Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as Stage

1. Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as Stage

2. Diction: Answers • What words does the author choose in chapters one and two? Choose five specific examples: Why did the author choose those particular words? What are the connotations (implications) of that word choice?—student choice. • Richard’s full name (1) • “spectacularly unsound investments” (1)—think about the addition of spectacularly unsound rather than just bad. • Bohemian (3): a person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices. • Compares him to an electron (9)—how does this metaphor work. What image does it suggest about Will?

3. Answers: Chapter 1—2 February 7th • In Search of William Shakespeare and The Early Years: • Diction: What words does the author choose in chapters one and two? Choose five specific examples: Why did the author choose those particular words? What are the connotations (implications) of that word choice?—student choice. • Why does Bryson begin the book with the Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent BrydgesChandos Grenville?—starts with the idea that we know so very little about Shakespeare that we don’t even have a clear visual about him. (2) • What does Dr. Tarny Cooper say that this image of Shakespeare reveals about the man in the painting?—bohemian (2), no documentation.

4. Answers: Chapter 1—2 • In Search of William Shakespeare and The Early Years: 4. What does Bryson mean, and refer to, when he says: “That wasn’t quite true then and it is even less true now, but it is not all that far from the truth either” (7). More facts known than the “few scanty facts” like birth place, went to London, career, returned, will and died. 5. What are the three possibilities that Shakespeare scholars are faced with in regards to what is known about the playwright? (15) –legal documents; speculate/conjecture; persuade self they know more. 6. What is the purpose then of this biography if we know so little?—(21) to see how much of Shakespeare we can know from the record.

5. Answers: Chapter 1—2 7. What is the purpose of the introduction to London life in chapter 2?—to set up the world he lived in. 8. Explain the importance of this statement: “Plague, however, remained the darkest scourge” (24). Death; his greatest achievement was surviving. 9. Why does Bryson discuss Queen Elizabeth and religion? (27)—the politics of the time; fines and life in London. Shakes place in religion. How it might affect his writing. Persecuted for ideas was a possibility. 10. At the end of chapter 2, what are your conclusions about the life of Shakespeare and what is known about him? Site three quotations exemplifying new things you learned about Will. Early life is a series of occasional sightings. (44)

6. Answers: Chapter 3—5 February 9th • What images does the author use? What does he focus on in a sensory way? Do the kinds of images the author puts in or leaves out reflect his style? Are they vibrant? Prominent? Plain? NOTE: Images differ from detail in the degree to which they appeal to the senses.—describes sketches and visuals of the 16th century; tactile descriptions so audience visualizes the lifestyle of the playwright. • Explain what effect the first sentence in chapter 3 has on the reader. Why does the author start with this? “Few places in history can have more deadly and desirable at the same time than London in the sixteenth century” (45). Challenges of living in London that WS faced. • How did the Plague affect 16thcentury London society?—”those who could afford to left the cities at every outbreak” and those that didn’t faced death: “deaths outnumbered births”. • Why does Bryson choose to elaborate so much on the growth of the population and the layout of the city, if this is a biography on Shakespeare? Focused on the Thames; shows the world he moved to . • What does he say about the Thames and the venerable bridge? The bridge was already venerable when Shakespeare first saw it”. Thames was teeming with life and was a “little city itself”.

7. Answers: Chapter 3—5 February 9th 6. How does the sentence “We don’t know when Shakespeare first came to London” (56) provide a shift in the narration and what is the purpose of this shift? Shifts back to Shakespeare’s POV and conjecture of how he would have lived in this environment. 7. What is a “matter of conjecture” (65)? An opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information. 8. What did the Dutch tourist do in the Swan Theatre in 1596, and why is this an important event? Made a sketch (rough) with and interior view. “complete visual record…of theatres”. 9. How do we have our information about theatre life in the Elizabethan era? “We would know even less about the business and structure of Elizabethan theatrical life were it not for the diary and related papers of Henslowe.” (69) 10. Explain why Bryson says: “Shakespeare could not have chosen a more propitious moment to come of age” (71). Theatres were growing in popularity and “would continue to rise throughout his career”. 11. Explain why it was a “time of rapid evolution for theatrical techniques” (76). Longer plays, more ambitious and spectacular and complex in construction, wider in emotional range, better designed to show talents (76—77) 12. What happens when Shakespeare enters the Theatrical record? (85). “the record itself is suspended owing to a particularly severe outbreak of plague.”

