Sigh of relief 1: Bryson is back in peak form after the self-indulgent The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.Sigh of relief 2: Bryson, being an intelligent, reasonable man, has no truck with any conspiracy theories regarding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.
Shakespeare: The World as Stage is part of a series of short biographies of famous dead people, by famous live people, edited by James Atlas and published by HarperCollins. This template works pretty well for ol' Willy S., since -- as Bryson points out in his first chapter -- we don't actually know all that much about his life. (So all of those longer biographies are filled with speculation and theorizing.)
Bryson's book is just shy of 200 pages, and feels neither rushed nor stretched. And that will make this blog post pretty short, because otherwise I'll be summarizing his summary of Shakespeare's life, which is too much like George Carlin's "taking your stuff on vacation" routine for my taste.
Bryson is an energetic and appealing writer, and a good explainer. As far as I can tell, he's very reliable on Shakespeare. So, if you are in the market for a short biography of anybody, this is a decent choice.
Bryson's book is just shy of 200 pages, and feels neither rushed nor stretched. And that will make this blog post pretty short, because otherwise I'll be summarizing his summary of Shakespeare's life, which is too much like George Carlin's "taking your stuff on vacation" routine for my taste.
Bryson is an energetic and appealing writer, and a good explainer. As far as I can tell, he's very reliable on Shakespeare. So, if you are in the market for a short biography of anybody, this is a decent choice.
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