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4th out of 135 books
—
57 voters
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599
1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England
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
...morePaperback, 432 pages
Published
June 13th 2006
by Harper Perennial
(first published January 1st 2005)
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Feb 03, 2010
Barbara
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Barbara by:
Paula Fowler - Utah Symphony and Opera Education Director
Shelves:
non-fiction,
biographies
This is what I wanted in a biography about Shakespeare. It looked into the events of his time and discussed how those events contributed to his work. It also talked about why his writing appealed to both the rustic and the aristocracy of his time. It also discussed how he grew and progressed as a writer. As we know, Shakespeare was great at stealing stories from others and reworking them into a better story. The book also discusses this and why his versions are such improvements on the originals...more
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I can't praise this book highly enough: an inspired idea, meticulously researched, executed with consummate skill and insight.
Professor James Shapiro takes as his subject the year in which Shakespeare completed Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar and As You Like It and drafted Hamlet. He relates the content of the plays to the playwright's life, to what was happening in the London playhouses, to the court of Queen Elizabeth, to current affairs such as the English invasion of Ireland and the fear of ano...more
Professor James Shapiro takes as his subject the year in which Shakespeare completed Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar and As You Like It and drafted Hamlet. He relates the content of the plays to the playwright's life, to what was happening in the London playhouses, to the court of Queen Elizabeth, to current affairs such as the English invasion of Ireland and the fear of ano...more
I adored reading this book. It is at once intelligent and engaging. Shapiro sets out the events of a busy year in the life of Shakespeare by cleverly dividing the book up into seasons. The book starts out with the transportation of the old theater and it's re-christening as the Globe. He elucidates what is known about some of the big characters in the group of players that worked at the globe. There is a chapter on the Irish wars. Hamlet, As you like it, Henry V, Julius Caesar were most likely p...more
I don't know that I could say exactly why, but I absolutely loved this book. It was such an interesting read and I just drank it all in.
I felt it was well done, although perhaps not exceptionally so, but I had one major issue with it. I felt there were several points where Shapiro draws conclusions about what Shakespeare must have felt about a certain issue based on something that a character says in one of his plays. This is extremely fallacious, in my opinion, and really bothered me. The one I...more
I felt it was well done, although perhaps not exceptionally so, but I had one major issue with it. I felt there were several points where Shapiro draws conclusions about what Shakespeare must have felt about a certain issue based on something that a character says in one of his plays. This is extremely fallacious, in my opinion, and really bothered me. The one I...more
1599 was the year that the famous Globe theatre was built and the year that Shakespeare created Hamlet, probably the first character in the history of the theatre to wrestle so intelligently and so eloquently with his own demons. For these reasons it seems, James Shapiro chose to focus on 1599 when he set out to write his "intimate history of Shakespeare" as the blurb on the back of the book puts it. But very little documentary evidence exists relating to Shakespeare's life, apart from his plays...more
Twenty-some years ago – between the ages of fifteen and twenty – I devoured the bulk of Shakespeare’s dramatic works. Nowadays, I usually pick up a single contemporary retrospective on the Bard of Avon; the last two being Stephen Greenblatt’s A Will in the World and Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as Stage . Having recently come across Shapiro’s latest nonfiction offering in paperback while scouring the remainder tables of the U Bookstore, I was more than happy to shell out six bucks for an...more
Part history, part textual examination and part biography; ‘1599’ does an excellent job of putting Shakespeare’s work – and the man himself – into context. It was a momentous year for The Bard, he wrote ‘Henry V’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘As You Like It’ and started on ‘Hamlet’. But it was also a tumultuous year for England, with an aged queen, over-ambitious lords and the threat of invasion (and indeed insurrection) hanging in the air. Shapiro takes on the task of showing how the events of the world a...more
To begin with, it must be said that I generally can't enough of Shakespeare. It's been a low level passion of mine for decades. The four stars I gave it tell you that I enjoyed this book which attempts to show how the momentous events of 1599 in Elizabethan England may have worked their way into the plays that Shakespeare wrote that year.
Interestingly, 1599 has some things in common with 2013 - a time of unease, societal transformation and changing values. Shapiro explores the failing Irish war...more
Interestingly, 1599 has some things in common with 2013 - a time of unease, societal transformation and changing values. Shapiro explores the failing Irish war...more
James Shapiro is one of my favorite Shakespeare scholars, primarily because he is able to transport the reader back to the Elizabethan age with a sentence. He does so at the beginning of 1599, when he asks his audience to imagine the moving of the Globe Theatre from one side of the Thames to the other, commenting on the odd band of brothers doing the moving, the actual trick of transplanting all that timber, and even remarking on what the weather must have been like that winter.
