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Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson
from HarperPerennial

Editorial Review:

'As wryly humorous as you'd expect...Bryson dig[s] up some enjoyably obscure nuggets.'

'A joy from first to last...An accessible, exhilarating biography that's shot through with Bryson's trademark humour and irreverence...Tremendous.'

'Bryson's short biography is about as enjoyable as history books get. Bryson brings his trademark wit to a complex subject.'

'Less a biography than a delightful account of Shakespeare's elusiveness...The pairing of Bryson with Shakespeare is a happy one.'

'A warm and funny guide through the whole complicated morass of Shakespearean scholarship.'

'[A] fast paced jaunt through Bardolatry...wittily evokes Elizabethan England.'

'A work worthy of one of the greatest writers in the English language.'

'Information and wit in spades...this book is a fine addition to the canon of biographies.'

`The nation's favourite living writer shrewdly sieves out the likely form the outlandish...'

Alastair Campbell's `favourite book this year'

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• There's small choice in rotten apples
  Bill Bryson is more or less superman in today's literary world. He transcends subjects in a single bound and the globe in another. He's a talented critic, writer and humourist. It's a good job, to use modern vernacular, that he's the daddy because, with this one, he's taken on the mother of all literary subjects.
  He's done so wisely. He's not attempted to become an original researcher and posit new theories about the man's identity or his plays and other works. He has essentially evaluated and... more info

• Informative, entertaining and readable
  Any biographer of Shakespeare is faced with a problem: the known facts about Shakespeare's life would only fill one rather short chapter. Some biographers discuss at length various speculations about possible events in his life, but Bill Bryson wisely avoids most of this, briefly dismissing, for example, the story that he was caught poaching.
  Instead, Bryson fills the book with a colourful depiction of life in Elizabethan England, describing for example food and drink, religion, the theatre, and the... more info

• Enjoyable and informative
  This is an easy to enjoy book offering the latest thinking on the world's greatest playwright, written in Bryson's typical witty and brisk style. It can be read over a short period of time - in fact, you find yourself wishing it was longer.
  One of the most common phrases in the book is 'nothing is known about...' or 'very little is known about...' Bryson does not include information that is not fully backed up, or if he does, he discounts it. So there are times when you become a little exasperated at... more info

• Combining facts and humour
  When Bill Bryson is going to tackle a subject like William Shakespeare, you know that it is going to informative and very funny, an excellent combination. In his usual wry style Bill Bryson tries to unravel fact and fiction about Shakespeare's life, time and works. Because of the scarcity of facts, people have over the ages made up whole stories based on no evidence whatsoever. Also, there was (and is) a strong movement that Shakespeare's plays were not written be Shakespeare, because they consider him too... more info

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