Over the last two years, I read various non-fictional books about Shakespeare and his works. I was going to do a ‘top five’ but when I looked through my spreadsheet, I only read about seven, so I’ll just tell you about all of them. I know there are millions of books on this subject out there and I will continue reading them for sure. The following titles helped me to appreciate Shakespeare in various ways.
Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson is an excellent little biography. I read it at the beginning of my Shakespeare journey and it was a good one to start with because it’s so short. The author’s principle is to stick to historical fact and not speculate, so there are some chapters about Shakespeare’s life and his work, but it stood out to me how much of the book is about the historical period, geographical location and social context of his life because there’s very little we know about Shakespeare himself.
I love how the book paints a vivid picture of Elizabethan London with a lot of fascinating factual details – what did London look like, what did people eat and drink, the religious and political situation, the theatre scene. I remember at various points I thought to myself this is not about Shakespeare at all, this is more about his world. The chapters on the Lost Years for example, read like a filler – there’s nothing to report on Shakespeare therefore let’s talk about the context to fill the space. Sorry that sounds mean but I did feel a bit disappointed.
I didn’t see what was lacking until I read 1599, which I’ll talk about later. The world and the playwright are talked about separately. It’s unfair to say this book is inferior as a result because Bill Bryson did not set out to write what James Shapiro set out to write. I think it’s ambitious to write a biography of Shakespeare this size and the author did a great job. 1599 is about just one year of Shakespeare’s life and it’s bigger in comparison. But I have to say I do love 1599 more.
The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom
There’s a chapter on every Shakespeare play. It’s funny watch some BookTubers’ Shakespeare Journey tag video, people seem to have really strong opinions about this book, some swear by this, and some swear at it. It’s probably the most controversial title on this list.
According to Wikipedia, Harold Bloom was called “probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world” in 2017. I don’t know much about him at all, I just have this one book that was recommended to me by a friend who specialised in storytelling a year ago. And I found my almost-new copy from a secondhand bookshop at a very reasonable price – I was thrilled to find it. I’m not sure I’d recommend you to get a copy at full price.
Talking about controversy, I don’t have as strong an opinion on this book as some of you. This is how I use it: I typically just read the chapter after I finish watching and reading the play. I learnt this from Jonathan Bate’s school teacher, if we can disagree with Samuel Johnson as long as we have a good reason, I don’t see why we can’t disagree with Harold Bloom. However, often I can’t even say I disagree with him because I find parts of the essays hard to follow. Again, it’s probably my fault but honestly a lot of the time I have no idea what he’s on about. For example, I didn’t quite get his interpretation of The Tempest, but I found the chapter on Julius Caesar very informative. I see it as a useful collection of essays by someone who thought about the plays carefully and his opinions are worth listening to, whether I agree with him in the end or not.
My Shakespeare by Greg Doran
The full title of the book is My Shakespeare: A Director’s Journey through the First Folio. It was published in April this year, 2023. I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by the author himself.
Greg Doran is the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2012 until 2022. He directed or produced ALL of the plays within Shakespeare’s First Folio during his career. I think that’s not just an amazing achievement, what a wonderful professional life, to spend your days reading and thinking about Shakespeare, working with talented and hardworking actors and other theatre people and bringing the plays to life, lifting the text from the pages to the stages, in front of an audience – there are fewer exciting things I’d love to be involved in.
Each of the book’s chapters looks at a different play, like The Invention of the Human. But these are not academic essays, these are the stories of Greg Doran. It talks about his professional life as well as personal life. It also pulls the curtain open a smidge and shows us what goes on behind the scenes of RSC as an organisation. I love hearing him talk about actors like Judi Dench, David Tennant, Harriet Walter, Patrick Stewart, Simon Russell Beale and Antony Sher. The chapter on Hamlet made me really want to watch the David Tennant 2008 production.
Greg Doran talks about the real human skull in his Hamlet production and the real live snake in Antony and Cleopatra. I was fascinated to hear about the puppet show of Venus and Adonis by Little Angel Theatre and regretted almost every minute why I was not born a few decades earlier.
The Genius of Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
As a general reader, to be honest, I find it really hard work, though 100% worth the effort. It’s at the academic end of the spectrum for a general reader.
The book is in two parts. Part one is called Who is Shakespeare? What is he? Which has five chapters:
Chapter 1, A Life of Anecdote – I love the explanation of the idea of creativity and originality. I never knew or thought of the relationship between the source material and Shakespeare’s plays before. It’s eye-opening. Chapter 2, Shakespeare’s Autobiographical Poems? – mainly about his Sonnets, who is the famous and mysterious Mr W. H in the dedication. I love the author’s conclusion. Chapter 3, The Authorship Controversy – I wasn’t particularly doubtful that Shakespeare wrote all the Shakespeare and I was only asked once so far how could I have such blind faith, but if ever I have need to lay out the evidence, this chapter covers all the ground. Chapter 4, Marlowe’s Ghost – writers and artists are more or less influenced by their predecessors and contemporaries, but I never knew how much Shakespeare’s plays were written in response to Marlowe. It makes me want to read Marlowe. Chapter 5, Shakespeare’s Peculiarity – not only Shakespeare was influenced by Marlowe, his writing was also shaped by the fact that he was an actor and he knew theatre well. It talks more about how Shakespeare is not an ‘original genius’ but he is a genius in making the old, new. And in giving us many voices and opinions within one play, he allows us to think and discuss forever and ever.
