Bill Bryson,
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Atlas Books, 2007).
199pp.
By Clark B. Timmins
Bill Bryson’s concise biography of William Shakespeare is
brilliantly written, humorously insightful, and entirely
delightful. The prose is a well-crafted and playful presentation
of the dozen odd facts known about Shakespeare and many of the
suppositions, inferences, and wild speculations about the man and
his work. This Shakespeare primer can be easily understood by any
high-school level reader and no prior knowledge about the
playwright is required-Bryson even helpfully informs the reader,
on page 196, that "William Shakespeare of Stratford was
unquestionably" the author of plays and poetry attributed to
him, but questioned by some in what is known as "an
authorship debate."
Bryson has written several books including the prize-winning A
Short History of Nearly Everything. The book under review is
provided as a volume in the "Eminent Lives" series of
concise biographies by various authors and, as such, conforms to
an imposed restriction on length. With a candid honesty that
permeates his offering, Bryson notes that the world didn’t
really need another Shakespeare biography but that the
"Eminent Lives" series did. Bryson is straightforward
in admitting that no groundbreaking research is presented, but
rather the biography gathers the known facts, the supposed facts,
and much pithy innuendo into a single engaging and accessible
overview. Bryson’s strength, then, lies not so much in his
Shakespearean expertise but rather in his obvious ability to turn
a phrase.
As expected, the book presents facts about Shakespeare’s
life, work, and environment. The book reads much as one would
expect and holds no surprise of construction, methodology, or
presentation. The book is divided into chapters that establish
what is known and what is generally supposed about several
periods in Shakespeare’s life and his environment. It also
mentions most plays, several long poems, and a few sonnets; it
does not present substantive literary criticism on any of the
works, though it does briefly examine some issues of attribution.
Bryson makes some attempt to place Shakespeare’s materials
into a general chronological order but does not tackle the
thornier issues. The book’s somewhat unbalanced biography is
similar to all Shakespearean biographies insofar as virtually
nothing is actually known about the man, whereas very much has
been inferred. Bryson carefully notes fine distinctions between
the two. For example, Shakespeare’s death is presented mostly
as an interpretation of his will, as that document has been
discovered and can be analyzed objectively. The final chapter of
the book examines the occasional academic notion that Shakespeare
didn’t write all the material he claimed as his own, and
reviews some of the leading alternative theories and their
attendant problems.
While nothing in the biography is new or even particularly
innovative, it is nevertheless an invigorating review of extant
data. Bryson brings a fresh and exciting voice to material that
elsewhere is often stale in presentation. A mix of bedrock facts,
such as Shakespeare’s date of birth-"By tradition it is
agreed to be April 23, Saint George’s Day" (p. 24) in
1564-stand alongside humorous observations: "The Droeshout
engraving [of Shakespeare].is an arrestingly-we might almost say
magnificently-mediocre piece of work" (p. 4). Bryson throws
compellingly banal facts into the mix,
too-"Shakespeare’s works contain 138,198 commas, 26,794
colons, and 15,785 question marks" (p. 19). What emerges is
a lovingly rendered biography of an obviously favorite subject.
Those familiar with Shakespeare’s life and times will find
the information recast in an enjoyable way, while those
unfamiliar with the topic will find the biography intelligible
and quite accessible. One of the book’s particular strengths
is the development of a sense of time and place surrounding
Shakespeare as an individual. For example, Shakespeare’s
multi-year absence from the stage is explained by the closure of
all London theaters due to plague.
Bryson’s book includes nine named and enumerated chapters and
a selected bibliography. It runs to 199 pages and has only a
handful of footnotes. Bryson attributes several items within the
book and occasionally textually refers to his sources to
establish academic authority on some point. In summary, Bryson is
an endlessly entertaining writer and Shakespeare - The World as
Stage is an outstanding read for anyone who enjoys Shakespearean
theater, good writing, or both.
Clark B. Timmins is a freelance writer and lives in Utah
with his wife and kids.
