As You Like It

Most people are well acquainted with the works of William Shakespeare, considered to be one of the greatest writers in the English language. Yet as Bill Bryson points out in his latest book Shakespeare, part of the Eminent Lives series published by HarperCollins, very little is known about this wordsmith, who in his lifetime penned a million words of text.

The problem of who Shakespeare was starts from the beginning when Bryson explores the evidence to pin down the visual reference as to what this great playwright looked like. There are at least three paintings that claim to be of the dramatist but neither Bryson nor other scholars before him have been able to say conclusively that which one is really the true and correct portrait of Shakespeare.

If that isn't bad enough, the book says that most information about Shakespeare's life is known to us more by conjecture, deduced from fragments of information rather than with any degree of certainty, which is troubling. How did this genius, the man who invented words like zany (which surprisingly to this date sounds trendy), abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, assassination, well-read, leapfrog and phrases like one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, the milk of human kindness and beggar all description lead a life that is now invisible to us, his readers and admirers in the 21st century?

Bryson faithfully puts all the facts before us in a writing style that is reminiscent of a whodunit. At the outset, the book makes no claims and the reader is forced to feverishly turn page after page to get to the bottom of the mystery that was Shakespeare's life? Was he gay? If he was, who was the object of his affection? Was the sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" addressed to a man? And if it did, does that make that sonnet any less sublime? Or, for that matter, does that impact the quality of Shakespeare's work in any way?

The lack of reference and what were the possible influences that worked to bring out this astonishing quantity and quality of work that still finds relevance today is I think what has troubled Shakespeare scholars for long and resulted in their dogged search for more details of his life. Unfortunately little of merit has come up in recent times and that isn't surprising, given that it was seven years after Shakespeare's death in 1616 that his close friends and colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell put together the First Folio edition of his complete works.

Bryson pays tribute to these two gentlemen as being "literary heroes" yet here too, there were inconsistencies as well as omissions that have cost future scholars and readers of Shakespeare dear. For instance the duo left out The True History of Cardenio from the First Folio and that play is now lost forever.

This may not be the most important work on Shakespeare but it makes Shakespeare accessible to the iPod generation and Second Lifers, who may not have the patience to wade through soliloquys and innumerable thous and doths and such like. In fact Bryson's book is so full of interesting information about Elizabethan England that one need not even know who or what Shakespeare was (and trust me there are multitudes of such people) to be able to enjoy this lovely book, which makes you turn pages almost in a compulsive way.

Bryson's mastery over finding cute facts and presenting them in an easily digestible form makes this book a must read for even those who may already know enough about Shakespeare and may have formed their opinion about the many controversies that surround the dramatist including the authorship. But in the end Bryson is also forced to admit that there are no easy answers about Shakespeare, given the number of debates and controversies that have cropped up over the years. Bryson in the last chapter claims certitude about Shakespeare having been the author of his works and but is forced to conclude that "only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give us such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratford was unquestionably that man "" whoever he was." So take Shakespeare as you like it, the way you like it.

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SHAKESPEARE

Bill Bryson
HarperCollins
Price: Rs 325; Pages: 200