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The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606

James Shapiro

4.06 · Rating details · 1,830 ratings · 356 reviews

Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro shows how the tumultuous events in England in 1606 affected Shakespeare and shaped the three great tragedies he wrote that year—King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.

In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare’s great ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published October 6th 2015 by Simon Schuster

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Mar 25, 2016 Manuel Antão rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

A Good Year for Shakespeare but an Awful One for England: “1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear” by James Shapiro

“Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.”

In Macbeth, “1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear” by James Shapiro

In the last 2 years I've been thinking a lot about Shakespeare. ...more

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Sep 08, 2020 Rachel rated it really liked it

Shelves: shakespeare, 2020, audiobooks, nonfiction

The Year of Lear focuses on one specific year as it pertains to Shakespeare's life and works--1606, the year he wrote Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, and King Lear. This is a historical rather than literary text--Shapiro doesn't give a line-by-line analysis of any of the aforementioned plays, but rather, he fills in the historical context surrounding their respective compositions, particularly highlighting the Gunpowder Plot and its aftermath.

It's an interesting text as long as you're compelled ...more

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Oct 14, 2015 Bettie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: BBC Radio Listeners

Recommended to Bettie by: laura

Shelves: autumn-2015, nonfiction, published-2015, history, lit-crit, plague-disease, religion, willsphernalia, execution, radio-4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06gqdwm

Description: Ten years ago James Shapiro won the Samuel Johnson Prize for his bestseller 1599: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

1606: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THE YEAR OF LEAR is a compelling look at a no less extraordinary year in his life. The book traces Shakespeare's life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, THE CHRONICLE HISTORY OF KING LEIR, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, KI ...more

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Dec 13, 2015 Nooilforpacifists rated it really liked it

Shelves: british-history, music-art-entertainment, lit-crit

Original take on the history of a pivotal British year through the lens of the words of Shakespeare, contemporaneous sermons, and a few diarists (in an era when critical words in a secret notebook were treated as treason). James Shapiro--a retired Shakespeare professor--begins the previous November 5, 1605: the exposure of the Gunpowder Plot. After the Kingdom first is relieved by the deliverance of the King, his family, the aristocracy and Parliament from being atomized, repercussions soon divi ...more

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Nov 30, 2020 Rebecca rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, literary-analysis, favorites, nonfiction, non-fiction-november, gunpowder-plot-of-1605

4.5 stars. I wish I could give this brilliant, powerful, and surprisingly moving analysis of the year 1606 and the impact 1605 and 1606 had on not only Shakespeare but England as well the full 5 stars. However the occasional factual error and frequent jumping around in the timeline was occasionally jarring. His chapters on the Gunpowder Plot and the impact not only it but also the various government propaganda versions of it had on the national psyche were, pardon the pun, mind blowing. It left ...more

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Jan 18, 2017 Lew Watts rated it it was amazing

I was interviewed a few weeks ago(https://watermelonisotope.com/2016/12...). One question was "If you could be present at any moment in history...what event would you visit and why?" My answer, at the time, was 66 million years ago, at the mass-extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous, where I could witness the kind of devastation from a future nuclear war. After reading James Shapiro's magnificent The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, I should have said the year 1606, hovering over Shakes ...more

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Nov 03, 2015 Ed rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: shakespeare

“The Year of Lear” is not an academic book—no aspiring assistant professor shooting for tenure would want to hang his career prospects on it as a first or even second book. It isn’t about how the academy views Shakespeare’s late works. Shapiro doesn’t attack scholarly rivals nor does he break new ground analyzing the plays. It is, however, a serious book, or at least a book for serious readers who are familiar with “King Lear”, Antony and Cleopatra” and “Macbeth”. Shapiro assumes the reader know “The Year of Lear” is not an academic book—no aspiring assistant professor shooting for tenure would want to hang his career prospects on it as a first or even second book. It isn’t about how the academy views Shakespeare’s late works. Shapiro doesn’t attack scholarly rivals nor does he break new ground analyzing the plays. It is, however, a serious book, or at least a book for serious readers who are familiar with “King Lear”, Antony and Cleopatra” and “Macbeth”. Shapiro assumes the reader knows the basics of the religious/political conflicts of the time--Catholic recusancy, Puritan intransigence and Anglican willingness to sanction torture and disemboweling of heretics.

