As part of Harper Collins' "Eminent Lives" series, Bill Bryson took on writing a short, light biography of Shakespeare. The result is odd and a bit disappointing for a fan of both Bryson and Shakespeare, but part of that is certainly to do with the lack of concrete evidence about much of anything in Shakespeare's life. Bryson pads out what we do know about Shakespeare with a lot of context about Elizabethan and Jacobean England, attempting to deduce likelihoods about Shakespeare from what we know generally of the times. Bryson also spends a good chunk of the book on the mechanics of producing the First Folio, and outlining and debunking anti-Stratfordian conspiracy theories. He avoids getting too much into the substance of plays, though discusses ways that some scholars have attempted to read into the plays to illuminate more about Shakespeare's life, often misguidedly. At the end of the day I did feel like I took away some new knowledge about Shakespeare, but maybe more so about Elizabethan England in general. Although the book is short, there were still sections that felt too tangential and caused me to briefly lose interest.