Shakespeare

I am one of those individuals who enjoy Bryson's work. When I read this author's books, I get the impression that he does not take himself all that serious, much in the same way I take myself. I can relate. This little volume on the individual who is probably and arguably the greatest of all our English writers is no exception. It, as others here have pointed out, is sort of a book about nothing. By that I mean, we know almost absolute nothing of the man, William Shakespeare. We don't even know for sure how he spelled his name due to the fact that he, himself, did not spell it the same all of the time. Bryson has taken nothing and turned out a work, 196 pages of work, of something. Now if you think that is easy, try it some time.

This is not a scholarly dissertation (thank goodness) which tries to pass itself off as the beginning and end of all that was ever written about the life of Shakespeare. It is a short study of just what we do not know about him, which we find, is quite a lot! I picked up absolutely dozens and dozens of facts as to what I did not know, and until I read this book, did not realize I did not know. In addition to this I picked up some wonderful trivia (and some information that was not trivial at all) concerning the era in which Shakespeare wrote, if indeed, he wrote during that era. I had no idea of the words and phrases, which happen to number in the hundreds, which were introduced to the English Language via Shakespeare. As one reviewer has pointed out, this is really not a biography, but rather a history lesson, a lesson of little facts that you would not normally be exposed to. Bryson has done his home work and we have all benefitted from his seemingly endless curiosity.

Now for those folks who are Shakespearian scholars. This probably will not be all that much help to you; of course picking up the book, noting that it has only 196 pages, should pretty well tip you off to that fact pretty quickly. If it doesn't, perhaps you might want to find some other line of work. This is a readable book, an interesting book, written for those of us who have not made the study of Shakespeare a profession or made it an obsession, which ever the case may be. It is not a book that you can use as a substitute for a sleeping pill, as so many hard core books on this subject are. It is for those of us who are curious, and who want to know bits of this and pieces of this and that. I will say though, that by reading this work, I have gained even further appreciation for the work of Shakespeare, which says a lot, as I had already admired him greatly.

I did enjoy the last chapter or so, as it addresses the many theories of the many rather odd individuals who have been obsessed over the years, trying to prove that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, or that someone else wrote his writings. These nut jobs seemed to have started from the beginning. The neat thing about it is, as Bryson so well points out, we know even less of the basis of their theories than we know of Shakespeare. Some of them are pretty funny though and worth taking a look.

Bryson does have a low keyed sense of humor and this fact shines through on ever page of this work. His style is easy on the eye, and in this work, there are no pretentions. It is sort of what you read is what you get. I enjoyed this one front to back and feel much richer for having read it. I did give this one five stars as I truly enjoyed it and felt, for me, it was a very worthwile book. Others may disagree with this, but hey, they can write their own review.