Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.

Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.


A con, 01 Nov 2008
Where here the blunt Aussie frankness that Germaine Greer has celebrated and been respected for all of her life?
When writing history, it is sometimes almost acceptable to now and then fill in gaps by positing things to make sense of an action, but this disingenuous offering is the worst `history' book I have ever read in that it is 99% conjecture - positing - and 1% truism.
After 400 pages we know exactly nothing more about Shakespeare or his wife, than we did - than anybody did - before. Using highly irritating devices like: `if... we might suppose... it is not inconceivable... I would argue...' etc. ad nauseam, Greer attempts to create a woman whom she can find sympathy with, for no other reason than to defend her against the criticisms of other historians who clearly know no more about their subject than Greer does.
The reader does not care about individuals in the records who have no bearing on the facts about William Shakespeare or Ann Hathaway and are put in as ballast. But anyone interested in the truth will be appalled and insulted by the deceitful way Greer uses suggestion to give substance to her imagination and thus mislead him or her.


Very convincing, compassionate and scholarly, 20 May 2008
I found this a very convincing portrait of a forgotten life and of an often unfairly villified woman. Before I read this book I hadn't realised I fell into the category of what Greer calls 'Bardolaters', people who assume that Shakespeare was such a genius and that his wife was an illiterate cunning woman who trapped a gullible boy into a marriage that he hated and couldn't wait to get away from. Throughout the book, Greer gives Ann her proper title - Ann Shakespeare. I have never seen her referred to as anything other than Ann Hathaway by other writers. This is a powerful statement that puts the author on the Ann's side and enables the reader to re-evaluate what they think of Ann and her life and marriage.
Greer rightly praises Ann's achievements, unnoticed until now: she bore and brought up 3 children through plague and famine on her own, she lived in the same small town all her married life without a hint of scandal and she seems to have not only lived, but prospered, keeping herself and her family with no help from her husband.
Greer also points out that Ann cannot have felt abandoned by her husband as there was a legal process for claiming abandonment for wives in that situation and Ann did not initiate that proceeding.
Much of the book is taken up with accounts of women contemporary with Ann as a way of extrapolating what her life might have been like and this can become confusing and occasionally a bit tedious, which is why I've given the book 4 stars and not 5.
If you want a balanced and compassionate look at the life of a woman who has had a very bad press since the 17th Century, you won't find a better book than this. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in how ordinary people lived at that time and how this extraordinary woman might have lived as well.

Dire, 16 Apr 2008
Although interested in social history and women, this book was a great disappointment. As one reviewer has said (favourably!), this book is just reams of anecdotal information that may, possibly, could be relevant interspersed with inflamatory judgements against other scholars. The book demonstrates no editorial control whatsoever and exists on a presumption that it will sell because of the author and a nice cover. As a broad reader who enjoys serious books based on facts and well constructed argument this was a very unusual disappointment. That said, I buy the argument she made but think it could have been argued a lot cleaner and better. I pity the teacher who will use it in class to stimulate her Shakespeare students as unless carefully used, it could have exactly the opposite effect!

Jarring and fanciful, 18 Mar 2008
Sadly, a rather embarassing performance, this, in the long tradition of half-baked and almost entirely fanciful Shakespearean speculation (A.L. Rowse etc). Greer presents suppositions as fact, and her assertive tone is really jarring, hectoring and trying to compel, rather than drawing the reader in; and there's a nastily dismissive approach to fellow critics and historians (which she isn't). Greer's scholarly work on the seventeenth century writers is sure-footed and interesting. By contrast, this book will be quickly forgotten, I hope. And of course, it's unlucky in that it appears shortly after three genuinely excellent books on Shakespeare: Charles Nicholl's The Lodger, Shapiro's 1599, and Frank Kermode's little book on Shakespeare's Language.

shoddy scholarshio, 22 Jan 2008
This is simply a flight of fancy on Ms Greer's part.She sneers dismissively at the work of other scholars, sometimes in quite an insulting tone, while putting forward her own ideas, most of which can have little basis in fact. She insists that they provide proof for their conclusions while then, often in the next sentence, putting forward an outlandish idea for which she has no proof! She contradicts herself, sometimes as blatently as from page to page. Like the rest of us, she knows very little hard facts about Ann Hathaway, so she looks at what other women of the time did and imagines that Hathaway did them all- from money lending to growing a mulberry tree plantation to brewing beer to being a medicine woman, with plenty of other options in between. However, apart from her rather Mills & Boonish take on the Shakespeares' married life, the most annoying thing about this work is the rubbishing of others' research while replacing it with a house of cards. As a scholar, Ms Greer has let her past work down very badly.

Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.


A con, 01 Nov 2008
Where here the blunt Aussie frankness that Germaine Greer has celebrated and been respected for all of her life?
When writing history, it is sometimes almost acceptable to now and then fill in gaps by positing things to make sense of an action, but this disingenuous offering is the worst `history' book I have ever read in that it is 99% conjecture - positing - and 1% truism.
After 400 pages we know exactly nothing more about Shakespeare or his wife, than we did - than anybody did - before. Using highly irritating devices like: `if... we might suppose... it is not inconceivable... I would argue...' etc. ad nauseam, Greer attempts to create a woman whom she can find sympathy with, for no other reason than to defend her against the criticisms of other historians who clearly know no more about their subject than Greer does.
The reader does not care about individuals in the records who have no bearing on the facts about William Shakespeare or Ann Hathaway and are put in as ballast. But anyone interested in the truth will be appalled and insulted by the deceitful way Greer uses suggestion to give substance to her imagination and thus mislead him or her.


