The book "Shakespeare - the world as a stage" by the American writer Bill Bryson (translated from English Alexander Chabraj) is an outstanding, succinct work of the biographical type and presents a short biography of this great playwright, poet and theater actor, in which numerous anecdotes, jokes, myths and little-known events from his artistic and private life are described. As stated in this book, many literary critics, and not only literary critics, consider Shakespeare the greatest and most famous poet who created in the English language and the greatest playwright of all time. Shakespeare was a distinguished poet and playwright during his lifetime, but his reputation did not reach today's proportions before the 2000th century. The Romantics especially emphasized Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians celebrated him almost as an idol. Since the XNUMXth century, Shakespeare's works have been constantly performed in different cultural and political contexts around the world. In many millennial elections around the year XNUMX, it was Shakespeare who was declared the greatest and most influential writer of the second millennium.
William Shakespeare, that is, William - as some translators render his name, seems that he was not quite sure how to spell his last name or how to pronounce it. In the surviving signatures, he never wrote it the same way twice. To make all this about his surname even more strange, it is also stated that today it is written as standard as Viljem never used it: Shakespeare. It is not even known how he pronounced it. He left behind almost a million words of text. (Unfortunately, in this book on Shakespeare, by Bill Bryson, only fourteen are said to have been written by his hand). The opus of his works that have survived to this day consists of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narratives and several other poems. His plays such as "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet", "King Lear" have had a great influence on literature and theater for more than 400 years. They have been translated into many living languages and are performed all over the world more often than any other dramatic works.
Although it is not known for sure whether William Shakespeare ever left the soil of England, his biography still remains insufficiently known. It is not even known who were his close friends, what particularly delighted and amused him. Especially mysterious is his eight-year departure from Stratford-upon-Avon, the town where he was born and lived with his wife and three small children. Leaving his family behind, he went to London and became a successful theater actor and playwright there with almost impossible speed. The author of the book, Bill Bryson, a man who with incredible skill and exceptional ability came to important information about the life and work of Shakespeare, says that it was not until 1592 that the first record appears in which this great writer is mentioned as a playwright, even though Shakespeare had already passed more than half of his life, because he died only 24 years later - on April 23, 1616. With his characteristic wit, Bill Bryson, as an extraordinarily gifted and original storyteller, in this witty, concise and unobtrusively enlightening book, reveals Shakespeare's character, and in a large it also measures his life, so it contains quite a number of significant details related to the work of this famous artist, for which even the most learned Shakespearean scholars can be grateful.
Shakespeare wrote most of his works between 1590 and 1613. His early works are mainly comedies and histories, genres that he raised to perfection by the end of the 16th century. Then, until about 1608, he wrote tragedies. In that period, "Hamlet", "King Lear" and "Macbeth" were created, plays that are considered among the best plays of all time, and not only among those written in English. In his later period, he wrote tragicomedies and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his works were published during his lifetime in editions of varying quality and accuracy. In 1623, two of his colleagues published the "First Folio," a collection of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognized as Shakespeare's. In this Bryson book he is stated to be a famous historian George Stevens, more than two centuries ago, noted that everything we know about Shakespeare consists of only a few meager facts, some of which have already been mentioned: they point to Stratford-upon-Avon where he was born and lived with his wife and three small children, to London where went and surprisingly quickly became a famous artist, and on his return from London to his hometown of Stratford where he made his will and died. However, today these statements are not considered completely accurate, but not too inaccurate either, because during the past four centuries extensive research and uncovering of unknowns related to the life of William Shakespeare and his immediate family was carried out. In the book, it is said that the researchers discovered about a hundred documents such as notes on births, baptisms, title deeds, tax certificates, marriages, detention orders, various court notes because in those days litigation was frequent, but, nevertheless, all these data they talk about someone's less important affairs, and almost nothing about the human feelings behind them. Nothing about what could be intrinsically significant for Shakespeare's life and artistic creation. So it still remains unknown to us, for example: how many plays he wrote in total and in what order. Based on some well-known sources, we can find out to some extent what books he read, but we cannot find out how he came to those books and what happened to them later. Not a single message from him has been preserved, and there were probably many. Nor the page of the manuscript, how and why remains unknown. The book states that some scholars of Shakespeare and his works believe that a part of the play "Sir Thomas More" was written by his hand. Also, it is questionable why that drama was never performed, or it is not known exactly if it was performed. He left behind no personal description. Bryson cites the first textual portrait he made of this artistic great John Aubrey sixty-four years after William's death, where it is said - "he was a presentable, handsome man: very pleasant in company and with a very likable and sharp spirit". Aubrey knew Shakespeare well because he was only ten years younger than him. Among Shakespeare scholars, there is a lot of overlap, so, noticing this, Bill Bryson wrote down the opinion of one of them in his book, saying that Shakespeare's biography consists of five percent facts and ninety-five percent conjecture. That even the most careful biographers sometimes make assumptions. Bryson also notes that some of them are fanciful. In this sense, he cites the opinion of a respected and sober woman Caroline FE Spurgeon, from the University of London, an academic from the fourth decade of the twentieth century, who confidently says in one of her works about Shakespeare that Shakespeare's appearance can be determined by carefully reading his texts, adding that he was "a well-built and well-built man, probably a little smaller , with extremely harmonious movements, a supple and agile body, a quick and sharp eye that enjoyed the rapid movements of the muscles...” She assumed that he was probably of a lighter complexion with a light blush that quickly appeared and disappeared in his youth, revealing his feelings. Given that Caroline Spurgeon wrote about images in Shakespeare's plays, this attitude of hers speaks of her real conviction in what she said.
A popular historian Ivor Brown based on the mention of ulcers and other similar phenomena in Shakespeare's plays, he concluded that Shakespeare suffered a severe staphylococcal infection sometime after 1600 and was therefore eternally tormented by ulcers.
In the more literal interpretations of Shakespeare's sonnets, two mentions of lameness are noted, and on this basis it is concluded that the poet was lame.
The author of this book on Shakespeare states that it is true that many biographical data about William Shakespeare are based on assumptions rather than facts, but he notes that this should not be strangely simple because the biographies of many other famous people are times and remain very scarce to this day. It is cited as an example of this Thomas Decker who was one of the leading playwrights in Shakespeare's time, so the only thing known about him is that he was born in London, that he was a prolific writer and that he was often in debt.
Then, it is also mentioned Ben Jonson who was even more popular than Thomas Dekker, yet many important details about his life remain unknown to this day.
Bill Bryson was born in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa. He traveled to England as a tourist in 1973, where he met his future wife and then decided to settle permanently in England. He writes travel articles. Until 1995, he lived with his wife and four children in North Yorkshire, after which he decided to return to the United States with his family. After an eight-year stay in America, Bryson returns to England with his family. Bill Bryson's first book was "The Lost Continent," a humorous travelogue in which he described travels in small American towns. Then, "Neither here nor there: a journey through Europe". "A Brief History of Almost Everything" and "Notes from a Small Island". For the book "A Short History of Almost Everything", an exceptional work of the popular science genre, he received the "Descartes" award, as well as the esteemed "Aventis" award.
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