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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Excellent work, but then again I'm a faithful believer that Shakespeare was actually William Shakespeare. The reading was easy and fast I love the way Bryson paints the world around giving a great sense of the time and on top of that throws some humor to keep you turning the pages.
funny
informative
funny
informative
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
This is a pretty well put together compilation of the info that is available about Shakespeare. Lots of fun little factoids, statistics, and information about the actual documents about him and the people around him and lots of discussion of the many theories about his life and works that are out there.
The truth of the matter is that Shakespeare is a bit of a mystery. There isn't really very much information about him and his interests and life and what little we are able to derive is often ignored while various people try to fit him into their many ideas. As far as I can tell, he was the son of a mayor of a town with a decent school background, and although he writes about many things he does not necessarily know a lot about those things (he definitely did not know Italian geography). In a lot of ways, I think his major contribution was to the English language. It appears that he created words that had never been used before but that we use on a daily basis. Ex. frugal, lonely, unlock, untie, vast, horrid, excellent, unmask, assassination, etc. He also seems to have invented many phrases that we even use today - one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, cold comfort, foul play, with bated breath, and a bunch more. One point that Bill Bryson quotes from Stanley Wells "It is telling that William Shakespeare's birth is recorded in Latin but that he dies in English, as "[b:William Shakespeare|18135|Romeo and Juliet|William Shakespeare|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XTDJ3P4XL._SL75_.jpg|3349450], gentleman."
The truth of the matter is that Shakespeare is a bit of a mystery. There isn't really very much information about him and his interests and life and what little we are able to derive is often ignored while various people try to fit him into their many ideas. As far as I can tell, he was the son of a mayor of a town with a decent school background, and although he writes about many things he does not necessarily know a lot about those things (he definitely did not know Italian geography). In a lot of ways, I think his major contribution was to the English language. It appears that he created words that had never been used before but that we use on a daily basis. Ex. frugal, lonely, unlock, untie, vast, horrid, excellent, unmask, assassination, etc. He also seems to have invented many phrases that we even use today - one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, cold comfort, foul play, with bated breath, and a bunch more. One point that Bill Bryson quotes from Stanley Wells "It is telling that William Shakespeare's birth is recorded in Latin but that he dies in English, as "[b:William Shakespeare|18135|Romeo and Juliet|William Shakespeare|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XTDJ3P4XL._SL75_.jpg|3349450], gentleman."
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
adventurous
funny
informative
medium-paced
3.5/5 but gets an upgrade for its bodying of anti-Stratfordians