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Shakespeare: The World as a Stage
 
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Shakespeare: The World as a Stage [Audiobook] [CD] [Unabridged] (Audio CD)

by Bill Bryson (Author, Reader)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
RRP: £15.99
Price: £10.68 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Audio CD
  • Publisher: HarperPress; Unabridged edition (10 Sep 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007262183
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007262182
  • Product Dimensions: 14.2 x 12.6 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 89,326 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

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Product Description

Review

Praise for 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' (HB): 'A modern classic.' The New York Times 'It represents a wonderful education, and all schools would be better places if it were the core science reader on the curriculum.' Times Literary Supplement Praise for 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid': 'Outlandishly and improbably entertaining!inevitably [I] would be reduced to body-racking, tear-inducing, de-couching laughter.' New York Times 'Always witty and sometimes hilarious!wonderfully funny and touching.' Literary Review


Financial Times

'Bryson...is a warm and funny guide through the whole complicated morass of Shakespearean scholarship.'
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Customer Reviews

68 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (68 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great overview of Shakespeare's life, 31 Aug 2009
By Fiction Fan (Madchester) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives) (Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed this brief account of Shakespeare's life. What Bryson gives us is all the facts we actually have about our greatest writer - which is why the book is short - as most of what is written elsewhere is supposition. A tale speeds best being plainly told and Bryson is a master storyteller. It was a miracle that so many of Shakespeare's plays came down to us at all as the first folio wasn't printed until after Shakespeare's death and generally playwrights didn't think it worth the expense and bother to get their plays printed.
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121 of 126 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare explained, 14 Sep 2007
By L O'connor (richmond, surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives) (Hardcover)
This is a very entertaining and informative account of the life and works of William Shakespere. Although the book is short, there is much fascinating information packed into it. I found it particularly fascinating to read about the huge contribution Shakespeare made to the development of the English language, and the large number of words now in common usage that were originally coined by him. Many myths about Shakespeare are cheeerfuly debunked by Mr Bryson, like the one about his work as an author never being mentioned in his lifetime, and the one about less being known about him than other contemporary dramatists (apparently more is known about Shakespeare than any of the others). The final chapter, in which Mr Bryson cheerfuly disposes of the fantasies of those who claim that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare, is particularly entertaining.

The only complaint I have about this book is that I wish it had been longer, since Bill Bryson writes about his subject so entertainingly. However, Mr Bryson has evidentl taken to heart Shakespeare's own aphorism "brevity is the soul of wit."

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93 of 98 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars De-bunking the Bard's de-bunkers, 27 Sep 2007
By R. Creer (Cumbria, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives) (Hardcover)
This is an easily readable and short life of Shakespeare written for a series called "Eminent Lives" and strangely coming after books on George Balanchine and George Crick!! In it Bill Bryson, in his inimitable witty style, tells us how little is known of WS's life but then goes on to examine what others have conjectured about it, pouring scorn on so many of the theories. I have read several attempts at Shakespeare biographies but still learned something from this [especially on the Bard's neologisms] but my favourite was the final debunking of the attempts to say the plays were written by someone else. Bryson does this so amusingly [can it be true that of the 5000 books written to prove Shakespeare's plays were written by someone other than Shakespeare, three were by Messers Looney, Silliman and Battey?!] that I was actually laughing as I read it. For example, on the claims for Marlowe to have been the real Shakespeare, Bryson writes "He was the right age ..., had the requisite talent and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn't too dead to work."

So, Bryson has produced just what his publishers wanted, a brief biography that anyone can read and learn from, which appears both learned and well researched on the one hand, but also enjoyable and amusing on the other.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly enjoyable & down to earth.
I have read many books about Shakespeare, from those so dry & heavy that they were soon abandoned unfinished, to those full of sheer fantasy. Read more
Published 1 day ago by RooRoo

4.0 out of 5 stars Bill on Bill - all you need to know.
Here's William Shakespeare shorn of almost all the supposition and wishful thinking that larger tomes sometimes pad out with. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Kathleen

5.0 out of 5 stars Did he or didn't he?
Interesting study that poses more questions than answers concerning William S. I am enjoying it, still not finished as about half way through I am flagging a little. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kat Mac

4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening, but not deeply so
This book is very good at repeating in various ways how little is known of Shakespeare; a point Bryson is clearly keen to emphasise. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Wilson Carter

3.0 out of 5 stars Substance out of thin air
This isn't the best of Bill Bryson's books. In fact it may be the one I liked the least among five others I have read (the best being A Short History of Nearly Everything)... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Demarion

1.0 out of 5 stars Maybe Bill should stick with the Travel Books
Very dull - strings together a series of well known facts on Shakespeare's life without the merest attempt to lift the tedium with fresh insight or humour. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Doris

5.0 out of 5 stars Even I have to agree with the Mail on Sunday
There is apparently 20-years worth of reading material in the Library of Congress on "Shakespeare". This is remarkable because so little is actually known about the man... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Andy

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice work ...if you can get it.
It's amazing what you can get people to pay for. By being merely amiable Bill Bryson has built a career out of re-stating other peoples ideas in the belief that his... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Fraser Hale

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise and to the Point
As readers of my Amazon reviews are aware, I have read several Shakespeare biographies. This one is short, concise and, thankfully, sticks to known facts. Read more
Published 5 months ago by James Gallen

3.0 out of 5 stars good points about Will
An entertaining read, a lot of well-known information skillfully potted, but also some good points, for example, for those who have doubts about the Stratford man's ability to... Read more
Published 5 months ago by L. Babut

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