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Shakespeare: The World As A Stage: Bill Bryson

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With ‘Shakespeare’ what Bryson has successfully managed (presumably consciously) to avoid is the ground covered by the overwhelming majority of other books written Shakespeare the man – ordinarily being either academic/quasi-academic tomes and as such impenetrable to all but Shakespeare/literary scholars, or highly speculative popular writings based on the various conspiracy theories and myths that now surround the life, works and legend of William Shakespeare. A pláne az egészben az, hogy Shakespeare így is ekkora májer tudott lenni - kis túlzással a kisujjából rázta ki az angol nyelvet. Hangsúlyozni kell, hogy akkoriban kábé csak a latint tartották alkalmasnak arra, hogy értelmes gondolatokat fejezzünk ki általa, hősünk azonban (akár tudott róla, akár nem) mindent megtett azért, hogy ezt az előítéletet lebontsa. Új szavak és kifejezések ezreit vezette be, megmutatta, milyen hajlékony tud lenni az angol nyelv, milyen gazdag érzelmeket és gondolatokat tud megragadni... Ha az elitnek írt volna, mindez csak szűk körben fejtett volna ki hatást - óriási szerencsének kell tartanunk, hogy a tömegkultúrát választotta a kibontakozás terepének. Simán lehet, ha Shakespeare nem lett volna, Oxfordban még most is holt nyelveken író költőket próbálnának a professzorok valami holt nyelven a hallgatók fejébe verni. (Persze az is simán lehet, hogy nem.) Author Bill Bryson Takes Agent to Court". Courthouse News Service. Pasadena, California. 4 December 2012. Archived from the original on 16 February 2013 . Retrieved 31 January 2020. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link) When I worked as a secretary on a tabloid newspaper, many years ago, journalists writing stories based only only a few facts would say they were 'cooking with gas'. This is a cheerful and entertaining read where Bryson is doing just that - so little is known about Shakespeare's life. Yet I think he does a great job. He talks about Tudor England - and the general experiences of playwrights, actors and audiences during this period. We are able to get an excellent flavour of the theatre scene in late 16th century, early 17th century London. Bryson also talks about the research and scholarship attached to Shakespeare's works - some of it an ever-expanding celebration of extraordinary minutiae. (This cheers me up. There are apparently people in this world a whole lot crazier than me.) Bryson imagines Shakespeare in the hard times of the 16th century. The usages and customs and the historical context are fascinating to discover. It was another world that made me think of science fiction. The diseases were multiple: the plague, syphilis, & c. In the 16th century, England experienced the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in 1582 while she was pregnant. A whole period remained obscure (between 1585 and 1592); it is the lost years where the biographers lost in conjectures to identify its course. Some say he traveled to Italy. Others say he was a traveling comedian.

Bryson also wrote two popular works on the history of the English language, The Mother Tongue and Made in America—and, more recently, an update of his guide to usage, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (first published as The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words in 1983). Bill Bryson library opens 200 new study spaces and 'Small Island' café – Palatinate". 21 February 2019. He worked as a journalist, first for the Bournemouth Evening Echo, eventually becoming chief copy editor of the business section of The Times and deputy national news editor of the business section of The Independent. Bill Bryson is an old friend. His approach to history makes the standard tome all the more flat and dull by comparison – Bryson knows his stuff well enough to not only present it to an audience but to play with it, to have fun with it, to make it fun. He genuinely loves his subjects, and it is infectious. He's like the teacher you always hoped to get – the brilliant, funny, cool one who (to use a real example) sat cross-legged on the table at the front of the room and told the most amazing stories and made you sorry when the class was over, rather than the one who turned the lights off and showed irrelevant slides to a group of uninterested and often napping art students at the deadly time of 3:00 in the afternoon. Bryson was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, the son of Bill Bryson Sr., a sports journalist who worked for 50 years at the Des Moines Register, and Agnes Mary (née McGuire), the home furnishings editor at the same newspaper. [8] [9] His mother was of Irish descent. [10] He had an older brother, Michael (1942–2012), and a sister, Mary Jane Elizabeth. In 2006, Bryson published The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a humorous account of his childhood years in Des Moines. [9] In 2006 Frank Cownie, the mayor of Des Moines awarded Bryson the key to the city and announced that 21 October 2006 would be "Bill Bryson, The Thunderbolt Kid, Day." [11]

At school I was required to study two of the Bard’s plays: the one known as The Scottish Play and Twelfth Night. I found the former a real struggle and way too grim but rather enjoyed the humour in the latter. But I’ve never returned to Shakespeare’s work, in truth I just find the language rather impenetrable, just too much like hard work to battle through. But I am somewhat curious about the man considered perhaps the finest writer of them all and I’ve long admired Bryson’s ability to tell a story, so why not give this exploration a go. Like most Americans, I was first introduced to Shakespeare in high school, when we read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and a few of his sonnets. I've read more of his plays since then, but until now I have never read a biography of the man himself. After reading Bryson's book, I feel like I know as much as any modern person can know, simply because so few facts have survived. One Shakespeare scholar told Bryson that "every Shakespeare biography is 5 percent fact and 95 percent conjecture." Is this a scholarly work? No. But have you seen some of what passes for such? I'm okay with this. It seems like sound logic deduced from absorbing sound work on the topic. After all (and for example) one of the leading proponents of the anti-Shakespeare movement was a woman who wanted to claim all of the plays for her cousin Sir Francis Bacon. She was biased and, as it turns out, crazy. Her book on the subject was widely dismissed at the time of publication as ridiculous, but the idea lingered, took shape and went on to have a long second life in quarters that rely on scanty evidence or none at all. And yet they persist. It all seems absurd. Bryson has written several books, including the prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything . The book under review is provided as a volume in the “Eminent Lives” series of concise biographies by various authors and, as such, conforms to an imposed restriction on length. With candid honesty that permeates his offering, Bryson notes that the world didn’t really need another Shakespeare biography but that the “Eminent Lives” series did. Bryson is straightforward in admitting that no groundbreaking research is presented, but rather the biography gathers the known facts, the supposed facts, and much pithy innuendo into a single engaging and accessible overview. Bryson’s strength, then, lies not so much in his Shakespearean expertise but rather in his obvious ability to turn a phrase.

General admission for groundlings - those who stood in the open around the stage - was a penny. Those who wished to sit paid a penny more, and those who desired a cushion paid another penny on top of that - all this at a time when a day's wage was one shilling (12 pence) or less. The money was dropped in a box, which was taken to a special room for safekeeping - the box office.Nyilván ha valaki írt egy könyvet "majdnem mindenről", és utána szükségét érzi, hogy külön Shakespeare-ről is írjon egyet, akkor Shakespeare nem tartozik a "majdnem mindenbe". Hát kösz, Shakespeare nevében. a b Crace, John (15 November 2005). "Bill Bryson: The accidental chancellor". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 10 February 2008 . Retrieved 26 April 2010.

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