8. Answers: Chapter 3—5 February 9th 13. Why is Shakespeare “unusual among the troupe” (95)? “not being a conspicuously devoted family man” like the others. • What two major arguments surround the beginning of his play writing career? We know it was around 1590, but not which plays began it (96) • What does Bryson tell us about pronunciations in Shakespeare’s time and ours? (112) “Were often very different from today’s”. Loose rhyme. • What does Bryson tell us about some of the first words found in Shakespeare plays? What reasons does Bryson give for these “new” words? (114) “he was particularly prolific…when attaching un- prefixes to existing words to make new words that no one had thought of before…and no fewer than 309 others in a similar vein…appreciate how much punch Shakespeare gave English”. • What is particularly poignant about his birth and death records? (116) “It is telling…that WS’s birth is recorded in Latin but that he dies in English” because it reveals the changes in language of the time.

9. Answers: Chapter 6—7 February 14th • What details does the author choose to include? What do they imply? What does the author choose to exclude? What are the connotations of his choice of details? PLEASE NOTE: Details are facts; they differ from images in that they don't have a strong sensory appeal. Think of examples that reveal Bryson’s narrative choices. He chooses not to focus on conjecture like many others, rather reveals the details of the age and the city he lived in and shows the life the man would have had based on the records we do have. He is careful not to suppose or assume anything. No embellishment. • Explain why Bryson says, “not from all perspectives were Elizabeth’s closing years a golden age” (117). “few people alive in the 1590s in an England racked by poverty, unemployment and commercial depression would have said that theirs was a better world or that human inventiveness had restored a good and just society.” Remember: Plague! • Why “for Shakespeare” was there “a particular dimension to the gloom of the decade” (119)? Lost his 11 yr old son. • What is “puzzling” about the first “nontheatrical reference to Shakespeare”? (120) Charges against him. 5. How did Shakespeare become involved in “an attempt to overthrow the Queen”? (128) explained on page 128—129. association through his friends.

10. Answers: Chapter 6—7 February 14th 6. What is odd about the Queen by the winter of 1603? “her face was caked permanently in a think mask of white makeup, her teeth were black or missing, and she’d developed the habit of loosening her dress so it hung open” –132. 7. Why does Bryson say that “we might allow ourselves a touch of skepticism” (133)?—courtiers who wanted to see the King reduced to a caricature. In reference to James who “was not the most appealing of fellows” (133). 8. Why might we re-categorize Shakespeare as a Jacobean playwright rather than an Elizabethan? “much of his greatest output was Jacobean and he now produced a string of brilliant tragedies…” (135). 9. What, “in some critics’ view” is “the very summit of Shakespeare’s achievement”? (140) and Why? The sonnets because “No poet has ever found more linguistic forms by which to replicate human responses than Shakespeare in the Sonnets”. 10. What “has caused trouble for his admirers” about his sonnets? Why do you think this has caused such woe in some of his admirers? (146). “the matter of Shakespeare’s sexuality”. 11. The line: “can only be a matter for conjecture” (151) or one like it is written often in this biography. Why? Because most of the things we know about Shakespeare is speculation based on a small record of facts.

11. Answers: February 16: Chapter 8—9 • Describe Shakespeare’s life in late March of 1616. “It was an unhappily eventful time in Shakespeare’s life…” (see p 152). Slows down writing; works on will. • Give three reasons why this chapter is aptly titled: Death. Discussion of how his family members die. His death and postmortem. • What existed of his plays before the First Folio? (159) “Before the first folio all that existed of Shakespeare’s plays were cheap quarto editions of exceedingly variable quality”. • What are the “typographical curiosities” in the Folio? (160) stray words and other odd editing errors. Misprints and wrong names, etc.

12. Answers: February 16: Chapter 8—9 5. Why does Bryson devote “a moment to considering how books were put together in the early days of moveable type”? (167) to show how Shakespeare’s words were printed first. And because he is discussing the folio and it is not common knowledge he describes it for the audience. 6. Explain: “At the time of Shakespeare’s death few would have supposed that one day he would be thought the greatest of English playwrights” (170). Others were more popular like Francis Beaumont, John Flether, and Ben Johnson. 7. What does Edmondson say we need to accept “are gone for good”? Why? (180) “A lot of people ache to believe that the manuscripts still exist somewhere…but there is no evidence to suppose that they are in the monument or anywhere else. You just have to accept that they are gone for good.” 8. [Chapter 9]: What claims have been made about “Who Wrote Shakespeare? And what does Bryson conclude about these claimants? (181) and chapter 9. Disregards these claims as they are based on conjecture.