Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives) - Hardcover

'This season's best-selling volume.' Independent.

'Pleasant quirky details...make for enjoyable interludes...admirable.' Sunday Telegraph

'A brilliantly funny and gently insightful travel guide to 16th century England. Bryson is great at picking out of the morass of Elizabethan fact the small details that illuminate and amuse...he also uncovers from the world that surrounded the theatre some fascinating examples of Elizabethan eccentricity...As an abbreviated tour around the world of Shakespeare, this could hardly be bettered.' Sunday Times

'less a biography than a delightful account of Shakespeare's elusiveness – and the extraordinary lengths people have gone to remedy it...the pairing of Bryson with Shakespeare is a happy one.’ TLS

'Bill Bryson jogs along in his own ineffable way, good–humoured, undoctrinaire, nodding respectfully at experts but confidently following his own inclinations...he is shrewd on telling detail.' The Times

‘Bill Bryson has always been able to spot a market; and there ought to be a market for his latest book...an accessible, sensible Life of Shakespeare...surely a fine gift for someone encountering Shakespeare for the first time...Bryson is shrewd...and as funny as you'd expect...he sets down all the important bits of evidence, and assesses them in a measured scholarly way. He's good value too.’ Daily Telegraph

‘Measured, sensible and, at times, as wryly humorous as you'd expect.’ Times

‘Bryson uses an inimitably light touch and squeezes a vast subject down to manageable proportions...he is a warm and funny guide through the whole complicated morass of Shakespearean scholarship.’ Financial Times

'Bill Bryson offers us a brisk summary of all the things we'd like to know, but don't...enough to be absorbed in an entertaining evening.' Daily Mail

In this much anticipated addition to the Eminent Lives series, Bill Bryson’s biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright.

Shakespeare’s life, despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, is still a thicket of myths and traditions, some preposterous, some conflicting, arranged around the few scant facts known about the Bard – from his birth in Stratford to the bequest of his second best bed to his wife when he died.

Following his international bestsellers ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ and ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’, Bill Bryson has written a short biography of William Shakespeare for the Eminent Lives series – which seeks to pair great subjects with writers known for their strong sensibilities and sharp, lively points of view.