Very convincing, compassionate and scholarly, 20 May 2008
I found this a very convincing portrait of a forgotten life and of an often unfairly villified woman. Before I read this book I hadn't realised I fell into the category of what Greer calls 'Bardolaters', people who assume that Shakespeare was such a genius and that his wife was an illiterate cunning woman who trapped a gullible boy into a marriage that he hated and couldn't wait to get away from. Throughout the book, Greer gives Ann her proper title - Ann Shakespeare. I have never seen her referred to as anything other than Ann Hathaway by other writers. This is a powerful statement that puts the author on the Ann's side and enables the reader to re-evaluate what they think of Ann and her life and marriage.
Greer rightly praises Ann's achievements, unnoticed until now: she bore and brought up 3 children through plague and famine on her own, she lived in the same small town all her married life without a hint of scandal and she seems to have not only lived, but prospered, keeping herself and her family with no help from her husband.
Greer also points out that Ann cannot have felt abandoned by her husband as there was a legal process for claiming abandonment for wives in that situation and Ann did not initiate that proceeding.
Much of the book is taken up with accounts of women contemporary with Ann as a way of extrapolating what her life might have been like and this can become confusing and occasionally a bit tedious, which is why I've given the book 4 stars and not 5.
If you want a balanced and compassionate look at the life of a woman who has had a very bad press since the 17th Century, you won't find a better book than this. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in how ordinary people lived at that time and how this extraordinary woman might have lived as well.

Dire, 16 Apr 2008
Although interested in social history and women, this book was a great disappointment. As one reviewer has said (favourably!), this book is just reams of anecdotal information that may, possibly, could be relevant interspersed with inflamatory judgements against other scholars. The book demonstrates no editorial control whatsoever and exists on a presumption that it will sell because of the author and a nice cover. As a broad reader who enjoys serious books based on facts and well constructed argument this was a very unusual disappointment. That said, I buy the argument she made but think it could have been argued a lot cleaner and better. I pity the teacher who will use it in class to stimulate her Shakespeare students as unless carefully used, it could have exactly the opposite effect!

Jarring and fanciful, 18 Mar 2008
Sadly, a rather embarassing performance, this, in the long tradition of half-baked and almost entirely fanciful Shakespearean speculation (A.L. Rowse etc). Greer presents suppositions as fact, and her assertive tone is really jarring, hectoring and trying to compel, rather than drawing the reader in; and there's a nastily dismissive approach to fellow critics and historians (which she isn't). Greer's scholarly work on the seventeenth century writers is sure-footed and interesting. By contrast, this book will be quickly forgotten, I hope. And of course, it's unlucky in that it appears shortly after three genuinely excellent books on Shakespeare: Charles Nicholl's The Lodger, Shapiro's 1599, and Frank Kermode's little book on Shakespeare's Language.

shoddy scholarshio, 22 Jan 2008
This is simply a flight of fancy on Ms Greer's part.She sneers dismissively at the work of other scholars, sometimes in quite an insulting tone, while putting forward her own ideas, most of which can have little basis in fact. She insists that they provide proof for their conclusions while then, often in the next sentence, putting forward an outlandish idea for which she has no proof! She contradicts herself, sometimes as blatently as from page to page. Like the rest of us, she knows very little hard facts about Ann Hathaway, so she looks at what other women of the time did and imagines that Hathaway did them all- from money lending to growing a mulberry tree plantation to brewing beer to being a medicine woman, with plenty of other options in between. However, apart from her rather Mills & Boonish take on the Shakespeares' married life, the most annoying thing about this work is the rubbishing of others' research while replacing it with a house of cards. As a scholar, Ms Greer has let her past work down very badly.

Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.

Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.


A con, 01 Nov 2008
Where here the blunt Aussie frankness that Germaine Greer has celebrated and been respected for all of her life?
When writing history, it is sometimes almost acceptable to now and then fill in gaps by positing things to make sense of an action, but this disingenuous offering is the worst `history' book I have ever read in that it is 99% conjecture - positing - and 1% truism.
After 400 pages we know exactly nothing more about Shakespeare or his wife, than we did - than anybody did - before. Using highly irritating devices like: `if... we might suppose... it is not inconceivable... I would argue...' etc. ad nauseam, Greer attempts to create a woman whom she can find sympathy with, for no other reason than to defend her against the criticisms of other historians who clearly know no more about their subject than Greer does.
The reader does not care about individuals in the records who have no bearing on the facts about William Shakespeare or Ann Hathaway and are put in as ballast. But anyone interested in the truth will be appalled and insulted by the deceitful way Greer uses suggestion to give substance to her imagination and thus mislead him or her.


Very convincing, compassionate and scholarly, 20 May 2008
I found this a very convincing portrait of a forgotten life and of an often unfairly villified woman. Before I read this book I hadn't realised I fell into the category of what Greer calls 'Bardolaters', people who assume that Shakespeare was such a genius and that his wife was an illiterate cunning woman who trapped a gullible boy into a marriage that he hated and couldn't wait to get away from. Throughout the book, Greer gives Ann her proper title - Ann Shakespeare. I have never seen her referred to as anything other than Ann Hathaway by other writers. This is a powerful statement that puts the author on the Ann's side and enables the reader to re-evaluate what they think of Ann and her life and marriage.
Greer rightly praises Ann's achievements, unnoticed until now: she bore and brought up 3 children through plague and famine on her own, she lived in the same small town all her married life without a hint of scandal and she seems to have not only lived, but prospered, keeping herself and her family with no help from her husband.
Greer also points out that Ann cannot have felt abandoned by her husband as there was a legal process for claiming abandonment for wives in that situation and Ann did not initiate that proceeding.
Much of the book is taken up with accounts of women contemporary with Ann as a way of extrapolating what her life might have been like and this can become confusing and occasionally a bit tedious, which is why I've given the book 4 stars and not 5.
If you want a balanced and compassionate look at the life of a woman who has had a very bad press since the 17th Century, you won't find a better book than this. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in how ordinary people lived at that time and how this extraordinary woman might have lived as well.