It's a great set-...more
It's a great set-...more
Great book. Devoured it. Most of the best scholars will talk about how difficult it is to write a biography on the Bard because there simply isn't much documentation. Then they'll turn around and write a biography. But I have to admit that Shapiro picked a pivotal year in Shakespeare's life. The Earl of Essex is playing games with Queen Elizabeth who is running on fumes, the English are bogged down in a war with Ireland, and Shakespeare and his fellow actors build the Globe on the southern side...more
Wonderfully written survey of an important year in Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan culture. This book combines the best of literary criticism, history, and cultural studies. A worthy read for experts and general enthusiasts alike. Shapiro directs our attention to a period in Elizabethan history when tensions and anxieties were peaking. This is an important tale to remember: we often celebrate the end of the century as the Golden Age of English culture and literary achievement; but just around...more
I read James Shapiro's 1599 three hundred and six years after its subject, the year it came out. It is the best written book on Shakespeare I have read in decades, and since Shakespeare is only known because he wrote so well, Shapiro's is the the most Shakespearean book on Shakespeare. From the first page account of the deconstruction (no, not the French mind-game, but a carpentry event) of The Theater
at night to prepare for the construction of the Globe miles south and across the river, this bo...more
at night to prepare for the construction of the Globe miles south and across the river, this bo...more
James Shapiro may be my favorite Shakespeare scholar. I've read Contested Will and now this one, and I love his erudition, his writing style, and his vast knowledge. This book takes the year 1599 and argues that that year was a turning point in Shakespeare's career: he wrote four plays that year--Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. He also became part owner of a new theater--the Globe--, along with three partners, and supervised or was present for the construction of the theater....more
What a year! By placing Shakespeare's life in the context of the forces--personal, literary, social, and political--James Shapiro gives a sense of how Shakespeare's imagination meets with the unfolding chaos of life and transmutes into Julius Caesar, Henry V, As You Like It, and Hamlet. Since I was also rereading As You Like It and Hamlet before seeing new productions of those plays, this book was particularly rewarding and enlightening. Shapiro's retelling of the story of Essex and Elizabeth's...more
Some bits of this book were really intersting - the religious history, Queen Elizabeth's role in the war on Ireland etc, but some bits were really difficult to get through, such as the detailed look at Shakespeare's writing. I put it to one side while I read something else, hoping that I would have a renewed interest in it when I picked it up again, but when I tried, I found it just as difficult to get through as before. I'd recommend it if you were writing an essay on the time or on Shakespeare...more
I have to say that I am not a native english speaker but I was just fascinated by the title and the introduction.
The book starts off very well and is an easy read. It feels a lot like a novel until Shapiro gets to the point when characters and content of Shakespeare's work become the major focus of the book. If you don't know all these characters and pieces it is extremely hard to follow.
I was hoping that Shapiro would return to some "story telling" but he stayed with all that literature interp...more
The book starts off very well and is an easy read. It feels a lot like a novel until Shapiro gets to the point when characters and content of Shakespeare's work become the major focus of the book. If you don't know all these characters and pieces it is extremely hard to follow.
I was hoping that Shapiro would return to some "story telling" but he stayed with all that literature interp...more
A book about Shakespeare written by James Shapiro so, naturally, I really loved this book. It was a great factual record of one of the key years in Shakespeare's life and, although I would argue that it is not written in the most accessible prose, I found it easy to understand. Not only did it provide excellent information about the playwright himself, but also gave vivid descriptions of Elizabethan England so that the reader may understand the context in which Shakespeare was writing.