Part two is called the Shakespeare effect, as the author puts it, ‘what transformed Shakespeare from one among a constellation of admired dramatists into the universally revered Bard of Avon?’ The five chapters are 6) The Original Genius; 7) The National Poet; 8) All the World his Stage; 9) From Character to Icon; 10) The Laws of the Shakespearean Universe. It’s fascinating to learn that Shakespeare is not just literary people’s possession. He was made use of SO much politically, throughout history and across the world as a banner to mean what people want him to mean and to say what people want to say in certain times and places. I love how the author finishes the book with this fascinating hypothesis about another playwright who had the potential to become as great as Shakespeare but somehow didn’t.
The Shakespeare Book by DK
One slightly different book to mention is The Shakespeare Book published by DK. It has glossy paper and is in full colour. For each play, there’s a quote and a bold illustration on the title page. There is a list of characters, a timeline with a summary of the scenes, and a summary of the whole play on the first spread. There is an essay with various key themes on the second spread. Some fun facts about the play throughout history. I’m always interested in past production photos and info.
The next two titles are my favourite non-fictional books about Shakespeare by October 2023. I can’t decide which I like better and it’s OK because they’re very different in what they’re trying to do.
Mad about Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
The full title of the book is Mad about Shakespeare: From Classroom to Theatre to Emergency Room. I listened to the audiobook again this month, this might be my fourth or fifth time reading or listening to the book within 18 months. It’s narrated by Jonathan Bate himself. I like his voice. It’s a voice that gives me the image of a teacher and a scholar at the front of a lecture hall, who spends his life talking to students about literature, something he’s never and will never be bored with.
The authors in the past feel immediate to him and his storytelling makes it feel immediate to me. They’ve been dead for decades or centuries but I can know them. The author suggests a few times in the book that Shakespeare gives him words to express his feelings in many life circumstances. Shakespeare makes him more alive. And the author manages to make Shakespeare and literature more alive for me.
But on a higher level, all the magical moments in this book generate in me a love for beauty and life – I think that’s ultimately why I love this book – I don’t love it just because of the knowledge or the writing style. It opens one’s eyes to the beauty of life – do not be a sleepwalker sleep walking through life, affection and romance, pain and hardship, stories and poetry, life – borrowing from a line from Antony and Cleopatra, “take but good note… behold and see”.
1599 by James Shapiro
I was prompted to read 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare last month because of Skatember first of all, but also because 1599 has just won Baillie Gifford 25th anniversary Winner of Winners Award. The special one-off award crowned the best work of non-fiction from the last 25 years of the prize.
I had high hopes for it and I’m not disappointed. I only read the short biography by Billy Byron so far. In comparison, 1599 also talks a lot about the wider context but it does not read like fillers. Those historical events are extremely relevant, crucial to understanding Shakespeare plays. In the Preface, it says
“This book is about both what Shakespeare achieved and what Elizabethans experienced this year. The two are nearly inextricable: it’s no more possible to talk about Shakespeare’s play independently of his age than it is to grasp what his society went through without the benefit of Shakespeare’s insight. He and his fellow players truly were, in Hamlet’s fine phrase, the ‘abstract and brief chronicles of the time’.”
I didn’t know what he meant, or retrospectively, I didn’t believe what he said. I saw Shakespeare’s works as things lifted out of time and space. But I was wrong and I’m really glad I was wrong. It’s an eye-opening and wonderful experience to learn from this book that Shakespeare is not outside time and space. And knowing his world makes his plays richer.
Just one example, Julius Caesar starts with a group of labourers celebrating in the street and making the day a holiday. I always found it a bit odd. Fair enough, the tribunes tell them off for skyving but what’s the fuss about holiday. Now I know it’s rooted in the historical fact that during Shakespeare’s childhood and young adult years, the religious unrest affected the celebration and the forbidding of celebration on Saints Days. ‘Is this a holiday?’ Is not a question Shakespeare invented for this play. It would have been a question he himself asked as he grew up. Has this Saint Day been removed or added back into the calendar? Is this still a holiday? And all that’s tightly linked with that question, religion and politics of his Elizabethan days.
I know there’s The Year of Lear – how wonderful there’s another book like this to look forward to. But I want James Shapiro to write one book for each year of Shakespeare’s professional life. I want to know what happened when he wrote every play, what historical events might have influenced his thinking, what gossip he heard when his company performed in court, what sermons he read and everything else that might have found their way into his plays.
A Day of Small Things 