Dire, 16 Apr 2008
Although interested in social history and women, this book was a great disappointment. As one reviewer has said (favourably!), this book is just reams of anecdotal information that may, possibly, could be relevant interspersed with inflamatory judgements against other scholars. The book demonstrates no editorial control whatsoever and exists on a presumption that it will sell because of the author and a nice cover. As a broad reader who enjoys serious books based on facts and well constructed argument this was a very unusual disappointment. That said, I buy the argument she made but think it could have been argued a lot cleaner and better. I pity the teacher who will use it in class to stimulate her Shakespeare students as unless carefully used, it could have exactly the opposite effect!

Jarring and fanciful, 18 Mar 2008
Sadly, a rather embarassing performance, this, in the long tradition of half-baked and almost entirely fanciful Shakespearean speculation (A.L. Rowse etc). Greer presents suppositions as fact, and her assertive tone is really jarring, hectoring and trying to compel, rather than drawing the reader in; and there's a nastily dismissive approach to fellow critics and historians (which she isn't). Greer's scholarly work on the seventeenth century writers is sure-footed and interesting. By contrast, this book will be quickly forgotten, I hope. And of course, it's unlucky in that it appears shortly after three genuinely excellent books on Shakespeare: Charles Nicholl's The Lodger, Shapiro's 1599, and Frank Kermode's little book on Shakespeare's Language.

shoddy scholarshio, 22 Jan 2008
This is simply a flight of fancy on Ms Greer's part.She sneers dismissively at the work of other scholars, sometimes in quite an insulting tone, while putting forward her own ideas, most of which can have little basis in fact. She insists that they provide proof for their conclusions while then, often in the next sentence, putting forward an outlandish idea for which she has no proof! She contradicts herself, sometimes as blatently as from page to page. Like the rest of us, she knows very little hard facts about Ann Hathaway, so she looks at what other women of the time did and imagines that Hathaway did them all- from money lending to growing a mulberry tree plantation to brewing beer to being a medicine woman, with plenty of other options in between. However, apart from her rather Mills & Boonish take on the Shakespeares' married life, the most annoying thing about this work is the rubbishing of others' research while replacing it with a house of cards. As a scholar, Ms Greer has let her past work down very badly.

Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.


Seminal year, seminal study, 15 Aug 2008
No cradle-to-grave study, this book takes a radically different approach to biography by focusing on a single year. Sounds bizarre, but it works.

1599 was an eventful Elizabethan year. It witnessed, among other things, the building of the Globe, Essex's campaign in Ireland, the phoney ('invisible') Spanish Armada and endless speculation about the succession. Shapiro chooses to put this particular year in the spotlight not just because of its historical richness but because it was, he suggests, the decisive year in Shakespeare's development as a writer. Here, he is in agreement with Frank Kermode who, in 'Shakespeare's Language' (2000), reaches a similar conclusion.

'1599' is a book with many virtues, not least of which is a readability and accessibility that make it ideal for both general and student reading. It has pace, structure and a wonderfully lucid and engaging style. It is particularly interesting when making unlikely assertions. We all know that Shakespeare wrote 'romantic' comedies, unlike the 'realistic' ones of Jonson, Middleton et al. But Shapiro tells us, on the basis of its historically informed details, that As You Like It possesses a new and occasionally gritty realism. As well as its cross-dressing, sylvan setting, pastoral singing and happy ending, the satirical voices of Touchstone and Jaques exploit the vogue for malcontented social criticism created by Jonson's 'humour' play of 1599. And he thinks it no coincidence that Rosalind should enter the forest of Arden disguised as a soldier, many of whom would have been seen disconsolately returning home from the ill-fated Irish campaign that summer.

Shapiro makes the excellent point that we need to look beyond printed material to get a fuller idea of Shakespeare's sources - beyond the likes of Holinshed, Plutarch and Lodge, in other words. Elizabethan culture was largely oral/aural and only rarely literary, resulting in prodigious and retentive memories. The most famous preacher of the day was Lancelot Andrewes, who gave the Lenten sermon at Richmond Palace in 1599, where Shakespeare just happened to be performing for the court. By chance, Andrewes's text has survived, enabling Shapiro to identify verbal echoes between it and some of the opening exchanges in Henry V.

Admittedly, one reason why Shapiro is so convincing may be his tendency to present supposition as fact. 'Shakespeare was caught up in writing As You Like It pretty clearly by late summer 1599...' And a few pages later, 'The first role he would create for Armin would be Touchstone.' Yet it is by no means certain that Shakespeare hadn't already written AYL in 1598 (as the new Arden edition considers probable) or that the role of Touchstone wasn't in fact played by Kemp before his imminent departure from the Chamberlain's Men, as Arden again argues.

But Shapiro's ideas are at the very least plausible as well as intriguing. He tells us, for example, that before turning to the theatre Robert Armin had trained as a goldsmith - whose professional emblem was a touchstone! Whether a fortunate coincidence or an in-joke enabling us to chart the comings and goings of the Chamberlain's Men there's ultimately no telling, but it is a fascinating detail characteristic of an outstanding book. '1599' represents a successful and innovative approach to Shakespearean biography.

