Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Bill Bryson set out to ask, How much do we really know about William Shakespeare, and how confident can we be of our knowledge?

Bryson bills himself as a journalist, not as a historian, and yet the question he faces is one common to those who study history. How certain are we of our facts? In the case of Shakespeare, there are a few things that we know for certain. There are things that we know with a high degree of probability. There are things we can reasonably infer. There are things that are more likely true than not. There are things that are more likely untrue than valid. There are things that are almost certainly false. There things that are legendary. There are things that are speculation. And there are things that are invented, or that are supported by the flimsiest of evidence (assuming the support is even worthy of being called "evidence").

And Bryson discusses these things.

Bryson does not dwell on the content of Shakespeare's work. He does not discuss the plot of Hamlet in any detail, or the competing interests of the characters in King Lear. Many of Shakespeare's most memorable characters are not mentioned at all.

What Bryson does address is the man. That Shakespeare existed seems certain. His existence is bourne out by various records separate from his works. But nearly every detail of his life is in question.

Bryson starts with Shakespeare's appearance. Despite the fact that "everybody knows" what Shakespeare looked like, there are only three original images of him... maybe. (The Wikipedia entry on Shakespeare shows all three.) Two of the images are generally deemed to be poor portraits. One, a sculpture near his grave, was affected by the environment and some careless painting. Another, an engraving in the First Folio, is widely regarded as amateurish. And the third image, which is quite a good painted portrait, might not be of Shakespeare at all.

In one sense, it is amazing how little we know about Shakespeare, and in another sense, it is at least equally amazing that we know as much as we do. Records were being kept in Shakespeare's time, but not in a standardized or fastidious fashion, and spelling irregularities appeared to be the norm. Add to that the fact that volumes of historical records have been lost due to age, misplacement, fire and the like, and you can get a sense about the difficulty facing historians who wanted to find out who Shakespeare was.

Time and again, Bryson tells us that, in some aspect of interest in Shakespeare's life, we just don't know.

It is this angle--questioning what we can know with certainty, and with what degree of certainty--that Bryson has created quite a skeptical work.

One must not come to the conclusion, however, that Bryson's skepticism leads him to conclude that William Shakespeare did not author the works attributed to him. In actuality, Bryson goes the other way. There is quite a substantial amount of evidence to the effect that Shakespeare DID write the works that bear his name (with a few exceptions, such as where certain authors received a small written contribution from Shakespeare, then attributed the ENTIRE work to him, perhaps to cash in on his fame). What is completely absent, says Bryson, is ANY evidence that anyone else wrote the works.

It is easy, hearing Bryson address the theses that various other persons were the true authors, to think of other crackpot notions like the faked Moon landings or the vast JFK Assassination conspiracy or the so-called Intelligent Design view. In each case, there are arguments from ignorance. People cannot understand (or are unwilling to do the work necessary to understand) how men could have gone to the Moon, or how creatures could evolve over time, or how a non-aristocrat could have written such great works. Because they cannot understand such things, they conclude that such things cannot be so. And then the speculations begin, and upon repetition and suspension of critical judgment, wild-ass guesses become perceived as fact, and actual truth is lost.

Another common theme is the extent of the conspiracy that would be needed to keep the vast plot to kill JFK a secret, or to prop up a plainly untenable scientific theory, or to falsely attribute a large body of literary work to someone completely undeserving. The consipiracy would be large to the point of absurdity, and in order for the plot to work, the various actors would need to be able to know things they could not possibly know.

For a skeptical analysis of the history of William Shakespeare, get Bill Bryson's book. (Or better yet, listen on five CDs, read by the author.)