He takes particular umbrage with the many arguments that Shakespeare did not actually write his work, and those that state that he could not have actually existed. He takes aim at dozens of bizarre statements and “facts”, but always keeps his barely-stifled giggles in check. We hardly know what he was as a person.”īryson has no patience for the grand opinion-based proclamations throughout time, and he takes great joy in dismantling them. Shakespeare was of course all these things-as a writer. “From a selection of his other works, we might think him variously courtly, cerebral, metaphysical, melancholic, Machiavellian, neurotic, lighthearted, loving, and much more. People have ached to paint a portrait of the man, but really all we have is his language. People believe that he was a sailor because he talked about the sea! People believe that he was actually Queen Elizabeth! People believe that, because he twice used the word “lame” in two separate sonnets, that he MUST have been disabled! There has been so much desire throughout the last few centuries to bend ideas and hopes into fact that we have a garbled and mostly imagined picture of who Shakespeare was and what he did as part of our cultural language. The bust of Shakespeare at Stratford in the Holy Trinity Church, made by people who had actually seen him, was whitewashed over years later by a man who found its coloring indecent and garish- despite the fact that the bust was in its original colorful state.
We are not even entirely sure of what he looked like, and scholars throughout history have messed with the facts to suit their own needs.
We know very few things about him there are only a handful of days where we can say for certain where he was and what he was doing.
Bill Bryson, everyone’s favorite kindly uncle, lays the facts bare while gently chiding all of the (mostly bonkers) “hopeful suppositions” that have been presented as facts by well-meaning and often obsessed fans, historians, and scholars.īryson, himself an acolyte at the altar of Shakespeare, paints a bright and brisk portrait of the man that we know to be Shakespeare. There is a lot to say about Shakespeare, but there is not a lot to know.
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