Shakespeare: The World As A Stage: Bill Bryson

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of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson This biography of William Shakespeare is mostly about how much we don’t know about him. I found it interesting how people of the time didn’t care about spelling things consistently, including their own name. I’ve worked as an editor for years, and the notion of spelling words haphazardly is completely contrary to everything I’ve ever been taught. Even Scientific American entered the fray with an article proposing that the person portrayed in the famous Martin Droeshout engraving might actually be--I weep to say it--Elizabeth I.”

Bryson's Guided Tour of Shakespeare's World – Minus the Man Himself". New York Observer. Archived from the original on December 22, 2007 . Retrieved April 28, 2008. At first glance, Bill Bryson seems an odd choice to write this addition to the Eminent Lives series. The author of ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ isn’t, after all, a Shakespeare scholar, a playwright, or even a biographer. Reading ‘Shakespeare The World As Stage’, however, one gets the sense that this eclectic Iowan is exactly the type of person the Bard himself would have selected for the task. The man who gave us ‘The Mother Tongue’ and ‘A Walk in the Woods’ approaches Shakespeare with the same freedom of spirit and curiosity that made those books such reader favorites. A refreshing take on an elusive literary master. Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson – eBook Details We don't know if he ever left England. We don't know who his principal companions were or how he amused himself. His sexuality is an irreconcilable mystery. On only a handful of days in his life can we say with absolute certainty where he was. We have no record at all of his whereabouts for the eight critical years when he left his wife and three young children in Stratford and became, with almost impossible swiftness, a successful playwright in London. By the time he is mentioned in print as a playwright, in 1592, his life was already more than half over. Just as we know to some degree how Shakespeare knew what he knew, we also know the same to some degree about Mr. Bryson, for he provides a Selected Bibliography listing “principal books referred to in the text.” There are some three dozen of these, the earliest dating from 1910, the most recent from 2006. But just as significant as these sources are the people Bryson visits (among them an expert in portraiture, an archivist at the National Archives in West London and an assortment of scholars) and the places he goes. As you may know, in addition to being the author of A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), Mr. Bryson is a very well loved travel writer, and what he’s done here is not so great a departure from that genre.He’s obviously an important guy – I use his words and allusions all day long, but he’s also so important that studies and books about Shakespeare tend to be a bit intense…and a bit dense. At school I was required to study two of the Bard’s plays: the one known as The Scottish Play and Twelfth Night. I found the former a real struggle and way too grim but rather enjoyed the humour in the latter. But I’ve never returned to Shakespeare’s work, in truth I just find the language rather impenetrable, just too much like hard work to battle through. But I am somewhat curious about the man considered perhaps the finest writer of them all and I’ve long admired Bryson’s ability to tell a story, so why not give this exploration a go.

With the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Bill Bryson Prize for Science Communication was established in 2005. [32] The competition engages students from around the world in explaining science to non-experts. As part of its 350th anniversary celebrations in 2010 the Royal Society commissioned Bryson to edit a collection of essays by scientists and science writers about the history of science and the Royal Society over the previous three and a half centuries entitled Seeing Further. [33] [34] What we do have for Shakespeare are his plays - all of them but one or two. This is thanks in very large part to the efforts of his colleagues Henry Condell and John Heminges, who put together a more or less complete volume of his work after his death - the justly revered First Folio. It cannot be over-emphasized how fortunate we are to have so many of Shakespeare's works, for the usual condition of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century plays is to be lost. Few manuscripts from any playwrights survive.... Of the approximate three thousand plays thought to have been staged in London from about the time of Shakespeare's birth to the closure of the theatres by the Puritans in 1642, 80 per cent are known only by title....Duvan koji se u Londonu pojavio godinu dana posle Šekspirovog rođenja, isprva je predstavljao luksuz, ali je uskoro postao tako rasprostranjen da je u gradu krajem veka već bilo ništa manje nego sedam hiljada duvandžija. Korišten je ne samo iz zadovoljstva, već i kao lek za raznovrsne boljke, ubrajajući tu i venerične bolesti, migrenu, pa čak i neprijatan zadah, i smatrao se tako dobrom preventivom protiv kuge da su čak i decu podsticali da ga koriste. Izvesno vreme učenicima u Itonu pretila je kazna batinama ukoliko se ustanovi da zanemaruju duvan."

