Shakespeare: The World As A Stage: Bill Bryson

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Most all Shakespeare biographers go off into pure speculation after that – but Bill Bryson instead explores his world, his work, and contemporary scholarship and weaves it all together into a still rather short book. For a better assimilation of the capsule, Bryson needs to correct our modern expectations, and remind us that to know so little about a sixteenth century craftsman is nothing out of the ordinary. Those who wished to sit paid a penny more, and those who desired a cushion paid another penny on top of that - all this at a time when a day's wage was one shilling (12 pence) or less. O come lo stesso Shakespeare ha scritto in una battuta citata spesso a sproposito: «Il diavolo può citare le Sacre Scritture per i propri fini». Although able to apply for British citizenship, Bryson said in 2010 that he had declined a citizenship test, declaring himself "too cowardly" to take it.

With ‘Shakespeare’ what Bryson has successfully managed (presumably consciously) to avoid is the ground covered by the overwhelming majority of other books written Shakespeare the man – ordinarily being either academic/quasi-academic tomes and as such impenetrable to all but Shakespeare/literary scholars, or highly speculative popular writings based on the various conspiracy theories and myths that now surround the life, works and legend of William Shakespeare.

Although the central premise here is that, as Bryson freely acknowledges indeed almost relishes, is that what we do know about the life of William Shakespeare is surprisingly very, very little. Spevack in his magnificent and hefty concordance - the most scrupulous, not to say obsessive, assessment of Shakespearean idiom ever undertaken - counts 29,066 different words. In this much anticipated addition to the Eminent Lives series, Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright. While we often know a good deal about performers in male roles from Shakespeare's day, we know almost nothing about the conduct of the female parts.

Some became coney catchers, or swindlers (a coney was a rabbit reared for the table and thus unsuspectingly tame); others became foists (pickpockets), nips, or nippers (cutpurses), hookers (who snatched desirables through open windows with hooks), abtams (who feigned lunacy to provide a distraction), whipjacks, fingerers, cross biters, cozeners, courtesy men, and many more. Here Bryson as usual entertains us with, amongst other things, various tales of those who have seemingly dedicated years of their lives attempting to get to the heart of and establish some hitherto unknown truths about Shakespeare and his works. In his typical style, Bryson starts off by saying that we do not know what the hell Shakespeare looked like; and apart from a few dry facts and statistics, we knew absolutely nothing about the man.

I’ve worked as an editor for years, and the notion of spelling words haphazardly is completely contrary to everything I’ve ever been taught.

They moved to Bryson's hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, in 1975 so Bryson could complete his degree at Drake University.

The focus of the book is to state what little is known conclusively about Shakespeare, and how this information is known, with some discussion of disproved theories, myths, and that which is believed by the public but not provable. This sort of interesting stuff comprises the bulk of the book, and caused me to underline quite frequently. He discussed the future of the countryside with Richard Mabey, Sue Clifford, Nicholas Crane, and Richard Girling at CPRE's Volunteer Conference in November 2007. They can tells us (and have done so) that Shakespeare's works contain 138,198 commas, 26,794 colons, and 15,785 question marks; that ears are spoken of 401 times in his plays; that dunghill is used ten times and dullard twice; that his characters refer to love 2,259 times but to hate just 183 times. 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.