Shakespeare’s response to the chaos that ruled the social and political Stuart world was a burst of sustained creative energy. 1606 was dominated by the foiled Gunpowder Plot and the government response to it. “Lear”, “Macbeth” and “A&C” are focused on regicide, civil strife and anarchy; they have devils, witches and hellfire much in keeping with the Stuart government’s presentation of the plotters as Catholic servants of Satan. . The unease expressed in these tragedies is as much a reaction to government hysteria – the anti-Catholic propaganda, the reprisals and interrogations, the extravagant displays of judicial butchery – as to the actual threat of Catholic terrorism. Government hysteria and blood soaked reprisals were given the sheen of legality by the courts where torture was just another tool used by the prosecution and defendants weren’t allowed to question witnesses.

It is an incredible year of artistic labor, and Shapiro shows how powerfully these plays addressed the political and social upheavals of the time: they “collectively reflect their fraught cultural moment”. As Hamlet had said, in his famous advice to the players, the “purpose of playing” was not only to hold that universal “mirror up to nature”, but also to “show … the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”

Talk of “equivocation” was everywhere in 1606. The word appears just once in Shakespeare before Macbeth, and even then it seems to be a mere synonym for ambiguity. By 1606, it has acquired a more specific meaning, one that Macbeth himself explicates when he says that “I…begin/To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend,/That lies like truth.” In the early years of James’s reign, the practice of equivocation, of constructing lies that have the appearance of truth, acquired an urgent political currency. The Gunpowder Plot of November 1605, in which a well-organized group of Catholic conspirators installed thirty-six barrels of gunpowder under the chamber where Parliament was to meet, with the aim of killing James, his heir Prince Henry, and the entire government, concentrated royal attention on the threat of Catholic disloyalty.

A particular source of anxiety was the Catholic doctrine of “mental reservation,” which allowed those being questioned under oath to give answers that seemed true even while they withheld the real truth. Shapiro quotes a broadsheet ballad that sums up the accusation against Catholic leaders: “The Pope allows them to equivocate,/The root of their abhorred intents to hide.” That Shakespeare expects the previously arcane word to be widely understood and associated with religious treason is evident from the monologue of the Porter in Macbeth, imagining who might be hammering on the gate as if it were the gate of Hell:

“Knock, knock! Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator.”

“Macbeth” is so full of equivocal statements by the principals that following the dialog can be mentally exhausting—but exhilarating. The audience must be alert and will still be fooled, as is, for example, Macbeth, by the prophecy of the weird sisters. He feels he is safe in his treachery since “none born of woman/Shall harm Macbeth” and that he will never be vanquished until “Great Birnam Wood” shall come to Dunsinane. Macbeth, master of evasion, ambiguity and mental reservation is done in by his faith in the words of the greatest equivocators, the sisters on the “blasted heath”.
...more

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Oct 14, 2015 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Bettie

Shelves: literary-criticism, audio-books, american-fiction, non-fiction, read-2015

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week
Episode One : The Theatre

In 1606, Shakespeare was writing for a Royal Family hungry for new entertainment while the threats of plague, insurrection and rebellion threatened English society. At the peak of his powers, he was writing for actors who he knew well within a theatre company with which he had been involved for more than a decade. The resulting plays, KING LEAR, MACBETH and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA were extraordinary.

Episode Two: The Gunpowder Plot

The impac From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week
Episode One : The Theatre

In 1606, Shakespeare was writing for a Royal Family hungry for new entertainment while the threats of plague, insurrection and rebellion threatened English society. At the peak of his powers, he was writing for actors who he knew well within a theatre company with which he had been involved for more than a decade. The resulting plays, KING LEAR, MACBETH and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA were extraordinary.

Episode Two: The Gunpowder Plot

The impact of the Gunpowder Plot of late 1605 has implications not only for the monarchy and aristocracy but also for the work of the contemporary playwrights, including William Shakespeare.

Episode Three : Plague

An outbreak of the plague threatens the livelihood of William Shakespeare when the theatres are closed. It also looms close to his home in London.

Episode Four : Religion

The ferment in the country and King James' insistence on an Oath of Allegiance brings religious tensions to the fore in 1606. Anyone refusing to take communion (and therefore presumed to be Catholic) was fined. These matters come very close to William Shakespeare when a member of his family refuses communion in Stratford Upon Avon.

