Continuing with the “aren’t we brilliant, look at our Olympics” theme, and in light of this summer’s World Shakespeare Festival, it seemed appropriate to revisit the most comprehensive, enlightening yet humorous and abstract biography of the most famous playwright in history…written by an American.
Bryson treats Shakespeare in the same way he does any of the
subjects from his travel diaries, with an expert combination of forthright
affection, at once applauding his much celebrated achievements and firmly
shutting down those romanticised myths about the man we actually know very
little about, very little for sure at least.
Most startling are the globally accepted lies that have made
their way into the history books, and stayed there, simply because a single,
ill-informed fan scribbled them down a few hundred years ago.
Also up for debate is his reportedly devoted relationship
with Anne Hathaway, a wife he abandoned, along with his young children, while
he gallivanted off to London to set the theatre scene alight.
Bryson admits where his research has come up against a brick
wall, as with his investigations into the enigmatic subject of what Will did
with himself during the ‘dark period’ in which he dropped off the face of the
earth’s written records, but never fails to intelligently combine all possible
solutions and present us with a credible conclusion.
Plenty of bonus history lessons about Elizabethan London,
Elizabeth herself and her curiously ascended successor, James flesh out this
detailed, yet uncomplicated biography.
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