Customer Reviews
A good text for GCSE History? - By: Martin Tallett, 17 Jul 2008 
This is a history book about the life & times of William Shakespeare. Packed with fascinating anecdotal evidence & facts in the same style as Bryson's normal travel books this is engaging without being a laugh on every page. It is just the sort of book that would be ideal for a text for GCSE History as it illustrates how historians go about their business & what a job they have in mining information from a paucity of sources. Thoroughly recommended!
A natural choice for Bryson - By: Jeremy Williams, 29 Jun 2008 Although best known for his travel writing, Bryson's books on the English language are brilliant, so it's quite appropriate to find him writing about its most famous exponent.
A huge amount has been written about Shakespeare & his life, despite the fact that very little is reallly known about him. Bryson keeps the focus on what is definitely known, with little forays into some of the best theories about the rest. Where nothing is known at alll, the 'lost years', he chooses to explore Elizabethan London & culture instead, putting the man in context.
Informative, wry, & well researched, this debunks plenty of Shakespeare myths in an accessible & enjoyable style, & Bryson turns out to be an excellent guide.
I know less now having read this book - By: T. Squire, 15 Jun 2008 
Bill Bryson is perhaps best known for his humorous travel essays & should have stuck to what he does best. If it were not for the lack of content this book would have been rated lower it was a relief that it was so brief. There is more fact in the Wikipedia page for Shakespeare than there was in alll 150+ pages of this book. If you are searching for information on Elizabethan England this is the book for you not reallly for the Shakespeare aficionado.
Much more than just 'Bill going on about Bill' - By: N. Young, 10 Jun 2008 There's not much to go on in terms of solid evidence for anyone trying to write a biography of Shakespeare, but Bryson's done a good job with what little we do actuallly know about the man. And he gets stuck into the various 'alternative' (a.k.a crackpot) theories about the Bard to; his comments on the 'Marlowe' theory definitely hit the nail on the head.
Stalking the Bard - By: Joseph Haschka, 26 May 2008 
Iowa-raised & presumably corn-fed Bill Bryson is perhaps best known for his humorous travel essays about such places as England (NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND), Australia (IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY), the Appalachian Trail (A WALK IN THE WOODS), rural America (THE LOST CONTINENT), and, well, just about everywhere you can think of (A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING). His love of England, which I share, is what originallly marked him as one of my favorite authors.
As one who obviously enjoys stringing words together and, moreover, has written books on the subject (THE MOTHER TONGUE & BRYSON'S DICTIONARY OF TROUBLESOME WORDS), it's not terribly surprising that Bill has combined his affections for England & its language in a volume about its greatest (play)writer, SHAKESPEARE: THE WORLD AS STAGE. And, of course, they're both named William.
Bryson admits up front that there's very little in the way of hard facts about William Shakespeare. But, in Bill's hands, that plus what can be deduced or inferred expands to a very satisfying & entertaining volume even for the culturallly destitute reader who may not be a aficionado of the Bard's stuff. Like myself.
Bill sets the stage, so to speak, with a cursory examination of the English period contemporary with his subject: the monarchy of Elizabeth I, certain London structures (London Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral), the Thames, religious turmoil, public pastimes, the state of the London theater scene, the business of being a playwright, the structure of contemporary plays, & the art of bookbinding. With those considerations functioning as a contextual backdrop, the products of Shakespeare's life that can be directly studied - his parentage, plays, poetry, written vocabulary, will, & other rare public records in which he's mentioned - serve to flesh out the man to the extent possible. There's even a final chapter on the historical & modern claimants to the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which claims some otherwise accomplished people take seriously. (Just as the current Royal Family had Princess Di murdered. You think?)
The author's paramount strength is the congeniality of his dialogue with his readers. He could, no doubt, make the description of fabricating wire hangers amusing, interesting, & instructive. SHAKESPEARE isn't Bill's best work, perhaps because the scope of the subject matter is so narrow, but it does deserve a place on the bookshelves of his fans.