Episode Five : Union

King James' quest for the union of England and Scotland is not easily resolved.

Ten years ago James Shapiro won the Samuel Johnson Prize for his bestseller 1599: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

1606: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THE YEAR OF LEAR is a compelling look at a no less extraordinary year in his life. The book traces Shakespeare's life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, THE CHRONICLE HISTORY OF KING LEIR, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, KING LEAR.

1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, witnessing the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague. But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare who, before the year was out, went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times: MACBETH and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

Abridged by Anna Magnusson

Read by Ian McDiarmid

Produced by Gaynor Macfarlane.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06gqdwm ...more

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May 22, 2016 Roman Clodia rated it really liked it

In this follow-up to his groundbreaking 1599, Shapiro looks at the fateful year of 1606 and how it might have inspired, inflected and influenced Shakespeare's Macbeth, King Lear and Antony & Cleopatra.

1606 was the year that James I was negotiating the Union of England and Scotland; the year that the perpetrators of the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 were brought to trial; and a year that, according to Shapiro's readings, changed the thought-world and language of England.

What Shapiro's books do ...more

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Aug 10, 2015 M.L. Rio rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, history, shakespeare, theatre, literary-criticism, favorites

Because I have such a massive literary crush on James Shapiro, it's quite possible this review is biased. But it's equally possible that Shapiro is simply a scholastic genius. As in 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, Shapiro's wit and insight and--perhaps above all else, sense of narrative style--make for a read that is both delightful and informative in The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. He weaves together with spectacular finesse what little we know of the man Shakespeare, wh ...more

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Aug 17, 2015 Susan Liston rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-2016, history, shakespeare

This book does what I HATE, which is presume all sorts of stuff about Shakespeare that is not known and present it as fact. There are so many egregious examples of this here that I was happy to see that there is available "Contested Year: Errors, Omissions and Unsupported Statements in James Shapiro's "The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606" which I read alongside it. I had read a good chunk before I discovered this, and I was already shaking my head at what seemed to me to be some bizarre statem ...more

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Dec 08, 2019 James rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, history-middleages

One of the main reasons I write the odd review on Goodreads.com is to try and maintain my written English to at least a basic standard. I don't get much opportunity to write anything substantial these days and worry that my literacy level is in perpetual decline.
So when I saw a novel that combines history and the greatest writer ever to put pen to paper in the English language, I thought here is a chance for genuine self-improvement.

The history I loved, especially the minutiae which is right up ...more

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Oct 29, 2015 Leah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-criticism, new-to-me, history, 2015

“Let every man be master of his time.”

In 1606, Shakespeare wrote three plays – King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. James Shapiro sets out to show how this burst of creativity reflected the events and concerns of the times and to reveal what Shakespeare may have been thinking as he wrote.

Shapiro reminds us that Shakespeare was as much a Jacobean playwright as an Elizabethan one, and suggests that these later plays show how the English world had changed since James I came to the throne i ...more

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Jan 17, 2016 Pearl rated it liked it

I’d like to say that I was really wowed by this book because it seems that most readers were; but, truth to tell, I found it a bit tedious and plodding, so I’ll give it my honest reaction. This is not to say “The Year of Lear…” is not a worthwhile read. It’s meticulously researched. And that’s one of the problems I had with it. It seemed that there was not a detail too small or a linkage too tenuous for the author to claim its influence on Shakespeare. And perhaps it was so.

The year is 1606, the I’d like to say that I was really wowed by this book because it seems that most readers were; but, truth to tell, I found it a bit tedious and plodding, so I’ll give it my honest reaction. This is not to say “The Year of Lear…” is not a worthwhile read. It’s meticulously researched. And that’s one of the problems I had with it. It seemed that there was not a detail too small or a linkage too tenuous for the author to claim its influence on Shakespeare. And perhaps it was so.

The year is 1606, the year when “King Lear” and “Macbeth” were written and staged and probably “Antony and Cleopatra” as well, although the date for the latter is less certain. Strange and frightening events were occurring in England that year and the years leading up to it. Even as we read Shakespeare according to what’s going on in our time so did Shakespeare write according to what was going on in his time, Shapiro not unreasonably argues.

