Bill Bryson's Shakespeare
Or is it Willm Shaksp, William Shakespe, Wm Shakepe, William Shakespere, Willm Shakespere or even William Shakspeare.
Who knows, I had Shakespeare dulled out of me at school in a most definative and final way apart from one very memorable Field Trip to Stratford and have never read any since. Shame on me!
This is a book about how, out of all the fahsands and fhasands of books on Our Wm we know, conclusively, next to nought about the man. so little that this slim volume is filled out with a lot of general , scene setting history of the period. So I ended up knowing more about WS and Elizabethan England than all the might of the English education system achieved.
I'm a Bryson fan, enjoy the intelligent undoing of history as it's been repeated year in year out and thus gaining an undeserved verity by that very repetition. And I love the immeasurable depth and flavour of the English so as soon as this short book was over I could hardly believe that was it and double checked to see that I hadn't missed a chapter or two. Like a good film or some such that seems to have finished no sooner than you've got settled into one's chair.
And the words! The word play! Shakespeare used between 20,000 and 30,000 words according to how you count close variants. Today your average joe might know 50,000 but half of those are words like Chardonnay and Maserati and Citroën.
Between 1500 and 1650 about 12,000 words entered the English language and our man was making the running to the extent of over 2,000 of those introductions. At his peak, with Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear he was introducing a new word at an average rate of one every two and a half lines. What a hero! Try for size abstemious ,antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, excellent, eventful, barefaced, assassination ,lonely, leapfrog , dauntless, to elbow, to dislocate, countless, anchovy, alligator, auspicious, bandit, bump. blusterer, castigate, indistinguishable, hoodwinked, leaky, well-read, zany, unmask, unhand, unlock. Man alive! And then the phrases : 'all that glitters is not gold, bated breath, bear a charmed life, be-all and end-all, beggar all description. break the ice, dead as a door nail, good riddance, give the devil his due, the game is up, full circle, forever and a day, in a pickle, smells to heaven, kill with kindness, naked truth, one fell swoop, star crossed lovers, more in sorrow than anger, playing fast and loose, quality of mercy, send packing, sound and fury, send packing, there's the rub, Norwegian Blue, what the dickens (never!!) wild goose chase, towering passion, this mortal coil,!
Hell Fire but I am Shakespearean!
The only hair in my soup was that that inestimable rag, The Daily Mail and all it stands for called in " A delight... a gem of a book." . Head, hit, nail, on the etc etc.
Bill Bryson's Shakespeare
Or is it Willm Shaksp, William Shakespe, Wm Shakepe, William Shakespere, Willm Shakespere or even William Shakspeare.
Who knows, I had Shakespeare dulled out of me at school in a most definative and final way apart from one very memorable Field Trip to Stratford and have never read any since. Shame on me!
This is a book about how, out of all the fahsands and fhasands of books on Our Wm we know, conclusively, next to nought about the man. so little that this slim volume is filled out with a lot of general , scene setting history of the period. So I ended up knowing more about WS and Elizabethan England than all the might of the English education system achieved.
I'm a Bryson fan, enjoy the intelligent undoing of history as it's been repeated year in year out and thus gaining an undeserved verity by that very repetition. And I love the immeasurable depth and flavour of the English so as soon as this short book was over I could hardly believe that was it and double checked to see that I hadn't missed a chapter or two. Like a good film or some such that seems to have finished no sooner than you've got settled into one's chair.
And the words! The word play! Shakespeare used between 20,000 and 30,000 words according to how you count close variants. Today your average joe might know 50,000 but half of those are words like Chardonnay and Maserati and Citroën.
Between 1500 and 1650 about 12,000 words entered the English language and our man was making the running to the extent of over 2,000 of those introductions. At his peak, with Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear he was introducing a new word at an average rate of one every two and a half lines. What a hero! Try for size abstemious ,antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, excellent, eventful, barefaced, assassination ,lonely, leapfrog , dauntless, to elbow, to dislocate, countless, anchovy, alligator, auspicious, bandit, bump. blusterer, castigate, indistinguishable, hoodwinked, leaky, well-read, zany, unmask, unhand, unlock. Man alive! And then the phrases : 'all that glitters is not gold, bated breath, bear a charmed life, be-all and end-all, beggar all description. break the ice, dead as a door nail, good riddance, give the devil his due, the game is up, full circle, forever and a day, in a pickle, smells to heaven, kill with kindness, naked truth, one fell swoop, star crossed lovers, more in sorrow than anger, playing fast and loose, quality of mercy, send packing, sound and fury, send packing, there's the rub, Norwegian Blue, what the dickens (never!!) wild goose chase, towering passion, this mortal coil,!
Hell Fire but I am Shakespearean!
The only hair in my soup was that that inestimable rag, The Daily Mail and all it stands for called in " A delight... a gem of a book." . Head, hit, nail, on the etc etc.