The Bard and the Barman is a marked departure from humdrum explanations for Shakespeare's "lost years." Scholars have looked too close to home, failing to see that the Bard was a Francophile at heart, as is evident in one of his early plays, Love's Labor Lost, obviously based on "Good King Henri" of France. Due to the journal of a barman at London's Bayside Inn, where Shakespeare stayed during his apprenticeship as a playwright, we now know the scoop. Not only does the barman shed light on Shakespeare's coming-of-age in France, but he reveals why the Bard had to destroy the sequel to his...