In the mid to late 20th Century, for example, when we were seized by post Holocaust fears and nuclear threats, an apocalyptic world seemed absolutely to be the central focus of “Lear.” In the early 21th Century, however, we became more focused on Lear as a father than as a king and dementia loomed larger perhaps than apocalyptic events shaking the world. “King Lear,” Shapiro writes, is no less of its time. So not only did the social and political influences and events of Shakespeare’s day influence Shakespeare’s writing but also Shakespeare responded to what his audience was most concerned about and interested in.

James I has been three years on the throne of England and his greatest desire is to unite the divided kingdoms of England and Scotland. There also has been a gunpowder plot – an attempt at regicide – that has resulted in very deep mistrust and paranoia. The world seemed dark and unsettled. Questions such as how can ordinary people commit such horrible crimes were being fearfully asked. Where does this evil come from - without or within? What binds us together? What can destroy these bonds? All of these questions find their way into “Lear” and “Macbeth.” In addition, James evidenced a huge interest in a case of suspected demon possession in England. The case, ultimately proved to be a fraud, made big “headlines” at the time. It’s easy to draw a line between this event and events in the troubled plays.

Shapiro also gives us facts about Shakespeare’s changing status as he shifts from being part of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company during Queen Elizabeth’s time to belonging to the King’s Men under James. The King’s Men were required to put out many more performances than Elizabeth had demanded. Styles were changing too. Ben Jonson’s masques were elaborately staged and Shakespeare, Shapiro argues, was forced to compete with this splendor and, thus, Antony and Cleopatra.

All of these influences and many more are traced in great deal detail in Shapiro’s argument. Some of them are interesting. Some of them are significant. In my opinion, some are not. A word of warning: don’t read his book if you don’t know these plays. Shapiro presumes his readers will have more than a passing familiarity with them. (This is not a bad thing.) But the pleasure of a Shakespeare play is in its language, not in these influences interesting as they may be.
...more

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Jan 06, 2016 Carol Douglas rated it it was amazing

James Shapiro is my favorite Shakespearean critic. This book, true to form, is excellent.
In an earlier book, Shapiro described what Shakespeare's life was probably like in 1599. I enjoyed that book, and this is just as enlightening.
The plot to blow up Parliament, and King James and his family with it, was set to culminate in November 1605. Although it failed, the public was traumatized. Protestants especially were upset at the thought of losing their king, and Catholics feared retaliation b ...more

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Jan 29, 2019 Ed Erwin rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, history

I'm more interested in the history here than the thoughts about Shakespeare's plays. These were interesting times in English/British history. The perpetrators of "Gunpowder Plot" were being drawn and quartered, people were still adjusting to the break from the Catholic church, and were learning to live with a Scottish king in England. And we round the year out with plague, again.

I most enjoyed the chapter on "Equivocation". Catholics were concerned with just how close they could come to making f ...more

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Nov 12, 2020 E.A. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: britain, non-fiction, plays, history

In my recollection - which may well be wrong - 1599 was less coherently focused on certain historical developments than 1606. That actually ended up making 1606 really interesting. Reading about surprisingly topical historical events was a good reminder of the useful perspective offered by history. What we're going through is often not so special, but a variation on a theme. ...more

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Dec 08, 2016 Bfisher rated it really liked it

Shelves: literature, history, literary-criticism

Although we tend to think of Shakespeare as an Elizabethan playwright, some of his greatest plays were written in the early Jacobean years - Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Macbeth.

Shapiro places these plays in the context of the year they were completed in; England in 1606 after an attempt to behead the state by destroying all of the political establishment during the opening of Parliament (for Americans, probably equivalent to planting a massive bomb in the Capitol to explode during the State ...more

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Jan 25, 2016 Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken rated it liked it

Shelves: stuarts-stewarts, shakespeare

Edit: I have put this review off for a long time and am not sure why. I struggled with getting through this one and I think maybe I was Shakespeared-out in terms of reading about him - I'd read A LOT around the time the First Folio was on display at the Durham. I think I will give this book another chance at a later date so I can put together a better review.

I wanted to love this book, because it's Shapiro and Shakespeare. But it was not nearly as engaging as Shapiro's other books about Shakespe ...more

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Apr 09, 2017 Carol Storm rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed this book! King Lear is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, and Columbia professor James Shapiro does a great job showing how Shakespeare rebuilt the story from the ground up by borrowing from an earlier play called "King Leir."

