East of the Sun & West of the Moon

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

I actually listened to this one as an audio book, but I’m still going to write it up in here. I haven’t quite decided whether I think that listening to a book is the same thing as reading it. I think that for me, it’s actually more challenging. Regardless, I’m reading through it in book-format now.

For all that I love Shakespeare, I’d never read a biography of him before. This one came quite highly recommended by quite a few people, and as I really like Bill Bryson, and was curious to hear him read his own work, I decided to listen to his book. I was surprised to learn as I started listening to it how little I actually knew about Shakespeare.

Bryson’s work emphasizes the fact that I’m clearly not alone in this. Very little is known for certain about Shakespeare at all. I loved the way that Bryson exposed this fact while still managing to put together a coherent biography, and simultaneously avoided making assumptions as many other scholars have. He also filled in the gaps in Shakespeare’s life with a fascinating sketch of London as Shakespeare would have known it.

I think the part of the book that surprised me the most was the section about the Sonnets. I’d never read the Sonnets before, despite having taken a class on Shakespeare alone in university, and never read about them either. So I was surprised to learn about the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady, and interested to hear the theories about who these subjects may have been in Shakespeare’s life. Regardless of who they were, or if they even had counterparts in Shakespeare’s life, I am grateful for this section of the book for introducing me to the Sonnets. I’ve fallen in love!

My one complaint about this book is that when discussing possible likenesses of Shakespeare, Bryson failed to mention the Sanders portrait. I don’t generally approve of scholars making unfounded assumptions, but I still do it myself, and to me, the Sanders portrait is the face of the Bard.