Who was William Shakespeare?

Review also includes:

Who was Florence Nightingale?, Charlotte Moore, ill. James Nunn, 112pp, 978-1904095330

Who was David Livingstone?, Amanda Mitchison, ill. James Nunn, 128pp, 978-1904095309

Three new additions to this marvellously compact biographical series from Short Books, the style and tone of each book reflects the character of its subject. Shakespeare, by music and theatre critic Robert Christiansen, investigates the mystery of our greatest playwright as a detective story, setting the known facts in the context of Elizabethan England and asking why we know so little about the man. Few references to this elusive figure crop up in contemporary letters and diaries, while a host of different theories abound for other possible authors of the plays, from Bacon to Marlowe. A vivid picture emerges of a theatrical world of violence and intrigue, murder and revenge in London, contrasting strongly with Shakespeare’s quietly anonymous existence in Stratford-upon-Avon. Clearly an enthusiast for his subject, Christiansen quotes widely from the plays with descriptions of the plots and examples from the text, reinforcing why Shakespeare remains so relevant today.

Florence Nightingale reads more like a novel, with convincing dialogue and dramatic scene-setting as Florence returns from Crimea to her family home alone, eschewing welcome parties, regimental bands and a waiting escort of a man-of-war. Though she became the most famous woman in Victorian Britain, she hated any show of fuss or praise and in old age insisted that there should be no state funeral or memorial. Suffocated by the expectations of her wealthy family, she was determined to pursue her chosen career of nursing at a time when women were expected to remain at home. Nothing could have prepared her for the horrors of the army hospital in Scutari, yet she worked ceaselessly against huge prejudice to create order out of the filth and chaos, personally caring for the sick and wounded until she herself succumbed to ‘Crimea fever’. She spent the next half-century campaigning tirelessly from her invalid’s couch for proper training for nurses and improved standards of health and hygiene, creating a revolution not just in nursing but in the position of women in society.

David Livingstone portrays another towering Victorian figure, an extraordinarily determined explorer who twice crossed Africa in his search for trade routes and the source of the Nile. From a poor background as a Glaswegian cotton mill-worker, he clawed himself an education to become a medical missionary, sent out on a placement to southern Africa. Surviving hostile tribes and an attack by a lion, he worked as a missionary before turning his attention to exploration. With wife and small children in tow, he was intent on finding the Zambezi river to open up a highway into the African interior to traders and missionaries, thus ending the Arab slave trade. Returning to England to a hero’s welcome, Livingstone’s account of his journeys with their detailed recordings of plants and animals became an instant bestseller. He enthused his audiences with possibilities of cotton plantations, mineral resources, coffee, sugar and wheat growing – all means to open up Africa to the three Cs of Civilization, Commerce and Christianity. His final journey to find the source of the Nile was plagued by every possible disaster and by his own ill health, and he was already a very sick man when Stanley finally hunted him down.

I can only endorse Philip Ardagh’s recommendation on the cover of each: ‘I love these books.’