Brilliant, 09 Mar 2008
Shapiro has done a brilliant job of painting a picture of London in 1599, the year that Shakespeare wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and started on Hamlet, going through as many surviving books and documents from that year as possible, mooring his narrative quite firmly in what facts we have, frank about the extent to which he is speculating when he does.

For those who are not London residents (maybe even for those who are) the first interesting page is the very first, with a map of London in 1599. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance at seeing Whitehall and Westminster so far outside the old city limits. And while I knew that the Tower roughly marked one end of the City, I didn't realise that St Paul's marked pretty much the other end. Even by Pepys' day, sixty years later, a lot of the West End had been built over. Shakespeare's generation must have been the last for whom Lincoln's Inn Fields really were fields.

Ireland also looms heavily in the story. Here you had a seemingly unending overseas conflict pitting English soldiers against bitter and successful insurgents, to the point that the government as a whole was becoming deeply discredited by its failure to win and the waste of money and soldiers.

Original take on life and times, 25 Oct 2007
This is a detailed take on the life, times and works of William Shakespeare, which, originally and to its eternal credit, focuses on one year of a productive life, the year in which he wrote "Hamlet", amongst other things. Shakespeare is put into his artistic, religious and historical context.

While the research put into this book is prodigious, it does not weigh the book down; it is perfectly accessible to the layman, and provides an interesting counterpoint to Bill Bryson's recent effort. Both authors are unafraid to admit the paucity of the source materials available and are perfectly happy to acknowledge the impossibility of any form of academic certainty. How refreshing.

Dry but superbly researched, 19 Oct 2007
Shapiro's book is occasionally brilliant and always rich in detail. Starting in the winter of 1598/1599, the striking first image (the players of Shakespeare's Chamberlain's Men company, with Shakespeare likely one of them, descend in the night as a fully armed gang intent on dismbembering a theatre) is met with some startling insights into the creative process, but too often flows into a dry academic vocabulary.

This book, nonetheless, is extraordinarily successful at showing us the moods and currents of the epoch and how these inter-linking themes in the general culture influenced Shakespeare in a very productive year - and the year of the building of the Globe Theatre itself, the incubator of so much of Shakespeare's future inspiration (and, as a share-holder therein, the source of some considerable wealth for this Stratford-man done well).

Particularly noteworthy is the evocation of Elizabethan court life and the teasing out of influences on playwrights and poets that resulted from the complex power-struggles of the nobility and monarchy. Great sensitivity is shown, for example, in analysing aspects of "Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar" that derive from this hothouse milieu.

Why is this book disappointing despite its many strengths? Alas, there is something dry and inconclusive to Shapiro's work despite the sprawling review of Shakespearian mores and customs it encompasses. Shapiro is rightly wary of venturing into speculation as to the motives of Shakespeare as an individual, but this reduces a sense of clear argument within the book for all its strengh as a source of anecdotes. In comparison, and also pursuing an unorthodox but revealing analysis of the Shakespearian era, Germaine Greer's "Shakespeare's Wife" is a glittering corrective and points the way to the kind of book that this could have been - strongly argued, also richly researched but filled with a passion that Shapiro rarely aspires to. "1599" is an excellent academic tool and shows a fascinating approach, but in the end, is likely to faintly disappoint a general reader.

A Winner: The World's Leading Literary Figure Centre Stage, 26 Jul 2007
England was at war with the Irish, a second Armada was expected any time and it was so cold the Thames froze. Oh, yes, Queen Elizabeth was on the throne but she was ageing and childless and potential successors were lining up. Yet it was to prove a great year for literature because William Shakespeare was creating some of his greatest works, Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet and As You Like It. It was a time when to displease The Queen could be fatal and when the Lord Chamberlain censored books and plays, a sort of Elizabethan political correctness. Many a slip twix pen and paper could prove costly, particularly as Shakespeare and his like relied heavily on material provided by national and Court events. He invented new words and, of course, over the centuries since his death, the language has changed and so have the meanings, which is why many modern people find The Bard difficult to understand. The Cote d'Azur Men's Book Club, learned chaps all, had no such trouble and voted New York professor James Shapiro's saga, "l599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare", a winner.
Shapiro focuses on Shakespeare's work and his environment rather than his domestic life, and Shapiro's prose, coupled with one's imagination, brings the Elizabethan era vividly to life. The Earl of Essex is a ghostly figure well before he had his head chopped off by The Queen he professed to love. A ghostly figure not quite in the same context as Hamlet's father, but maybe Essex was someone who gave Shakespeare much food for thought. These were not peaceful times; the man in the street and thousands like him were pressed into Army service and many were ambushed and massacred by Lord Tyrone's bloodthirsty Irish soldiers.
The book works well at three levels, placing Shakespeare in the context of Elizabethan England and its social, political and theatrical environment, about which there is enough for all tastes. Shapiro shrewdly picks his way through the streets of London, following the writers, the fools, the courtiers and The Queen. He has written a book full of detail, that captures the sense and feel of the era, and it puts the world's leading literary figure back where he belongs, centre stage. Francis Bacon gets a few mentions, but the author does not subscribe to the controversial opinion that Bacon penned some of Shakespeare's plays. Is this a dagger I see before me? Quite so.

Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.


