Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Bill Bryson)
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It’s hard to write a biography of someone who left as scant a record of his life as William Shakespeare did. So a good portion of this book debunks theories that posit that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays and why the people who have been suggested as authors probably weren’t. Bryson sticks to his subject and while writing with verve and the humor for which he is justly famous, he meticulously sets out the few undisputed facts about Shakespeare — mostly gleaned from legal documents. While not adding any startling discoveries, he puts the playwright in context, describing vividly the London of Shakespeare’s time. Being Bryson, he also adds information you’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere — for example, it seems that King James I (yes, the one from that version of the Bible) could not keep his hands off his codpiece. More to the point, Bryson reiterates Shakespeare’s legacy both to English itself and in the wealth of expressions (including “one fell swoop,” “foul play,” “foregone conclusion,” “be cruel to be kind,’ and “pomp and circumstance”) he added to our language. This book is one of several brief biographies in the Eminent Lives Series.