated chapters and a selected bibliography. Bill Bryson is an old friend. I really like Bryson - he has a wonderfully dry sense of humour and at times can have me in stitches laughing. Details about SHAKESPEARE THE WORLD AS STAGE BY BILL BRYSON. But why would I want to read a wry Midwesterner on Shakespeare? He genuinely loves his subjects, and it is infectious. Women had to be played by men on the stage,. Shakespeare's biography is sketchy, and ever thus it shall remain. ), This overview of Shakespeare’s life improved greatly as the pages increased. The book starts off with anecdotes, one is from late 1900s of an American couple, Charles and Hulda Wallace, who housed themselves at London’s National Archives to search through hundreds of thousand records. Shakespeare. Reading 'Shakespeare The World As Stage', however, one gets the sense that this eclectic Iowan is exactly the type of person the Bard … The World as Stage is not one Bill Bryson's more popular textbooks, but it is one his best ones. Shakespeare was both an actor and director and performed at the Globe theatre. Join Bill as he takes you on a journey through Elizabethan England, tackling the myths, half-truths and downright lies to make sense of the man behind the masterpieces. In all of England the population was between 3 and 5 million. The years melt away and we are there, right in the world of Elizabethan Stratford and London, throwing light on what we do actually know about the life and times and people associated with Shakespeare. 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 wr. Welcome back. Bryson is good in describing the sixteenth century world of England. If you wanted to know more about William Shakespeare, his life, his writings, his times…etc, you would have to embark in the reading of an endless amount of written material that would fill trucks and trucks. by Bill Bryson . ARTICLES. Those of you who are familiar with his oeuvre would know that he is a "love-him-or-hate-him" author: people either love his snarky humour, or hate it with passion. Bill Bryson, in his own inimitable way, takes us through the world of Shakespeare as easily as if he were discussing the latest political controversy. From my limited experience with author biographies, I've learned that the less I know about an author, the happier I am. I had no idea we knew so little about William Shakespeare, where later in the book Bryson says there are a variety of ways his name was spelt back then, two were: Shappere and Shaxberd. Click to read more about Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) by Bill Bryson. There's nothing wrong with Bryson's writing... but he just doesn't say very much, because there ISN'T anything to say. It also explores the political, social, cultural and economic background to Shakespeare's work. I enjoyed the book though, I learnt a lot I didn't know before and I think the autho. I listened to it on my way to work and doing the dishes this week. 2 viewed per hour. If there is a hero it is the duo who gave us the first Folio. Bryson doesn't go incredibly in-depth with this work but I applaud him on that. 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. Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives) by Bill Bryson and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at AbeBooks.com. ... Shakespeare: The World As A Stage by Bryson, Bill Paperback Book The Fast Free. The main characters of this non fiction, biography story are William Shakespeare, . We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day. :). I am struggling to recall why exactly I wanted to read this. A freelance writer living in Utah with his wife and kids. It was fascinating to learn that most of what has been presented to us as biography is in fact, conjecture. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about half of them still in use today, and old words were employed in ways not tried before. He begins by swiftly establishing the paucity of factual information about Shakespeare such as what he looked like and even where he was for eight years when he left his new-wedded and early-bedded wife and before he surfaced as first an actor and then a playwright in the latter years of Queen Elizabeth I's … Atlas/HarperCollins $19.95 (199p) ISBN 978-0-06-074022-1. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. This is a very strange and frustrating book: A short, witty, highly readable biography of the Bard by one of the our best beloved writers. A time of plague and early death. OMG! This is middlebrow secondary work, not any sort of textual analysis. 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