What I loved best about being a Columbia undergraduate more than thirty years ago was the way professors emphasized close reading of the text. Shapiro follows that approach here. In Shakespeare's play the word "nothing" takes on an almost terrifying si I really enjoyed this book! King Lear is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, and Columbia professor James Shapiro does a great job showing how Shakespeare rebuilt the story from the ground up by borrowing from an earlier play called "King Leir."

What I loved best about being a Columbia undergraduate more than thirty years ago was the way professors emphasized close reading of the text. Shapiro follows that approach here. In Shakespeare's play the word "nothing" takes on an almost terrifying significance, since Cordelia says "nothing" about how much she loves her father, and he then gives her "nothing" in return. And when she dies, "nothing" is left! But in the old time source play, the tone is very different. The king of France asks Cordelia almost flirtatiously "but did he leave nothing for your lovely self?" And Cordelia replies very demurely, and a touch flirtatiously, "He loved me not, and so left me nothing at all." The circumstances are the same but the tone is completely different.

Interestingly, Shapiro insists that there were certain plot points and themes that Shakespeare took from the old play that didn't make sense in the new version, such as the invasion of France and good son Edgar's continuing in disguise even when his blinded father is on the point of suicide. Personally, however, I've always felt that Edgar's behavior towards his blinded father makes perfect sense. It's his duty to protect his father and lead him along the road, but Edgar has been deeply hurt by his father's earlier rejection and is perhaps even a little angry at him. That's why he never reveals himself to the blind man and that's why he feels so guilty afterwards. Most critics see Edgar as such an upstanding symbol of goodness that they don't make any allowance for his human feelings. Personally I think Edgar is very angry at his father, even if he's too loyal to admit it even to himself. The old man turned on him without cause and threw him out of the house to die, just like Lear's daughters did to King Lear!

Reading this book really brought back my time at Columbia in a wonderful way. Not only were there great professors but the whole experience of living on campus really made Shakespeare come alive. For example, I'll never forget the time I was trying to make the Columbia rowing team and some numb nuts coach suggested we all go on a five mile run through Central Park. This was in November, and it was getting dark and already about thirty degrees outside. So off we go! But the other guys on the team, all rich kids from private rowing clubs and schools like Andover and Exeter, were a whole lot faster than me. And soon they were all out of sight. So there I was, lost in Central Park after dark, freezing to death, miles from campus. Next thing I know, I'm lost and wandering through Harlem! Moments like that will really teach you what King Lear is all about. Columbia walls itself off from the surrounding community with high fences, security guards, and locked gates, but there's always the promise (or the threat) that the real slum life of NYC is just one unlucky block away. And if you aren't "really" the Columbia type, if you aren't fast enough to keep up, well then you really have no right to be there. And the big boys will turn you out to die just like Lear!

It was shocking to me, as it was shocking to Lear, to discover that there was a whole world outside the palace walls. It was even more shocking to discover that the lowly, forgotten people outside were more human than the people inside. I was way up on Lenox Avenue and 125th Street before I worked up the nerve to ask a black man in a fur coat for directions back to the Columbia campus. Of course I was a punk kid from the suburbs and I was sure I was about to die. After all, I'd been told by Columbia professors ever since orientation that the streets were dangerous!

Looking back, that guy in the fur coat didn't need to pull a gun or a knife to kill me. All he had to do was point the wrong way and I would have been dead. He had no reason to help me, but he did. Those rich boys had no reason to ditch me, but they did. Lessons like those are what King Lear is all about. Reading this book reminded me just how grateful I am to fine Columbia professors like James Shapiro for creating an atmosphere where King Lear lives! ...more

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Feb 11, 2021 Mary rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2021-reading-challenge, literary, history

'The Year of Lear' is a thrilling piece of literary detection. James Shapiro puts Shakespeare and his work in 1606 in historical context, showing how the volatile events of the time affected his writing.

