The Book Tower

I can’t really explain what attracted me to Bill Bryson’s new biography of William Shakespeare. There are much weightier books I trawled through as a student, and at only 200 pages I wasn’t sure what Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as a Stage could offer. However, he excuses his brevity by reminding us that Shakespeare the person is largely a mystery; although we know some key facts about his life, the years of his birth and death, who he married, how many children he had and so on, there’s nothing particularly substantial that’s survived history that even begins to explain his genius and enduring appeal. So as Bryson doesn’t attempt to provide an academic study into any of his plays – Bryson’s a man of facts and figures and not poetry and drama (and he’s more likely to tell us how many words feature in Hamlet as opposed to the themes it explores) – he aims to put Shakespeare into context instead, and we learn about London and the world of the theatre circa 1600.

And this period is always interesting to read about. Bryson is particularly keen to relate the grisly torture and execution that befell traitors and heretics, and he’s also keen to report on poor diet and sanitation, the very low life expectancy and of course the recurring visits of plague. He also gives a very good picture of the theatres of the time, how they came to be and what they were used for. For example, while crowds were prepared to stand watching several hours of Shakespearean tragedy (and as far as we can tell greatly enjoy it) they were also happy to watch bear baiting on another day in the same theatre. This is a book that really enjoys explaning just how different and remote the times were. As well as mentioning the well known restraints of the Elizabethan theatre (such as the fact that the female parts were always played by boys), Bryson carefully describes the life of the actors, from the huge volume of lines they were expected to learn (an actor was required to perform great feats of memory, having to keep several lengthy plays in his head – worrying I suspect if he was already cast as King Lear), how they were forbidden to wear the vast array of costumes outside of the theatre, and the penalties for drunkenness, lateness and the more serious crimes of enraging the monarch.

So Shakepeare’s actual personal life, cloudy at the best of times, acts as more of a bit player in this book. Bryson keeps assumption – always the temptation of a Shakespeare biographer – at arm’s length. The gaps in Shakespeare’s life – did he live in Italy as a young man, was he a soldier? – the questions – what did he really look like, how did he spell his name, was he gay, why did he only leave his widow his second best bed in his will? – are treated as mysteries that will never be resolved. Bryson is also prepared to knock him off his poetic pedestal; Shakespeare was lucky because many of his arguably equally talented contemporaries – including Christopher Marlowe – died young. He also dilutes some of the points often made to argue that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays – or at least collaborated – because they showed an unusually detailed knowledge of law and nautical expertise and anyway were just too good for an ordinary chap from Stratford upon Avon who didn’t go to university. Bryson argues that he was just naturally intelligent – bright, eager to learn, naturally gifted, and if he appears well versed in some subjects he’s terrible in others, for example showing an awful grasp of geography. And, most importantly, if the author of the plays was someone else pretending to be Shakespeare – what exactly was the point in that?

Bryson also tackles the much celebrated fact that Shakespeare had an extraordinary vocabulary – the average person today now knows at least twice as many words as the Bard did; although he concedes that it’s what you do with them that matters. And Shakespeare invented an extraordinary number of words – leapfrog, zany, critical, assassination, unmask – and many phrases were either coined by him or first recorded in his work – cold comfort, cruel to be kind, salad days, flesh and blood. More than any other writer, before or since.

This is an enjoyable book but I couldn’t help thinking it was written with the tourist in mind, somebody who might pass the Globe in London whilst on holiday and were keen to learn a little more. There’s nothing wrong in this, and as I’ve said Bryson does give a good portrait of the era that shaped Shakespeare’s work – and without some grasp of the times it’s hard to understand the plays fully (but we’ll never go all the way, and Bryson points out to the reader who might think they know it all that there are just some lines that remain forever incomprehensible). I wanted Bryson to revel in Shakespeare’s lines a little more, I wanted him to prove to me that he loved those lines, to celebrate all the wonderful things that Shakespeare has done for him, but this is too sober a study for that.

But I hope the tourists visiting the Globe buy themselves a ticket as the only way to really appreciate Shakespeare is to see a good production, and you need to know nothing about the man’s personal life. He can remain an enigma, as possibly he chose to do. I can speak from experience – the 2000 Globe production of Hamlet with Mark Rylance was the best thing I’ve ever seen in the theatre. It will be hard to beat.