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Upon learning of Bill Bryson’s new Shakespeare (The Illustrated and Updated Edition), I felt momentarily confused. Had that witty writer of felicitous English prose already composed a new Shakespeare book, fast on the heels of his Shakespeare: The World as Stage, published two years before? After all, the best Shakespeareans are as industrious as their subject, who was the author of 38 plays, two long narrative poems and more than 150 sonnets.