November 1605 was the time of the aborted Gunpowder Plot, which had tremendous repercussions throughout English society, from dozens of executions to increased severity of laws governing recusant Catholics. The early years of James I's reign were ones of optimism and change that slowly transform ...more

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Feb 28, 2017 Sara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I love learning about history through targeted perspectives, like biographies or deep dives into specific events. This book was an engaging way to get an introduction to England in the 1600s. The author takes current events and shows how they manifested themselves in Shakespeare's plays. It was a real reminder of how much writers are influenced by what's going on around them as well as their own desire to provide commentary on these events. The chapters on the gunpowder plot were most interestin ...more

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Nov 08, 2019 Caroline rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019-prose

The title made me expect more of a focused narrative history, but this is more a mishmash of historical and literary observations; it was fine to listen on audio and tune in and out to the more interesting parts -- mostly the Gunpowder plot and how the concept of 'equivocation' worked into Shakespeare's plays. I wouldn't say this is for casual history/Shakespeare readers, but moderately interesting if you are familiar with the plays (esp Lear, Macbeth and Antony + Cleopatra) and have a general i ...more

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Jan 18, 2021 Bruce Katz rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, history, literary-history-crit

Solid scholarship congenially presented. As he has done with other books, Shapiro brings to the reader aspects of Shakespeare's time that clearly influenced how he wrote, edited, and amended his plays. Filled with fascinating detail -- things like how certain lines that could be delivered in Elizabeth's reign had to be removed or altered during that of King James, or how the shock of the Gunpowder Plot found expression in the plays, or the many levels of scrutiny plays had to go through before t ...more

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May 21, 2020 Frederick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: shakespeare, history, read-in-2020

1606 was a very fertile year for Shakespeare as he wrote King Lear, Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra. This book offers us an insight in how the main events of that year (the plague, the Gunpowder plot and mistrust of Catholics following it and the desperate attempt of King James to unify his kingdoms England and Scotland) influenced and affected Shakespeare's plays. ...more

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May 09, 2020 Charlotte rated it really liked it

Really interesting Audio book! After listening to this book and enjoying it so much I think I should read more history books. I'm apparently missing out!

I always think of Shakespeare as being an Elizabethan playwright so it was fantastic to get some insight into his time under King James 1.

The parallels drawn between the then recent event of the gunpowder plot and Macbeth were amazing! I'll never see all the equivocation lines in Macbeth the same way. ...more

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Feb 16, 2016 Jill Lapin-Zell rated it it was amazing

Being a former English teacher and ardent admirer of Shakespeare’s work, I was anxious to read this book on the enthusiastic recommendation of an ex-colleague of mine. I have always been fascinated by the whole mystique of Shakespeare (the man), and I have also always been intrigued by how Shakespeare’s world influenced his plays. Moreover, Macbeth is my favorite of all Shakespeare’s plays. I feel it is one of the best plays ever written, bar none. And while the title may lead one to believe thi
Being a former English teacher and ardent admirer of Shakespeare’s work, I was anxious to read this book on the enthusiastic recommendation of an ex-colleague of mine. I have always been fascinated by the whole mystique of Shakespeare (the man), and I have also always been intrigued by how Shakespeare’s world influenced his plays. Moreover, Macbeth is my favorite of all Shakespeare’s plays. I feel it is one of the best plays ever written, bar none. And while the title may lead one to believe this play focuses on the development and writing of King Lear, make no mistake that it also centers around all of the events in 1606, the year in which he wrote both of these great plays, as well as Antony and Cleopatra.

That being said, this book did not disappoint. The scholarship is accessible for the lay person, and the information in the book is exceptionally and painstakingly researched. The author is a renowned Shakespearian scholar who knows full well that one cannot possibly separate Shakespeare from the world in which he lived. The political events in England in 1606 had a direct impact on what he wrote, and those events shaped his characters, his topics and his plays. Yet, Shakespeare was a man who kept a very low profile, and this makes writing about the ebbs and flows of his career all that much more challenging, and the author absolutely rises to that challenge and does his subject matter justice.

At the height of the Elizabethan period, Shakespeare was at the height of his productivity, turning out 3-4 plays a year. But after Elizabeth’s death in 1603, his productivity dropped off drastically. Between 1603, when James I succeeded Elizabeth I to the throne, and 1606 when he wrote King Lear and Macbeth, he had only written one other play. Once Shakespeare’s troupe was elevated to courtly status as “The King’s Men”, his career was given the boost it needed, and plays written under James’ patronage, from that point on, would go on to become some of the finest he would ever write. In this book, Shapiro explains how that came about, including the relevance of The Gunpowder Plot to Macbeth, written specifically to flatter James and his fascination with witchcraft and his pride of his Scottish ancestry. This particular time period in England saw a new king who was bent on uniting England and Scotland, and King Lear is a play that reflects the dangers and ramifications of a kingdom divided.

