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Shakespeare: The World Stage
Bill Bryson
#UB8102
Hardcover, 199 pages; 2007
$19.95
 Members' Price: $16.96
The paradoxical consequence is that we all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don’t really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: He is at once the best known and least known of figures.
Bill Bryson’s admittedly slim biography of Shakespeare cuts through the vast, largely speculative scholarship to distill the concrete facts—and to dispel some improbable myths—about the life of the bard. With ample wit, the always-entertaining Bryson relates the efforts of both serious academics and obsessed eccentrics to draw conclusions about Shakespeare’s life from a limited number of primary sources. With a final chapter devoted to debunking myriad theories that the great works were actually penned by someone else, Shakespeare is a fast-paced and fascinating profile of an enigmatic icon.
(AG)
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