A con, 01 Nov 2008
Where here the blunt Aussie frankness that Germaine Greer has celebrated and been respected for all of her life?
When writing history, it is sometimes almost acceptable to now and then fill in gaps by positing things to make sense of an action, but this disingenuous offering is the worst `history' book I have ever read in that it is 99% conjecture - positing - and 1% truism.
After 400 pages we know exactly nothing more about Shakespeare or his wife, than we did - than anybody did - before. Using highly irritating devices like: `if... we might suppose... it is not inconceivable... I would argue...' etc. ad nauseam, Greer attempts to create a woman whom she can find sympathy with, for no other reason than to defend her against the criticisms of other historians who clearly know no more about their subject than Greer does.
The reader does not care about individuals in the records who have no bearing on the facts about William Shakespeare or Ann Hathaway and are put in as ballast. But anyone interested in the truth will be appalled and insulted by the deceitful way Greer uses suggestion to give substance to her imagination and thus mislead him or her.


Very convincing, compassionate and scholarly, 20 May 2008
I found this a very convincing portrait of a forgotten life and of an often unfairly villified woman. Before I read this book I hadn't realised I fell into the category of what Greer calls 'Bardolaters', people who assume that Shakespeare was such a genius and that his wife was an illiterate cunning woman who trapped a gullible boy into a marriage that he hated and couldn't wait to get away from. Throughout the book, Greer gives Ann her proper title - Ann Shakespeare. I have never seen her referred to as anything other than Ann Hathaway by other writers. This is a powerful statement that puts the author on the Ann's side and enables the reader to re-evaluate what they think of Ann and her life and marriage.
Greer rightly praises Ann's achievements, unnoticed until now: she bore and brought up 3 children through plague and famine on her own, she lived in the same small town all her married life without a hint of scandal and she seems to have not only lived, but prospered, keeping herself and her family with no help from her husband.
Greer also points out that Ann cannot have felt abandoned by her husband as there was a legal process for claiming abandonment for wives in that situation and Ann did not initiate that proceeding.
Much of the book is taken up with accounts of women contemporary with Ann as a way of extrapolating what her life might have been like and this can become confusing and occasionally a bit tedious, which is why I've given the book 4 stars and not 5.
If you want a balanced and compassionate look at the life of a woman who has had a very bad press since the 17th Century, you won't find a better book than this. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in how ordinary people lived at that time and how this extraordinary woman might have lived as well.

Dire, 16 Apr 2008
Although interested in social history and women, this book was a great disappointment. As one reviewer has said (favourably!), this book is just reams of anecdotal information that may, possibly, could be relevant interspersed with inflamatory judgements against other scholars. The book demonstrates no editorial control whatsoever and exists on a presumption that it will sell because of the author and a nice cover. As a broad reader who enjoys serious books based on facts and well constructed argument this was a very unusual disappointment. That said, I buy the argument she made but think it could have been argued a lot cleaner and better. I pity the teacher who will use it in class to stimulate her Shakespeare students as unless carefully used, it could have exactly the opposite effect!

Jarring and fanciful, 18 Mar 2008
Sadly, a rather embarassing performance, this, in the long tradition of half-baked and almost entirely fanciful Shakespearean speculation (A.L. Rowse etc). Greer presents suppositions as fact, and her assertive tone is really jarring, hectoring and trying to compel, rather than drawing the reader in; and there's a nastily dismissive approach to fellow critics and historians (which she isn't). Greer's scholarly work on the seventeenth century writers is sure-footed and interesting. By contrast, this book will be quickly forgotten, I hope. And of course, it's unlucky in that it appears shortly after three genuinely excellent books on Shakespeare: Charles Nicholl's The Lodger, Shapiro's 1599, and Frank Kermode's little book on Shakespeare's Language.

shoddy scholarshio, 22 Jan 2008
This is simply a flight of fancy on Ms Greer's part.She sneers dismissively at the work of other scholars, sometimes in quite an insulting tone, while putting forward her own ideas, most of which can have little basis in fact. She insists that they provide proof for their conclusions while then, often in the next sentence, putting forward an outlandish idea for which she has no proof! She contradicts herself, sometimes as blatently as from page to page. Like the rest of us, she knows very little hard facts about Ann Hathaway, so she looks at what other women of the time did and imagines that Hathaway did them all- from money lending to growing a mulberry tree plantation to brewing beer to being a medicine woman, with plenty of other options in between. However, apart from her rather Mills & Boonish take on the Shakespeares' married life, the most annoying thing about this work is the rubbishing of others' research while replacing it with a house of cards. As a scholar, Ms Greer has let her past work down very badly.

Fascinating and accessible approach to Shakespeare, 05 Nov 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, admittedly, but it does not bill itself as a Shakepeare textbook or biography and would be a different animal if it was. If you take it at face value, it's a fun read, helped along by Bryson's amusing style.

Read this even if you are bored by Shakespeare, 28 Oct 2008
Bought it as a background book to a historical novel on Shakespeare. I knew so little about the man.It is one of the best books I read all year. Bryson explains with great clarity how scholars are forced to deduce so much with very little hard evidence. Even the basic facts that 'every school-child knows' are really conjectures. No contemporary manuscript of his plays exists. His birthday (23 April) is based upon assumptions drawn from his baptism. Even his picture may not be him. Bryson then dances his way through the host of theories, myths and scholastic analysis over the past five hundred years like a wiry court jester. It helped me make sense of it all and even become quite excited. I finally understood the significance of the different folios/quartos - and even more amazingly, I cared. For the first time in 30 odd years I had the urge to re-read Shakespeare's plays and I even thought about buying an audio-tape of Macbeth. I didn't but my hand hesitantly stretched out towards the shelf before I put it down again.

Makes the most of what little there is to know, 26 Sep 2008
A neat little book exploring what little we know about Shakespeare's life. Bryson hasn't had the easiest of tasks, trying to work a coherent life out of such scant information and vague references to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and all in all he's done well.