This book was thoroughly enjoyable, enlightening and thought-provoking, and was not written exclusively for a narrow audience of scholars, but for anyone who has an interest in Shakespeare and two of his most brilliantly written plays.
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Dec 23, 2015 Ken rated it really liked it

Shelves: finished-in-2016, nonfiction

Shapiro's is a neat mixture of history and Shakespeare's plays as he zeroes in on that troublesome year, 1606. It was the year of the Gunpowder Plot, bringing us Guy Fawkes Day (5 November) to commemorate the day the designs of religious terrorists (Catholic, not Muslim) were foiled in their attempt to blow Parliament (complete with seated King James & fellow ministers in attendance) to Kingdom Come (and Gone).

Seems there was a basement below Parliament. Where there was a lot of wood and such. E Shapiro's is a neat mixture of history and Shakespeare's plays as he zeroes in on that troublesome year, 1606. It was the year of the Gunpowder Plot, bringing us Guy Fawkes Day (5 November) to commemorate the day the designs of religious terrorists (Catholic, not Muslim) were foiled in their attempt to blow Parliament (complete with seated King James & fellow ministers in attendance) to Kingdom Come (and Gone).

Seems there was a basement below Parliament. Where there was a lot of wood and such. Enough to hide all manner of gunpowder (anyone got a match?).

What can I say? Security wasn't what it's come to be, but boy oh boy did 5 November change THAT. The Protestants of the Scottish (now British) King became absolute bird dogs as they chased down not only the conspirators but, ever after, any Papist (called "recusants") still on England's green and pleasant land.

They were hanged but not until death (except for lucky Guy Fawkes, whose spinal cord accidentally snapped), taken down from the gallows, eviscerated while still alive, and finally killed before their heads were hacked off and displayed in London. Nice.

Where's Shakespeare in all this? Well, as we all know, records of the Bard are slim and shady. But Shapiro's point is that all this tumult was reflected in the output of one of Will's most creative years: King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony & Cleopatra all appear in the year to end all years.

Shapiro goes to great pains to show how echoes of politics and terror of the day are reflected in each of these three plays, where W.S. must step carefully due to censors and a touchy king (the longer James reigns, the more fondly Londoners look back on Good Queen Bess).

I must admit, though I love Shakespeare as much as the next guy, that all this history-play paralleling was less entertaining than the bloody history and intrigue itself. I always thought Elizabethan England was fairly tolerant of its Catholics, who were allowed to worship in peace as long as they gave allegiance to the Queen, but Jacobean England was another matter altogether.

Can you say "witch"? How about "hunt"? It was no time to be a Catholic, lapsed or otherwise, in London and surrounding areas. You paid with your life once they tracked you down. And they did, thanks to informants.

You know the saying: You can pray, but you can't hide--especially when there's money to be had. ...more

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Jan 11, 2016 Wanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: shakespeare, non-fiction, cbc-radio, public-library, read-in-2016, history

So this year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. I didn’t realize that earlier in the year and it is just fortuitous that this has become my year of binge-watching and binge-reading the Bard. I’m having a grand time doing it too.

I heard about this book on CBC radio and since I think I saw King Lear twice last year (once live & once via film), I was intrigued enough to put a hold on our public library’s copy. I am so glad that I did! I haven’t read a great deal about the Bard himself ...more

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Oct 14, 2015 Kyle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: phd-studies

That's two down and only fifty more books like this to go, and then particularly bookish scholars will have a complete account of Shakespeare's entire life. Yet like the man in the royal livery attending a court masque on the Epiphany of 1606, the playwright appears in print more as a shadowy onlooker than as the centre stage attraction. For this book, the focus is on King James, whose popularity had its peaks (due to a couple of imagined assassination attempts) and troughs (being upstaged by hi ...more

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About James Shapiro

James Shapiro

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James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specialises in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakespeare and other topics, and he has published widely on Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture.