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A review by jennifer_mangieri
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
3.0
I really enjoyed this short course on Shakespeare by one of the wittiest men ever, Bill Bryson! I've read some of the longer bio's on W. Shakespeare but it's challenging to remember the details when they usually throw in lots of information about each individual play, & lots of pseudo-information that's really speculation - because we know so few concrete facts about WS. I enjoyed this book because Bryson goes out of his way to stick to what we really know & leave out the glamor & glorifications. The things we really do know about WS are pretty interesting anyway, without all that!
Things I learned - anaphora, epistrophe, analepsis and synecdoche! I learned that Shakespeare was possibly the "first gay poet." Or bi, really, I guess. OK, that part was a little speculative but some of his sonnets were definitely written to and for a man. WS was a great coiner of new words - words he used for the first time include abstemious, critical, frugal, dwindle, horrid, vast, excellent, eventful, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, well-read and zany! I learned the interesting story of the crazy Delia Bacon & her compatriots Looney, Battey & Silliman! I was happy to learn that WS almost certainly really was WS & not someone else. I was happy to find that Bryson states the plays of WS were almost certainly not written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, as the de Veres were Lancaster instead of York in the Wars of the Roses & therefore Evil and Naughty.
If you're interested in a quick, fun way to learn something about Shakespeare & his times, this is the book for you!
Things I learned - anaphora, epistrophe, analepsis and synecdoche! I learned that Shakespeare was possibly the "first gay poet." Or bi, really, I guess. OK, that part was a little speculative but some of his sonnets were definitely written to and for a man. WS was a great coiner of new words - words he used for the first time include abstemious, critical, frugal, dwindle, horrid, vast, excellent, eventful, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, well-read and zany! I learned the interesting story of the crazy Delia Bacon & her compatriots Looney, Battey & Silliman! I was happy to learn that WS almost certainly really was WS & not someone else. I was happy to find that Bryson states the plays of WS were almost certainly not written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, as the de Veres were Lancaster instead of York in the Wars of the Roses & therefore Evil and Naughty.
If you're interested in a quick, fun way to learn something about Shakespeare & his times, this is the book for you!