Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

William Shakespeare, author of a considerable portion of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, is largely an enigma. He was born to John Shakespeare, married, had a few children, wrote lots of plays, and died. Follow Bill Bryson as he tries to sort fact from fiction, truth from legend, and uncover the Bard of Avon.

Interesting. It seems odd that we have most of Shakespeare's work yet next to nothing on him. We have Macbeth and Twelfth Night and the sonnets, but we don't even know what the man looked like. If he was such a favorite of the Crown why did he never have a portrait done? Consequently, hundreds of people have dedicated their lives to attempt to uncover such mundane things as where he spent half of his life, where he learned a lot of his background information, what happened to some of his plays, what order the plays were written, and if they were even written by Shakespeare. As Bryson says, the lack of information is what makes his book so small.