William Shakespeare is the ultimate writer of our century. It is not only his plays, his books, his poems, the countless literary studies and the countless film adaptations of his works and his personality that overwhelm us on an almost daily basis. Shakespeare has become the bard not only of the 21st century but of the 20th century. He has been at the cutting edge for many decades. Comedy and drama, power play and death, fierce love, but also the power of madness or the depth of hatred, caprice and cunning can run from edge to edge through his discourse, but that which has made him the leading man of all times and all nations, something that the great Harold Bloom would have no difficulty in endorsing with both hands, is his ability to turn himself at once, more than 400 years after his somewhat inglorious end, into a symbol of everything. This is exactly what Bill Bryson's dense book ’Shakespeare: The Whole Truth About His Life«, which has just been published in a translation by Eleni Vachlioti from Metamihmio. It is a kind of biography that reads like a novel, but also like a thriller with great research ambitions.
A travel writer of the highest order, a humorist of the highest order and a storyteller ready to convey difficult scientific topics to the general public, Bryson, who has written the widely read and much-discussed «A Short History of [Almost] Everything» (translated by Andreas Michaelides, Metamichios 2020), and has dusted off everything that has been written about Shakespeare from the period of his great theatrical fame and heyday to the present day, wants to talk about the major dramatist without getting trapped in heavy or narcissistic interpretive schemes, but also without succumbing to the monstrosities (and even conspiracy theories) that his biographies sometimes contain. The author's starting point, then, as he prepares to roll out the carpet for Shakespeare's life and work, is demystifying agnosticism: we know much less about his case than the rumours and legends surrounding him have at times provided.
What exactly was the bond with his wife, who has always remained invisible? What about his two daughters? Why, although we call him an «Elizabethan», were his most important plays produced during the reign of James, Elizabeth's successor? Exactly what roles in his plays did he choose to play as an actor? Where was the Globe, his famous theatre, located, and how does it resemble its current namesake venue? How did the audiences of his time come to love the theatre and pay dearly for performances when there were no good theatres and performance halls yet? How was Shakespeare similar to other famous writers of his time, such as John Webster or Christopher Marlowe? Why did he write such extensive and long plays? What did he have to do with homosexuality or the black beauties that his sonnets praise? Why wasn't he as rich as he was once and still is believed to be? How much did he love Stratford where he was born in 1564 and died in 1616? What was the English he wrote, why did he prefer the older versions of it, and how did he turn it into the language of a country a thousand years old? How did he compose Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet and Coriolanus on the one hand, and on the other, Too Bad for Nothing and Strigla Who Became a Lamb? What are the manuscript figures that represent his tragedies and comedies? What happened to his inheritance and the disposition of his estate? And further, what was it that led to his existence as a writer being questioned?;
Bryson does not pose questions to answer them selectively, but to open up a series of crucial questions, summarizing centuries of debate, searching and questioning around Shakespeare. And in no way does Bryson seek to reach definitive conclusions, round up unresolved questions, or forcefully close gaps and chasms. It is enough for him to bring the theatrical, the urban, the class, and the sanitary to life (cf. plague pandemics) London of the 16th century, to give some brilliant glimpses of the incipient history of the theatre, but also to create an atmosphere suitable for learning (more like sensing) what Shakespeare was all about, offering us a guide to help us realise the magnitude of his work, as well as deciphering without the slightest seriousness the mystery of his art.
Β. Hadjivassiliou