It starts a little dry, and the small details get a bit overwhelming - but then, there is little emotive material to work with so detail is there is to offer. Where Bryson excels is in fleshing out these patchy details with other interesting information about the theatrical conventions of the time, life in Stratford and London, and other literary types who surrounded Shakespeare. In doing so he turns this into a much more interesting biography than it would otherwise have been. The last chapter, relating to the various theories that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnets attributed to him, is where Bryson's wit and sharp humour really come into their own as he batters them down one by one, and the book thus ends on a vibrant note which made me laugh aloud and left a lasting smile!

Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Sep 2008
Although his name is oft bandied about as a must read this is the first time I've ever had the chance. Bryson that is not Shakespeare! This serves as a nice intro to Shakespeare the man with a "just the facts ma'am" approach. And as he admits, this slim volume is a testament to the fact that what we can take as absolute fact about Shakespeare is very little at all.

For a giant in literary terms Shakespeare has left very few footprints. However as Bryson points out this isn't as odd as it might sound, one can't reasonably expect records dating 400 years ago to either be in a sturdy condition or to be legible or even to have survived numerous calamities over the years from natural fires to German bombing campaigns. The fact that the actual early copies of manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays account for about 15 % of all surviving plays from the late Elizabethan / early Jacobean period is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

The author obviously allows room to discuss the speculation of other scholars or this would be a very very slim volume indeed, but he clearly demarcates between what is established fact and what is theory. From his early years we get the speculation of his education and whether he was a secret Catholic, to the sparse years in London before becoming an established writer taking in such romantic fancies that he sailed with Drake.

The one thing Bryson holds no stock in at all is the theory that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays and though he dutifully covers all the potential others he is quite clear on the lack of any tangible evidence that anyone other than William of Stratford wrote the plays

The Perfect Layman's Biography of Shakespeare, 13 Sep 2008
Well, I suppose the big beardy Anglophile yank had to do it sooner or later.

As Bryson himself says in his introduction, the world doesn't really need another book on Shakespeare. From the incredibly specific and obscure to the uselessly vague and general, from the trivially lightweight to the inaccessibly somber, the Bard of Stratford is the subject of literally dozens of new books of facts, biography, analysis, opinion, theory and conjecture, every damn year.

For all that, this was a worthwhile book to have written, which is more or less all we'd expect of Bryson, who is a clear, clever and witty writer who rarely fails to please.

Bryson has chosen biography as his goal. The book is written in more or less chronological order, with chapters covering distinct periods in Will's life. Bryson starts by characterising the period, analysing the (usually scant) evidence available, then raising and scrutinising the various popular interpretations about what is known. He detours occasionally into anecdotal discussion about his researches or funny or impressive stories about other people's attempts at research, which all over helps it from getting too dry and to remain a very Bryson book.

Throughout he's diligent about the distinction between evidence and interpretation. The problem is, we actually have pretty slender information about Shakespeare's life: a veritable wealth of data by the standards of Elizabethans in general, but still very little from which to derive any reliable idea of the facts of his life. Inevitably, this means foraying into conjecture from time to time; a practice at which Shakespearean academe excels, but a dangerous one. Bryson gives an example of the famous deer-poaching incident, a romantic guess made in the eighteenth century that was repeated as solid fact in Shakespeare scholarship for more than a hundred years after. Bryson, by contrast, while happy to include reasonable and useful guesses as to how to interpret what is known, is very careful to let you know what's fact - and where it's from - and what's conjecture and how it was arrived at.

If you're seriously into your Shakespeare scholarship, this book probably doesn't have anything new to tell you (although Bryson's research is up to date, and he has access to facts I didn't have at Uni), but if you're only likely to buy one Shakespeare biography in your life, this isn't a bad one to choose.


Seminal year, seminal study, 15 Aug 2008
No cradle-to-grave study, this book takes a radically different approach to biography by focusing on a single year. Sounds bizarre, but it works.

1599 was an eventful Elizabethan year. It witnessed, among other things, the building of the Globe, Essex's campaign in Ireland, the phoney ('invisible') Spanish Armada and endless speculation about the succession. Shapiro chooses to put this particular year in the spotlight not just because of its historical richness but because it was, he suggests, the decisive year in Shakespeare's development as a writer. Here, he is in agreement with Frank Kermode who, in 'Shakespeare's Language' (2000), reaches a similar conclusion.

'1599' is a book with many virtues, not least of which is a readability and accessibility that make it ideal for both general and student reading. It has pace, structure and a wonderfully lucid and engaging style. It is particularly interesting when making unlikely assertions. We all know that Shakespeare wrote 'romantic' comedies, unlike the 'realistic' ones of Jonson, Middleton et al. But Shapiro tells us, on the basis of its historically informed details, that As You Like It possesses a new and occasionally gritty realism. As well as its cross-dressing, sylvan setting, pastoral singing and happy ending, the satirical voices of Touchstone and Jaques exploit the vogue for malcontented social criticism created by Jonson's 'humour' play of 1599. And he thinks it no coincidence that Rosalind should enter the forest of Arden disguised as a soldier, many of whom would have been seen disconsolately returning home from the ill-fated Irish campaign that summer.

Shapiro makes the excellent point that we need to look beyond printed material to get a fuller idea of Shakespeare's sources - beyond the likes of Holinshed, Plutarch and Lodge, in other words. Elizabethan culture was largely oral/aural and only rarely literary, resulting in prodigious and retentive memories. The most famous preacher of the day was Lancelot Andrewes, who gave the Lenten sermon at Richmond Palace in 1599, where Shakespeare just happened to be performing for the court. By chance, Andrewes's text has survived, enabling Shapiro to identify verbal echoes between it and some of the opening exchanges in Henry V.

