“Shakespeare: the World As Stage” - Bill Bryson
🎭 Ever since 10th grade English lit where the idea of the unknowability of Shakespeare the person, was first presented to me, I’ve been fascinated by the vast amount of knowledge we have about the character of Shakespeare the Bard, but how little we know about Shakespeare the person. I enjoyed SWAS because it’s not a conventional biography; it’s not an attempt at a sweeping chronicle of the life of the man, but an attempt to parse fact from fiction. Take for instance the commonly accepted image of Shakespeare that graces the cover of SWAS - what was the basis for this universally accepted portrait of Shakespeare, and how accurate is the rendering?
🎭 Bryson asks what can we know, what can we not know? What can we deduce and what is pure conjecture? What is the factual basis for what we do know? He gives the example of modern knowledge of Elizabethan theater interiors is effectively based on a single careless doodle by a passing Dutch tourist. Bryson not only fills in details about Elizabethan theater (sights, sounds, odors), but explains how he came to find these details. Doodles, sketches, private letters, the hoi polloi of diary entries - these are all invaluable to researchers trying to reconstruct the past.
🎭 In outlining the literary life of Shakespeare, one interesting point refers to the accepted the chronology of his plays. As Bryson moves through time, he shows the reader repeatedly that firm dates are difficult to establish; often we are left simply with knowledge that a particular play could not have been written beyond a certain date.
🎭 I also enjoyed Bryson’s historical scene setting of various points in Shakespeare’s life such as the execution of Mary Queen of Scots or the defeat of the Spanish armada. Context is everything!
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