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A review by askmrtalbot
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
4.0
This is a great biography about a guy that is almost impossible to write a biography about, and that's the central conceit of the book. Most of what we know about Shakespeare is speculation, so it's nice for a book to boil down all of the real info and discuss the rest in the context of what's known and what isn't.
The fun part of the book is the context of the time period and what that involved. There are three anecdotes I especially loved. First, people loved sugar so much during Shakespeare's time that having black teeth was a status symbol of having enough money to afford the stuff to the point that some people without the means to have their teeth blacken from eating too much sugar actually started dyeing their chompers in order to look wealthier. Second, bear baiting was a thing but sometimes people got bored with setting giant mastiff dogs on a bear chained to the ground or bears were too expensive to keep sacrificing that way. Instead, they'd chain a monkey to a horse that was chained to the ground and set dogs on that. It was insane. Third, towards the end of her life, Queen Elizabeth had zero effs to give because her face was permanently caked in a mask of white make-up, most of her teeth were black of missing (Thanks, sugar!), and she had taken to loosening her dress so "that it forever hung open [and] you could see the whole of her bosom."
It's an inside baseball Shakespeare book, but I really enjoyed it.
The fun part of the book is the context of the time period and what that involved. There are three anecdotes I especially loved. First, people loved sugar so much during Shakespeare's time that having black teeth was a status symbol of having enough money to afford the stuff to the point that some people without the means to have their teeth blacken from eating too much sugar actually started dyeing their chompers in order to look wealthier. Second, bear baiting was a thing but sometimes people got bored with setting giant mastiff dogs on a bear chained to the ground or bears were too expensive to keep sacrificing that way. Instead, they'd chain a monkey to a horse that was chained to the ground and set dogs on that. It was insane. Third, towards the end of her life, Queen Elizabeth had zero effs to give because her face was permanently caked in a mask of white make-up, most of her teeth were black of missing (Thanks, sugar!), and she had taken to loosening her dress so "that it forever hung open [and] you could see the whole of her bosom."
It's an inside baseball Shakespeare book, but I really enjoyed it.