1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear - Hardcover

Shapiro, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571235786 ISBN 13: 9780571235780

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2015

Synopsis

1606 William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear:

About this title

Review:

1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear succeeds brilliantly in the very difficult task of matching James Shapiro's previous and companion volume, 1599, for intensity of narrative and depth of insight. His particular gift as a literary historian is to combine great good sense with daring imaginative reach. (Andrew Motion)

1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear is a meticulous narrative of a momentous year in the life of the playwright and a masterpiece of intelligent literary criticism. (Colm Tóibín Guardian)

A book for anyone interested in history, or literature, or in the creation of the greatest play ever written. (Richard Eyre)

The Shakespeare Shapiro painstakingly and subtly presents here is a virtuoso remix artist, a textual sponge, a magpie, a master-orchestrator of the Zeitgeist ... 'Political theatre' is a dismissive buzz-phrase nowadays: but for the Jacobean court, politics was theatrical and theatre was political. Interpretation was everything. All the world, as this terrifically interesting book shows, really was a stage. (Sam Leith Spectator)

Despite the intricate tangles of evidence he assembles, Shapiro manages, as in 1599, to present his argument in a series of vivid, sometimes harrowing, narratives ... [His book] draws on a mountain of reading, yet is persistently original. It takes us onto the streets of Shakespeare's London, and it reminds us of the brutal culture from which his plays sprang. (John Carey Sunday Times)

In 1606 Shakespeare pens three of his greatest plays: King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. As Shapiro shows in exhaustive yet exhilarating depth, these works reflect the dark and anxious public mood which dominated a year which began in the shadow of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, and ended with an outbreak of plague in London, whose victims included Shakespeare's own landlady... [Shapiro has] a vigorous, burning appetite for historical information and an equally burning desire to impart it ... What Shapiro knows better than most is that the devil is in the details. (Lucasta Miller Independent)

Mr. Shapiro has once again brought Shakespeare's world to precise and pertinent life; the bright light he shines into obscure corners gives us the illusion that we can almost glimpse the dramatist himself, but he immediately slips away again. It is to be hoped that Mr. Shapiro might be persuaded to write a book for every year of Shakespeare's life. (Simon Callow Wall Street Journal)

Shapiro demonstrates once again his skill in shaping quantities of research into a brisk and enjoyable narrative. (Charles Nicholl Guardian)

[An] excellent and ingenious book ... Shapiro rekindles interest in the plays with every page, and I could imagine him writing something fascinating about every year, month and day of Shakespeare's life. (Stuart Kelly The Scotsman)

'As James Shapiro explores in his informative and exciting new book, 1606 was a significant, epoch-defining time that formed the background to two of Shakespeare greatest tragedies, King Lear and Macbeth ... the great strength of Shapiro's book is that he is able to combine acute literary criticism with substantial historical knowledge. (Andrew Hadfield Irish Times)

Book Description:

The sequel to James Shapiro's multi-award winning bestseller 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0571235786
• ISBN 13: 9780571235780
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448