A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599

Author - James Shapiro ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from HarperCollins was reviewed on 4-Nov-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by HarperCollins. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro takes a novel approach in its presentation of Shakespeare. It resists both the urge to give a birth to death account of Shakespeare´s life and the urge to form extensive conjectures based on what little is actually known about Shakespeare. Instead, it focuses on not only a pivotal year in Shakespeare´s writing career but also a pivotal year in the history of England, 1599. This is the year the Globe was erected and Shakespeare wrote Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. A Year in the Life discusses, in depth, the highly volatile and dangerous political context in which Shakespeare was writing and performing. Queen Elizabeth was aging without a clear successor in line for the throne; England was at war with Ireland and feared an invasion from the Spanish Armada. Free speech was not something that existed in 16th century England, and playwrights as well as common housewives were put in prison and punished for subversive speech. In this context, Shakespeare managed to escape prison, unlike several fellow playwrights, while he both wrote and performed in politically relevant plays that spoke to his contemporary audience. In his fascinating book, Shapiro sets the historical and political stage of 1599 and places Shakespeare and his plays firmly on it. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in biographical and historical information about Shakespeare.¤

2) Hardcover Book A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by HarperCollins. The year is 1599. "A year in the life..." takes a new look at the Bard ( if this is possible after the rivers of ink that have been written ) by concentrating on a thoroughly researched year in the history of Enland and Queen Elizabeth I, and melding it in with a prolific year in the works of Shakespeare (Henry V, Julius Ceaser, As you Like it , Hamlet). The result is fascinating, and sheds another ray of light, this time from a different angle , on the man of the millenium.¤

3) Hardcover Book A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by HarperCollins. While we have his magnificent plays and poetry, we know little about Shakespeare the man. We have the dry details of his birth, marriage, and death, the birth and death of his children, his education at Stratford Grammar School, his will, and some business and legal records. We can infer a little from what others wrote about him, especially in the 1623 First Folio; and we can extrapolate a bit more from what we know of the London theater scene and its denizens during the Elizabethan period. But the stuff of a real biography -- what Shakespeare was thinking, feeling, and experiencing during his life -- perforce are matters only for speculation.

It is truly remarkable, therefore, that Professor Shapiro uses this small heap of facts to bring Shakespeare brilliantly to life. Shapiro focuses on Shakespeare´s life during 1599, which Shapiro forcefully argues was the year Shakespeare began his transformation into one of the greatest dramatists of all time. It was a year in which Shakespeare and his partners built the Globe Theatre where the Chamberlains Men / Kings Men would perform for the rest of his career. It was also the year in which Shakespeare ground out masterpieces in all three of his genres of history, comedy, and tragedy: Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. Linking his sensitive and erudite explications of these plays to contemporary political developments (such as the bogged-down English invasion of Ireland and the threat of Spanish invasion), occurrences in the rapidly changing Elizabethan theater world (e.g., the diminishing roles of clowns like Shakespeare´s partners Will Kemp and Robert Armin), literary trends (such as the development of self-expository monologue in Montaigne´s essays and Shakespeare´s soliloquies) and events in Shakespeare´s own life (e.g., his quest for middle-class status as evidenced by his application for a coat of arms), Professor Shapiro paints a colorfully vibrant portrait of Shakespeare and the competitive theater business in which Shakespeare became so prominent as both a creator and an entrepreneur.

I don´t know enough about Shakespeare to have an independent opinion about whether Shapiro overstates the case for the crucial nature of the year 1599. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Although a product of deep learning, it is beautifully written and compellingly readable, and makes Shakespearean scholarship accessible even to a general reader like me. It also made me want to read many of the plays again, which I haven´t since school days. Whether you love the Bard, or haven´t thought much about him since you were forced to read the plays in school, this book is a wonderful and essential companion to Shakespeare´s works.¤

4) Hardcover Book A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by HarperCollins. A joy to read.

This is a magnificent book; clear, detailed and lucid.

Much has been said already about this book. It gives a very clear insight into Elizabethan London towards the end of Elizabeth´s reign. As a student of the Bard, Shapiro performs well in widening the discussion to mention the theatre-going habits of plebs and aristocracy alike; how Shakespeare and his players would have attended palaces which informed his works. Shapiro notes the echoes of Catholicism, the threat of another Spanish invasion, the deeply unsettling rebellion in Ireland, even the confusion over the calendar and holy/national days. Given the difficulties and expense of publishing in the 1600´s, I suppose it is possible to read every individual item published in 1599, and the comprehensiveness of the author´s grasp of Elizabethan London, makes me believe he may have done so.

All told extremely well, he plots Shakespeare´s emergence as a serious playwright, who eschews the popular trivialities and takes on large questions of politics and personality.
I was less impressed with the later discussions of Shakespere´s rewrites of the great plays of 1599, however it is a work of great learning, synopsized very well and told in an engaging style.
¤

5) Hardcover Book A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by HarperCollins. In this insightful and innovative book, Shapiro adopts the reverse approach to the usual. Instead of analysing the plays to find the man, he explores the life to illuminate the plays. The result is a revelation of both.

A Prologue describes the building of the Globe from timbers secretly transported across the Thames by Shakespeare and Co. from The Theatre (on which the lease had expired). Then Shapiro trains his lens on 1599, dividing it into its four "seasons". Maintaining dynamic readability throughout, each season deals with a set of preoccupations at national, professional, and personal levels:

1. Winter - Shakespeare´s artistic differences with his comic star, Will Kemp; the run-up to Essex´s Ireland campaign, with mobilisation and departure - as well as pacifism.

2. Spring - logistics of building the Globe; censorship, book-burning and history; the appropriation of religious holidays for politcal purposes.

3. Summer - paranoia in London with rumours of a second Armada invasion); Shakespeare´s anguish at an unauthorised, cobbled-together edition of his poems; sincerity, fakery, and learning the true nature of love.

4. Autumn - the decline of chivalric values and rise of empire via merchant-adventurers and the East India Company; the impact of Montaigne´s essays on soliloquies; and finally, an elucidation of how the various versions of "Hamlet" reveal Shakespeare´s changing view of this most problematic play.

Shapiro correlates these topics with the themes and language of Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet (the four dramas Shakespeare wrote in 1599). He also provides us with details so unexpected as to be poignant - for example, Shakespeare changing horses while riding home to Stratford. These touches reveal what critics formerly called "Shakespeare the Man" - but there´s minimal speculation here, with skilful deployment of primary sources. Also the texture of Elizabethan court and civic life is stunningly evoked.

So we have the feeling of moving through the year "in real time" with Shakespeare. Daringly illuminating, this will make you critically re-evaluate not only Shakespeare, but other biographies and criticism. Well done indeed.

¤

6) Hardcover Book A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by HarperCollins.

An intimate history of Shakespeare, following him through a single year -- 1599 -- that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature

How was Shakespeare transformed from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year we follow what he reads and writes, what he sees, and whom he works with as he invests in the new Globe Theatre and creates four of his most famous plays -- Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet.

James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare´s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599: sending off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathering an Armada threat from Spain, gambling on the fledgling East India Company, and waiting to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.

This book brings the news and intrigue of the times together with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 2-Dec-2008, , 930-410-720-7X0-8X1-Q4B-G4B-8

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