Will I love A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare?

Shakespeare comes across as a modest but wealthy man, a hard worker who wrote and re-wrote extensively, who had a dysfunctional marriage (he lived apart from Anne for most of their marriage), who amassed a modest fortune in his artistic activities to afford the grandest house in Stratford.
He lifted his plots from other works, primarily that of Plutarch, and through the many bookshops he visited. He cared less for plot and historical accuracy and more for the exploration and creation of words – he is reputed to have used 18,000 unique words in his career. He also perfected the… show more.

Shapiro’s work is often a model of the kind of writing that I would like to attempt. This book, which focuses on a single year in Shakespeare’s life–1599–and its historical, political, and theatrical events (including performances of Henry V and Julius Caesar), brings its material to life.

It is a deeply researched book, with a wealth of resources listed in its bibliographical essay, but its handling and style are still so captivating and accessible that I couldn’t put it down when I first read it!

When we write about early modern literature and history, we construct narratives that draw… show more.

A brilliant combination of biography and history during the amazing moment of creation of some of the Bard’s greatest plays (Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and even Hamlet). These varied dramas played out against the sensitive moment in London of an aging, heirless Queen Elizabeth I after the Armada and Irish wars but also at the formation of the East India Company.  Shapiro’s (and Shakespeare’s) sequel, The Year of Lear. Shakespeare in 1606, deserves attention, as does the vivid historical fiction, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, told from the viewpoint of Stratford… show more.

Strictly speaking, this is not a book about Tudor art or architecture. Rather, it tells the gripping story of a pivotal year in the life of Shakespeare – and Shakespeare’s England. Drawing on all manner of sources, including household inventories and travel diaries kept by foreign visitors to London and the provinces, Shapiro vividly evokes the textures of life in sixteenth-century England: from the humble stained cloths that adorned the walls of taverns and comparatively modest households like the one in which Shakespeare was raised to the tapestries, oil paintings and other objets d’art that lined the walls of the… show more.