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It takes some considerable talent to pen a biography on William Shakespeare without irritating the reader or the writer resorting to complete conjecture because the world's best known playwright left behind so few clues. We're not sure of the date of his birth, what he really looked like, how he spelt his name, whether he travelled abroad, his religion, his sexual orientation, where he was for eight years after leaving his wife and children in Stratford before becoming a playwright in London or who he wrote his sonnets to. We don't know where he did any of his writing and there are still those who maintain that Shakespeare never wrote any of the work attributed to him at all .
However, Bill Bryson sifts between the facts, fiction, suppositions and assumptions to produce a fascinating portrait (or lack of) of the Bard.
Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives) by Bill Bryson, out 3 September. .
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YOU ARE HERE: 11 November 2007 / tribune.ie / 2007 / 09 / 02
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