A fascina...more
A fascina...more
Wow, Nick Hornby was right! I can't imagine not being able to teach any four of these plays without the valuable knowledge gained from this insightful book. It was great to read how the plays themselves were incidental products of the volatile political and social era in which Shakespeare wrote. Read this along with Bryson's World as Stage biography, and it seems like the current trend it literary scholarship is to admit what the scholar doesn't know and will have no way to ever figure out. Can'...more
this was really interesting. i learned a lot, not so much about shakespeare, but more about what it was like to live in london and in england when he was alive: by exploring everything from customs to the political scene to what it was like to travel around england at the time, shapiro shows a unique way to look at shakespeare and his work that completed that year: henry the fifth, as you like it, julius ceasar, hamlet. it was an amazing year for shakespeare in terms of output, and shapiro does...more
Interesting and very successful approach to documenting Shakespeare's life - I think he put forward a compelling argument that 1599 was a turning point in Shakespeare's career. Excellent analysis of the plays in context of the precise social and political problems of the year they were written. Shakespeare is often lauded as timeless, but this book shows that as applicable as Shakespeare's plays still are today, he was very much a man of his times, writing directly in response to the troubled wo...more
One of Shakespeare's greatest years. Went from writing Henry V to Julius Ceasar to As You Like It and finally, to Hamlet. The events of the year are unfolded in this study and I really appreciated the historical perspective of the politics and events of the 1598-99 year that would have affected Shakespeare's writing. It adds a new level of "timeliness" to the Bard's writings. It also sets a good argument for Shakespeare's attempt to re-image himself as a serious dramatist rather than simply, "th...more
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who didn't already love Shakespeare. Having said that, this is a fantastic biography that met all of my expectations. Which I'm relieved to say, since it took over 400 pages of reading (my digital version was 600 pages total) to get to the section I was looking for -- the chapters that talked about the influence Montaigne's essays had upon Shakespeare as he wrote Hamlet's soliloquies. Who woulda thunk the literary conventions of the essay would have such...more
A beautiful read. In "1599", Shapiro tackles one year in the history of the citizens of London. It also happens to be the year William Shakespeare wrote "Henry V", "As You Like It", and "Julius Caesar", and began work on "Hamlet".
Despite the book's title, "1599" spreads its time equally between Elizabeth and her citizens, and the Bard himself. As Shapiro openly states, we know so little about what exactly led Shakespeare to write his plays, and about specific events in his life, that anything i...more
Despite the book's title, "1599" spreads its time equally between Elizabeth and her citizens, and the Bard himself. As Shapiro openly states, we know so little about what exactly led Shakespeare to write his plays, and about specific events in his life, that anything i...more
First of all, when I bought it, I thought this book was a novel, I don't know why, but that was what I expected. The first sentence in the blurb misled me:
"An intimate history of Shakespeare following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature."
I guessed it was a fictionalised biographical work. But misled I was, indeed!
Professor James Shapiro, who teaches at Columbia University in New York, writes an illuminating essay both on Shakespeare's stagg...more
"An intimate history of Shakespeare following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature."
I guessed it was a fictionalised biographical work. But misled I was, indeed!
Professor James Shapiro, who teaches at Columbia University in New York, writes an illuminating essay both on Shakespeare's stagg...more
Shapiro describes his M.O. best: this book is “about both what Shakespeare achieved and what Elizabethan’s experienced this year...it’s no more possible to talk about Shakespeare’s plays independently of his age than it is to grasp what his society went through without the benefit of Shakespeare’s insights. He and his fellow players truly were in Hamlet’s fine phrase, the ‘abstract and brief chronicles of the time’ (II,ii,524).”
1599 was a watershed year in Shakespeare’s career for it was then he...more
1599 was a watershed year in Shakespeare’s career for it was then he...more
Jun 02, 2010
Alan
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Alan by:
F R Jameson
don't read much non fiction, but this one caught my eye in the library (after a recommendation from F R Jameson). As some of you know I take a keen interest in local writers (eg I've recently read Anthony Cartwright's 'Heartland' set in Dudley, Mez Packer's 'Among Thieves' set in Coventry and Raphael Selbourne's 'Beauty' set in Wolverhampton). Well here is a local lad who did quite well for himself - Shakespeare. I live less than twenty miles from Stratford and am often hanging about the same ha...more
Oct 11, 2009
Spiros
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone wanting to get a nuts and bolts grasp on Shakespeare
Shelves:
bins,
londoncalling
1599 was a fraught year in the reign of Elizabeth: an uprising in Ireland had caused the Privy Council to levy troops throughout the country, and increase taxes (loans, they were called) from London merchants. Essex, sent to quash the rebellion, found himself, forced by Elizabeth's fretful orders, waging ill-considered attacks on the Irish, who wouldn't make themselves available to meet those attacks. As the relationship between the Queen and her onetime favorite deteriorated, Philip III of Spai...more
Good book, scholarly and readable. 1599 was the year that the Globe Theater was built, and that Shakespeare wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar and As You Like It, and began Hamlet. James Shapiro takes us through the year, showing us Shakespeare against his times. He implicitly contrasts Shakespeare with Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, who was the Obama-cum-Brangelina of his day. Essex starts the year a hero, marching off to war in Ireland; he ends it jailed in the Tower of London. John Donne wrote...more
Not an exact quote, but gives the sense of this book: "When people talk about Shakespeare's sources, they talk about books like Holinshed's Chronicles, but they ignore what was happening around him right then." The book delves into one year, 1599, the year of As You Like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet, but also the year when the Chamberlain's Men made off with the materials from their old theater (which was on land for which they'd lost the lease) with plans to build the Globe in what wa...more
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