I’ve finally finished reading Bill Bryon’s biography on our greatest writer and thought I’d share a few observations.
That one picture we all see of Shakespeare whenever he’s mentioned, might not actually be him!
Philip Henslow, proprietor of the Rose and Fortune Theatre, had listed as a prop an invisibility cloak!
Admission prices to the theatre were tiered back then, as now:
A penny to stand
A penny more to sit
A penny more to sit on a cushion
The money was dropped into a box and taken to a special room for counting - the box office!
Bill Bryson effectively sabotages the case of those who claim Shakespeare was really Bacon, or Oxford, or Marlowe, dropping the claimants one by one through the trapdoor in their arguments, mainly because none of them had a shred of evidence about anything! Or were mad. Or the person they claimed was Shakespeare was actually dead before all the plays were written! Read it and next time someone tries to diss Will, quote like mad!
Shakespeare invented these words, amongst around 800 still in use today: dwindle; hereditary; excellent; barefaced and leapfrog. And the following phrases: play fast and loose; vanish into thin air; flesh and blood; and, my personal favourite - blinking idiot. In an argument with hubby, who’s a philistine when it comes to the Bard - he finished the rant against our greatest playwright with “ …blah blah blah a foregone conclusion!” And guess who invented that particular little beauty? I rested my case!
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