A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize's 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award

What accounts for Shakespeare's transformation from talented poet and playwright to one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this gripping account, James Shapiro sets out to answer this question, "succeed[ing] where others have fallen short." (Boston Globe)

1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.

James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare's staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times 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.

Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 06/01/2006
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 8.03h x 5.35w x 1.09d
ISBN: 9780060088743

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 08/13/2006 pg. 24
Library Journal 01/01/2014 pg. 50

About the Author
Shapiro, James: -

James Shapiro, aprofessor at Columbia University in New York, is the author of Rival Playwrights, Shakespeare and the Jews, and Oberammergau.