‘Shakespeare—The World as Stage’ by Bill Bryson
“Shakespeare—The World as Stage” by Bill Bryson is Bryson’s account of this most celebrated poet of the English language. Each time Bryson cites a fact about Will’s life or about his face and figure Bryson adds “this is not true. Shakespeare was forever there and not there,” Bryson says.
A court case from 1612 shows Shakespeare’s signature, the best and most natural, with a blot at the end. Many people researched Shakespeare and found where he was living in London and also learned of his financial interests in the Globe and Blackfriars theaters and his purchase of a gatehouse in 1613. They knew who he was as a writer but not as a person even though there are thirtyeight plays that exist today. Bryson says this is why this book is so thin; so little is known.
1555-1556 were terrible years of illnesses from plague to fevers and the cures were often worse than the illness. Protestantism was transitioning to Catholicism and Queen Elizabeth imposed harsh punishments on those opposed to her rule. It was said that Shakespeare’s father was illiterate as were seventy percent of men and ninety percent of women. Shakespeare was accused of wool trading and money lending and signed with a mark. Will attended the local grammar school and could read and write, mostly in Latin. Will’s education stopped at age fifteen and he was later caught poaching deer at the estate of Sir Thomas Lacy and he left Stratford to avoid prosecution. In November 1582 he applied for a marriage license to Anne Whately but it’s believed he “stood her up” to marry pregnant Anne Hathaway. No record of Anne Whately ever existed and Anne Hathaway is listed on a marriage bond her gravestone says she had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Though he was poor and young (eighteen at his marriage) he became a notable success as a playwright in London. Bryson describes the physical properties of London with the Thames River the main thoroughfare dividing the city and several hundred acres of hunting grounds which are now London’s central parks.
After a time Protestants and Catholics fought and the Spanish Armada attacked the British but the English were nimbler and better commanded and in three weeks they won and returned Protestantism to England. Bryson describes the few theaters that were built in those days and the replica of The Globe after the original burned. Plays were performed at two in the afternoon and handbills were passed out in the town announcing which play. Treats such as apples and nuts were sold to the audience who tossed them onto the stage if the crowd was displeased with the performance. Italian plays were set around a town square, and Shakespeare set his scenes on hillsides, forts, castles, and battlefields, wherever he liked. They were of various lengths, Hamlet is almost four and a half hours, others slightly shorter. Males played the roles of females and Shakespeare wrote many female parts. He often had female characters dressed as boys confusing audiences. A theater needed to draw two thousand spectators a day to prosper. Plays belonged to the company, not to the playwright and few were found with his personal items at Will’s death. He appears to have acted in many of his plays so as to retain control of the script.
Shakespeare wrote a “mushy” letter to a beautiful youth, Henry Wheatherley, and one wonders if this was a love affair. In 1594 he left the world of poetry and devoted himself to the theater and never wrote again to anyone of means. He works with a well-run company with sober, diligent, clean-living members of the cast and crew. They do not draw daggers in public and six times a week dress in costumes and perform, beginning in 1590 but with which play? He often borrowed a play and made it better. So did many others. Bryson says he was not worldly and often put cities for boating far from waterways. He mentions plants and legal terms and many words of medicine, law, military affairs, and natural history. He put a sail-maker in a landlocked city in Italy and he introduced the clock 1400 years before it was heard but his genius had to do with ambition, intrigues, love, and suffering, things not learned in school. He was naturally learned. It is not how many words he knew that are important but what he did with them. Hamlet gave audiences about six hundred words they’d never heard before. Will produced about one-tenth of all the most quotable phrases written or spoken. Bryson cites them in the book though too many to cite here. Ie: “salad days” “flesh and blood”, “foul play,” “blooming idiot,” “bated breath.”
The 1590s were hard years with bad harvests and food shortages in London. People died of starvation and staples doubled in price. However, people went to the theater and for Shakespeare, it was a time of increased fame and good fortune. Nine months after Hamnet’s death he bought a huge house in Stratford with ten fireplaces and land enough for two barns and an orchard. The Globe theater burned in 1613 when sparks from a cannon ignited the roof thatch but the few years it performed plays were majestic: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Otello, King Lear, and Macbeth. To hear the lines from these plays for the first time must have been a thrill.
Will died in 1616 and left money and land to his sister and famously left his wife his second-best bed and the bedding. It is wondered what their relationship was. A silver bowl and a ceremonial sword were left to a friend and are now, Bryson suspects, lost in memory.
Fortunately several of his plays and sonnets were published in a Folio and preserved. Unfortunately, biographers never spoke to his daughter or granddaughter Elizabeth. We might have learned more about Will had the biographer questioned them. Why hadn’t Shakespeare printed his works during his lifetime? Many claimed to be or to have written Will’s works but this was never proven. Bryson says it’s not true. Bryson says no one had the time and talent and motive to produce the greatest literature ever written in four hundred years. See what you think in this delightful informative book called Shakespeare on the new non-fiction shelf of your local library.
Bryson has chosen an interesting subject for his book and it is historical to be aware of the times and the man Shakespeare, one of the greatest writers of the English language.