Who needs another book about Shakespeare? The author of this slim volume of biography asks this question himself, and stresses that we know almost nothing about our great national treasure. But this book is by Bill Bryson, which makes it worth a look. And it turns out to be a joy from first to last. The lack of hard facts inspires Bryson to issue a corrective to the suppositions, hopes and assumptions that inform some books on Shakespeare, offering us a chance to see how little we do know and how much has been said that is nonsense (as in the final chapter, which catalogues all those who have been suggested as the real authors of Shakespeare’s plays, who suggested them, and why the suggestions are pretty much rubbish).
With the pedantic accuracy of a former sub-editor and dictionary compiler, Bryson explores how Will has been described down the years, exploding rumours as he goes. His descriptions of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, London and its theatres are evocative and exciting.
And there are plenty of eyebrow-raising facts, such as the origin of the phrase ‘box office’ and how, of the six Shakespeare signatures so far found, all are spelled differently, with not one employing the spelling commonly used today. Only occasionally does Bryson use the book to offer his opinions of Shakespeare’s writing but, when he does, they’re precise and impassioned.
This is an accessible, exhilarating biography that’s shot through with Bryson’s trademark humour and irreverence and leaves you hoping that one day he’ll produce his own critical guide to the Bard. Tremendous.
