{"product_id":"shakespeare-the-world-as-stage","title":"Shakespeare: The World as Stage","description":"\u003cp\u003eWilliam Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases (\"vanish into thin air,\" \"foregone conclusion,\" \"one fell swoop\") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's--the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bill Bryson","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46347261477100,"sku":"9780062564627","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0684\/1791\/3068\/files\/9780062564627.jpg?v=1764858407","url":"https:\/\/intl.allstora.com\/products\/shakespeare-the-world-as-stage","provider":"Allstora","version":"1.0","type":"link"}