Mi entrañable Bryson no viene aquí a descubrir la pólvora con esta breve y concisa obra. Simple y llanamente expone lo poco que se sabe, dando referencias. De lo que no se sabe o se especula, el autor nos explica porqué no hay que creerse prácticamente nada. Y donde lo borda (y donde me lo he pasado mejor), es en las descripciones que hace de la época. Especialmente del Londres que vio nacer al Globe y sus teatros comtemporáneos. De cómo se (mal)vivía. De las recurrentes epidemias de peste que tuvieron que padecer, con la consiguiente reducción de población. Y, sin embargo, ricos y pobres tenían algo en común. Algo que disfrutaban, aunque muchos ni comprendieran: asistir al gran espectáculo del teatro. One theory is that Shakespeare's plays weren't particularly original,and that he may have taken the main ideas of his plays from other sources. Un personaje tan famoso e ilustre como desconocido. De Shakespeare no se sabe prácticamente nada. Por no saber, ni se sabe en qué orden escribió su extensa obra. Nada sobre sus pensamientos ni reflexiones personales. Nada sobre sus apetencias sexuales. Nada sobre su relación personal con su familia. NADA. Y, sin embargo, a lo largo de la historia, ingente cantidad de personalidades han dedicado su vida a desentrañar al (posiblemente) mejor dramaturgo de todos los tiempos. Y no hablemos de diseccionar su obra línea por línea. The only really interesting points were that estimates of Shakespeare's vocabulary are usually huge overestimates because they include each variant of word form and spelling: take, takes, tak'n, taken etc. It's not the size, but what he did with it that mattered; his true skill was as a phrasemaker, demonstrated by the fact that 10% of the entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations are from his works. Adapted, in 2009, as an illustrated children's edition titled "A Really Short History of Nearly Everything"

We thrill at these plays now. But what must it have been like when they were brand new, when all their references were timely and sharply apt … Imagine what it must have been like to watch Macbeth without knowing the outcome, to be part of a hushed audience hearing Hamlet’s soliloquy for the first time, to witness Shakespeare speaking his own lines. There cannot have been, anywhere in history, many more favored places than this. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-06-04 20:52:58 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA1127308 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor Among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, critical, excellent, eventful, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless).”

Mr Bill Bryson OBE HonFRS Honorary Fellow". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 5 October 2015. biographical text reproduced here was originally published by the Royal Society under a creative commons license The ship that took the Puritan leader John Winthrop to New England carried him, ten thousand gallons of beer, and not much else.)” On 22 November 2012, Durham University officially renamed the Main Library the Bill Bryson Library for his contributions as the university's 11th chancellor (2005–2011). [40] [41] The library also has a cafe named after Bryson's book Notes from a Small Island. [42] Seeing Further – The Story of Science and the Royal Society". The Royal Society. 28 January 2010 . Retrieved 5 December 2022. General admission for groundlings—those who stood in the open around the stage—was a penny. Those who wished to sit paid a penny more, and those who desired a cushion paid another penny on top of that—all this at a time when a day’s wage was 1 shilling (12 pence) or less a day. The money was dropped into a box, which was taken to a special room for safekeeping—the box office.”

To start – I never really knew much about Shakespeare. I knew the basics. And I realized starting the book that I’ve never actually read one of his plays all the way through, though I have seen a couple performed. a b c "Writer Bill Bryson remembers his Iowa roots". Ames Tribune. Gannett Co. 28 October 2013 . Retrieved 31 January 2020. From my limited experience with author biographies, I've learned that the less I know about an author, the happier I am. Thankfully (or regretfully, perhaps), I or anyone else is at little risk of having the Bard's work spoilt by too much biographical information of its creator. The aim of this slender book is to collect all of what we know about Shakespeare, which is precious little indeed. a b "Bill Bryson visits his utopia". The Independent. 7 May 2002. Archived from the original on 9 September 2010. I have no idea how Shakespeare was able to write, perform, run the business of, direct, and manage his plays all at once…and still sleep