Admittedly, one reason why Shapiro is so convincing may be his tendency to present supposition as fact. 'Shakespeare was caught up in writing As You Like It pretty clearly by late summer 1599...' And a few pages later, 'The first role he would create for Armin would be Touchstone.' Yet it is by no means certain that Shakespeare hadn't already written AYL in 1598 (as the new Arden edition considers probable) or that the role of Touchstone wasn't in fact played by Kemp before his imminent departure from the Chamberlain's Men, as Arden again argues.

But Shapiro's ideas are at the very least plausible as well as intriguing. He tells us, for example, that before turning to the theatre Robert Armin had trained as a goldsmith - whose professional emblem was a touchstone! Whether a fortunate coincidence or an in-joke enabling us to chart the comings and goings of the Chamberlain's Men there's ultimately no telling, but it is a fascinating detail characteristic of an outstanding book. '1599' represents a successful and innovative approach to Shakespearean biography.

Brilliant, 09 Mar 2008
Shapiro has done a brilliant job of painting a picture of London in 1599, the year that Shakespeare wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and started on Hamlet, going through as many surviving books and documents from that year as possible, mooring his narrative quite firmly in what facts we have, frank about the extent to which he is speculating when he does.

For those who are not London residents (maybe even for those who are) the first interesting page is the very first, with a map of London in 1599. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance at seeing Whitehall and Westminster so far outside the old city limits. And while I knew that the Tower roughly marked one end of the City, I didn't realise that St Paul's marked pretty much the other end. Even by Pepys' day, sixty years later, a lot of the West End had been built over. Shakespeare's generation must have been the last for whom Lincoln's Inn Fields really were fields.

Ireland also looms heavily in the story. Here you had a seemingly unending overseas conflict pitting English soldiers against bitter and successful insurgents, to the point that the government as a whole was becoming deeply discredited by its failure to win and the waste of money and soldiers.

Original take on life and times, 25 Oct 2007
This is a detailed take on the life, times and works of William Shakespeare, which, originally and to its eternal credit, focuses on one year of a productive life, the year in which he wrote "Hamlet", amongst other things. Shakespeare is put into his artistic, religious and historical context.

While the research put into this book is prodigious, it does not weigh the book down; it is perfectly accessible to the layman, and provides an interesting counterpoint to Bill Bryson's recent effort. Both authors are unafraid to admit the paucity of the source materials available and are perfectly happy to acknowledge the impossibility of any form of academic certainty. How refreshing.

Dry but superbly researched, 19 Oct 2007
Shapiro's book is occasionally brilliant and always rich in detail. Starting in the winter of 1598/1599, the striking first image (the players of Shakespeare's Chamberlain's Men company, with Shakespeare likely one of them, descend in the night as a fully armed gang intent on dismbembering a theatre) is met with some startling insights into the creative process, but too often flows into a dry academic vocabulary.

This book, nonetheless, is extraordinarily successful at showing us the moods and currents of the epoch and how these inter-linking themes in the general culture influenced Shakespeare in a very productive year - and the year of the building of the Globe Theatre itself, the incubator of so much of Shakespeare's future inspiration (and, as a share-holder therein, the source of some considerable wealth for this Stratford-man done well).

Particularly noteworthy is the evocation of Elizabethan court life and the teasing out of influences on playwrights and poets that resulted from the complex power-struggles of the nobility and monarchy. Great sensitivity is shown, for example, in analysing aspects of "Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar" that derive from this hothouse milieu.

Why is this book disappointing despite its many strengths? Alas, there is something dry and inconclusive to Shapiro's work despite the sprawling review of Shakespearian mores and customs it encompasses. Shapiro is rightly wary of venturing into speculation as to the motives of Shakespeare as an individual, but this reduces a sense of clear argument within the book for all its strengh as a source of anecdotes. In comparison, and also pursuing an unorthodox but revealing analysis of the Shakespearian era, Germaine Greer's "Shakespeare's Wife" is a glittering corrective and points the way to the kind of book that this could have been - strongly argued, also richly researched but filled with a passion that Shapiro rarely aspires to. "1599" is an excellent academic tool and shows a fascinating approach, but in the end, is likely to faintly disappoint a general reader.

A Winner: The World's Leading Literary Figure Centre Stage, 26 Jul 2007
England was at war with the Irish, a second Armada was expected any time and it was so cold the Thames froze. Oh, yes, Queen Elizabeth was on the throne but she was ageing and childless and potential successors were lining up. Yet it was to prove a great year for literature because William Shakespeare was creating some of his greatest works, Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet and As You Like It. It was a time when to displease The Queen could be fatal and when the Lord Chamberlain censored books and plays, a sort of Elizabethan political correctness. Many a slip twix pen and paper could prove costly, particularly as Shakespeare and his like relied heavily on material provided by national and Court events. He invented new words and, of course, over the centuries since his death, the language has changed and so have the meanings, which is why many modern people find The Bard difficult to understand. The Cote d'Azur Men's Book Club, learned chaps all, had no such trouble and voted New York professor James Shapiro's saga, "l599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare", a winner.
Shapiro focuses on Shakespeare's work and his environment rather than his domestic life, and Shapiro's prose, coupled with one's imagination, brings the Elizabethan era vividly to life. The Earl of Essex is a ghostly figure well before he had his head chopped off by The Queen he professed to love. A ghostly figure not quite in the same context as Hamlet's father, but maybe Essex was someone who gave Shakespeare much food for thought. These were not peaceful times; the man in the street and thousands like him were pressed into Army service and many were ambushed and massacred by Lord Tyrone's bloodthirsty Irish soldiers.
The book works well at three levels, placing Shakespeare in the context of Elizabethan England and its social, political and theatrical environment, about which there is enough for all tastes. Shapiro shrewdly picks his way through the streets of London, following the writers, the fools, the courtiers and The Queen. He has written a book full of detail, that captures the sense and feel of the era, and it puts the world's leading literary figure back where he belongs, centre stage. Francis Bacon gets a few mentions, but the author does not subscribe to the controversial opinion that Bacon penned some of Shakespeare's plays. Is this a dagger I see before me? Quite so.


