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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
lighthearted
medium-paced
Exactly as it should be: funny, accessible and to the point. It's filled with detail and factoids, touches on every scandal and conspiracy theory, then pretty clearly slaps the hand of anyone in history who claims to know anything for sure. The first biography I've read that clearly admits it might be about the wrong person - but we'll never know for sure.
This is a weird book. I picked it up at the library not so much because I wanted to read a Shakespeare biography, but because Bryson wrote it. He seems to not entirely know why. The book is part of a series of "brief biographies by distinguished authors" called the "Eminent Lives Series." Bryson writes, at the end of the first chapter, "The amount of Shakespearean ink, grossly measured, is almost ludicrous. ... To answer the obvious question, this book was written not so much because the world needs another book on Shakespeare as because this series does." I love Bryson for having the honesty and sense of humor to acknowledge this up front, and then writing a thoroughly entertaining and fascinating book anyway. Bryson has a gift for weaving together anecdotes and factoids into an engaging narrative that propels you ever forward even if, when you stop to think about it, you weren't sure you needed to know any of these things in the first place. (I would read so much more non-fiction if everyone wrote like Bryson or Mary Roach.)
Bryson's main challenge with this book is that we don't know very much about Shakespeare, and a lot of the stories that get told about him are largely conjecture. One thing I appreciate about Bryson is that he's more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity than he is with speculation, and he will therefore take pains to clarify and contextualize at length rather than be even remotely misleading or give any impression of making false equivalencies. He is always (in his other books as well) very clear about what we don't know. This is not a man who gets carried away. To compensate for the lack of biographical details with which to construct a biography, Bryson fills in the book with details about Shakespeare's contemporaries and associates, the London theater scene, and a brief history of research conducted into the man's life.
There was one thing that felt really off to me, and that's the placing at the end of the book the chapter regarding people who think Shakespeare's work was written by someone other than Shakespeare. It felt weird to end on a chapter that hardly discussed Shakespeare at all. The chapter was essentially: "Here's a list of crazy people who think X, Y, or Z wrote Shakespeare, and why this defies all logic. We don't know much about Shakespeare, but we know he wasn't any of these people! The end." I feel like it would have been better placed at the beginning of the book, as a way of saying, "Let's get this nonsense out of the way before we go any further." The way the conclusion reads now reminded me of how I used to end papers for class when I couldn't think of anything to say and just wanted to turn them in and be done with it. Which I suppose is possibly how Bryson was feeling when he wrote it.
Bryson's main challenge with this book is that we don't know very much about Shakespeare, and a lot of the stories that get told about him are largely conjecture. One thing I appreciate about Bryson is that he's more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity than he is with speculation, and he will therefore take pains to clarify and contextualize at length rather than be even remotely misleading or give any impression of making false equivalencies. He is always (in his other books as well) very clear about what we don't know. This is not a man who gets carried away. To compensate for the lack of biographical details with which to construct a biography, Bryson fills in the book with details about Shakespeare's contemporaries and associates, the London theater scene, and a brief history of research conducted into the man's life.
There was one thing that felt really off to me, and that's the placing at the end of the book the chapter regarding people who think Shakespeare's work was written by someone other than Shakespeare. It felt weird to end on a chapter that hardly discussed Shakespeare at all. The chapter was essentially: "Here's a list of crazy people who think X, Y, or Z wrote Shakespeare, and why this defies all logic. We don't know much about Shakespeare, but we know he wasn't any of these people! The end." I feel like it would have been better placed at the beginning of the book, as a way of saying, "Let's get this nonsense out of the way before we go any further." The way the conclusion reads now reminded me of how I used to end papers for class when I couldn't think of anything to say and just wanted to turn them in and be done with it. Which I suppose is possibly how Bryson was feeling when he wrote it.
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
My favorite chapter was about everything that we DON'T know about Shakespeare. Fun and quick overview of life in England at the time.
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
Very insightful, accessible and funny. I think I took in more from this book than some of my Uni lecturers of 20 years ago. Recommend to any enthusiasts for Shakespeare.
This is a brief yet very comprehensive and engaging primer about Shakespeare's life and times. Many myths are debunked, and his works are given much needed perspective where needed. I highly recommend it if you have any questions at all about the Bard.
Got bored. There were better audiobooks at the library.