Shakespeare: The World as Stage

SHAKESPEARE: THE WORLD AS STAGE: Bill Bryson: HarperCollins: Nonfiction: 2007

A new addition to the Eminent Lives series, Bryson’s book creates a fascinating context for William Shakespeare’s plays. Bryson admits early in the book that there are few known facts about Shakespeare himself. In fact, there is still a debate over whether or not William Shakespeare actually wrote the plays credited to him. Despite the lack of information, Bryson manages to create a quick-paced, thoroughly enjoyable read that gives readers insight into Elizabethan and early Jacobean England—the laws, the people, the customs, and the plays—which shed light on Shakespeare’s work and time.

This is a wonderful, short introduction to Shakespeare. A good companion volume is Jennifer Lee Carrell’s new suspense novel, Interred with Their Bones, which incorporates a lot of the same information Bryson supplies in a contemporary, fictional story.

MBC