Enticing and thought-provoking, 21 Mar 2002
The scholarship pervades this book. In the bargain, the thesis of this work is expounded in a style which engages and takes control. It is polemical in parts, but does try to balance the clearly and forcefully expressed ideas with a consideration of competing themes. Having said that, the occasional political bias does come through - but in the context of this book and its discussion of cultural influence and expression, that is no bad thing. The bonus was that the average reader will learn a great deal. What more could one ask for? A well written book, which instils novel ideas, challenges existing prejudices and educates.

The genius of Bate!, 03 Aug 1999
Jonathan Bate's THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE takes issue with cultural conservatives and with politically correct radicals to explain how a dramatist of humble orgins became the best known author in history. In what is described as "a new kind of biography", Bate offers a two-part history of Shakespeare's talent and reputation. Instead of the usual life story or play-by-play account, Bate begins part one by discussing the anecdotes that were told about Shakespeare during his life, looking at how his contemporaries saw him. Then he moves on to dissect the sonnets showing the various ways they have been used to provide a biographical key to their author's life. Wielding Occam's razor, Bate attacks the tendency of the "life and works" approach to over-interpret the poems to illuminate the dark corners of the life.

Bate's willingness to admit that much will never be known is refreshing. His suggestion about the Dark Lady's identity is delightfully mischievous: she could have been the wife of John Florio, Italian secretary to the Earl of Southampton. Given the sources, this is as credible as most other interpretations, even though Bate is attempting to convict the poet Samuel Daniel's sister of multiple adultery on circumstantial evidence that would not have persuaded Othello. More daring is Bate's solution to the conclusion of "Master W H", the unknown "begetter" of the sonnets. This, he argues, is just a printer's error for "W S" (William Shakespeare).

When addressing the authorship question, Bate uses knockabout tactics to demolish alternative candidates - from Francis Bacon to sundry lords - but he does so in a more profound question: why should anyone doubt that Shakespeare wrote the plays? As so often, the answer concerns class. Cultural conservatives could not bear the idea that a mere grammer-school boy and butcher's son was as talented as university-trained wits.

In part two, Bate deals with the gradual growth of Shakespeare's reputation after his death. Since the Bard's plays broke the rules of classical decorum, his eighteenth-century admirers were forced to "invent" a new category of "native genius" to account for his talent. Shakespeare's apparent weakness, his lack of a university education, turned out to be his greatest strength. Aided by sundry Romantics, Britain's national poet was defined a "natural" genius.

Other emerging nations also adopted Shakespeare as a cultural icon, but usually in opposition to the classical culture of oppressive rulers. In Germany, for example, the Bard was reinvented as a symbol of anti-Gallic, pro-Teutonic identity. As a large part of Shakespeare's rise to universal deification was his ability to inspire other artists, Bate considers the reworking of his plays by artists such as Hector Berlioz, Giuseppe Verdi and Henry Fuseli.

Although everyone knows that Shakespeare has been used for conservative propaganda, Bate is at his best when he reminds us that the Bard was once also the people's playwright. The use of Shakespeare by Quakers, Chartists and other nonconformists as a counter-tradition - "one nurtured in the dissenting academies in which those excluded from the old universities found an educational community" - powerfully suggests that Shakespeare's genius was rooted in the ability to represent so many different aspects of life that all social groups could find cofirmation of their world-view in his books.

Bate goes further. Rather than being a reactionary Dead White European Male, Shakespeare was also an inspiration to black writers such as George Lamming and Aime Cesaire, who used THE TEMPEST as a critique of colonialism and as "the voice of the recovered black identity". Examples such as these seem to prove Bate's assertion, following Jorge Luis Borges, that Shakespeare can be "everything and nothing".

Perhaps the most polemical passages are those in which Bate revisits the arguments between the conservative "vigilantes", who use the Bard to police educational standards, and the politically correct "new iconoclasts", who use him for their own ideological ends by arguing that Shakespeare was less a genius than a product of historical forces. At its most extreme, this view denies that his works have any meaning: it is we who give meaning to them.

Between the stubborn assertiveness of the conservatives and the absurd reductionism of the radicals, Bate occupies a middle ground - Shakespeare, he insists, became an icon of genius because he was a better playwright than his contempories. His reputation has become universal because his plays really do contain a rich store of images, ambiguities and the juxtaposition of different viewpoints convincingly imagined.

Bate ends his book by arguing that Shakespeare's dramatic techniques - he toned down, for example, the stark motivations of characters he found in his sources - have only been fully appreciated in the twentieth-century. After modern science and philosophy propagated new ideas about relativism, uncertainty and the coexistence of opposites, the way was open for William Empson to lead the appreciation of ambiguity in Shakespeare's work.

THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE is aimed squarely at the general reader. Cultural materialists are sure to be exasperated as conservatives and other Shakespeare specialists may cringe at the boldness of his assertions and the ambition of his scope. Like many popular accounts, this well written b