1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

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 is by necessity conjecture - but he'd still rather stick to what is probable, not just possible. As such, he covers the complex political and social landscape brought about by Elizabeth and Essex, the Irish and the Spaniards, the changes in show more theatregoers and theatre laws, and other concerns that hit London and Stratford. He posits areas and concerns that may have affected Shakespeare as he wrote four such monumental works, while also seeking to explain the mindset of an Elizabethan during this shifting era.

What Shapiro has written is a book that first of all, educates about the living, breathing public mass of Londoners (people who, after all, were far more complex than any film stereotype); second, negates many of the needless conjectures determined to give every event in Shakespeare's plays some needlessly grandiose or tragic origin (all of which seek to undermine the fact that he was writing for a specific theatre and crowd, and working as a creative, not just working through some Freudian issues); and third, most importantly, sees Shakespeare as a human. We can never know what it was like to be such a genius during an era when history, linguistics, and politics rose up like never before. But we can ask questions about Shakespeare's personal stake in the theatre, about his reactions to other literary and political movements, about his reasons for taking age-old stories, myths, and plays, and reworking them into feats of ever-growing depth. A very enjoyable read, although I couldn't help wishing Shapiro could write a volume for every year of Shakespeare's professional life. show less

The common problem when writing about Shakespeare is that biographical information is hard to come by, and it’s dangerous to read his plays and assume that he’s putting all of himself in there. James Shapiro gets around this challenge by writing about a pivotal year in Shakespeare’s—and England’s—life. In 1599, the succession to the throne of England was still uncertain, there were rebellions in Ireland and threats of armadas from Spain, and the East India Company was just getting started. Shakespeare, meanwhile, used events such as this to inform his writing four of his major plays: Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet.

Shapiro explains not only the historical background of the plays but also the theatre-going show more environment, showing the reader what Elizabethan audiences would get out of certain plot choices or casting decisions or even certain lines. And he demonstrates just how challenging the plays were for the audiences, particularly As You Like It and Hamlet, which did new things with the pastoral romantic comedy and the revenge play, respectively.

I found this book most interesting when it talked more about the actual plays and the theatre, rather than straight history, as interesting and appropriate as it was. This is probably the first time I’ve been remotely tempted to read As You Like It, because I tend to favour Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, and it’s all because of this book. I also found it interesting to read about the different editions of Hamlet and how modern editions (at least at the time this book was published, in 2005) conflate two printings of Hamlet in what ends up being far less coherent than Shakespeare intended. I’ll have to check my own copy of Hamlet to see what the editors did with that one.

This book contains a small set of colour plates in the middle and black-and-white sketches throughout the text, and a bibliographical essay that may be helpful to readers wanting to know more about a specific chapter or topic. I’d recommend this for people who like to read about the theatre or a different slant on English history. show less

“No,” I tell my students, “Shakespeare did not write in Old English. Beowulf was written in Old English. Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Shakespeare’s language was firmly in the Modern English linguistic period.” I then confess the obvious, that the language has indeed changed in the four centuries since Shakespeare wrote, but, as Shapiro’s book clearly demonstrates, much else in society has not. Such demonstrations, while not Shapiro’s goal, are, to me, among the strong points of his book, so let’s take a peek at those first, shall we?

Looking at the year 1599 in Elizabethan England, we are struck by more than a few parallels with contemporary world affairs. We see a national leader intent on show more invading another country, Ireland in the earlier case. We observe ill-starred Essex leading an invading army which utterly fails to subdue the Irish. We look on in astonishment as the English quake in fear of a reported Spanish invasion and as they block the streets of London with chains and illuminate the night time with burning lamps to thwart enemy infiltration under cover of darkness. Potentially, of course, that may have been somewhat more pragmatic than creating a new government department and a rainbow-hued series of “threat levels.” One can only recall the French axiom “Plus ça change, plus c’est la mȇme chose,” or “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Little in human nature, it seems, has changed in the past four hundred years.

Shapiro’s book also helps pierce the mask of literary demigod behind which Shakespeare has been hidden by generations of admiring teachers and bewildered students. We see a man who produced plays through hard labor and laborious revision. We come to appreciate that Shakespeare was a businessman with an eye toward profitability, even when such was perhaps not completely legal or ethical. In this, he was certainly a man of his time, for the proto-capitalist British West Indies Company also got its start during this period. With another eye toward profit, he and his fellow investors literally made off with the timbers from another theater to build the Globe that has become synonymous with his plays, although of course many other plays were enacted there as well. And speaking of enactments, Shapiro reminds us that Shakespeare was an actor as well as an investor and a playwright, and suggests some of the parts that the author very likely reserved for himself.

Reading Shapiro, one comes to appreciate the political realities of late 16th century England as well. In an era when writing that was perceived to be critical of the monarchy or to justify assassination or usurpation was banned and when books were burned, one simply did not publish Julius Caesar in Elizabeth’s realm. Writing that portrayed the rise of republicanism at the expense of monarchical rule simply did not appear without retribution. Such insights as these make Shapiro’s book a rewarding experience for those seeking to understand the social, economic, political, and intellectual milieu which formed both Shakespeare and his dramatic creations.

The book, however, is not an unmitigated success. I found my interest in Shapiro’s text waxing and waning, being the strongest when he delves into historical events such as the invasion of Ireland, Essex’s failed leadership of the military and his devolution from trusted general to seditious and condemned prisoner, the panic among both government and citizenry over the reported Spanish invasion with its “Invisible Armada,” and other facts, such as the common practice of plagiarism among authors of the day, including Shakespeare himself, the “inconvenient” fact that copyrights were owned by publishers, not by authors, and the annoyance that Shakespeare surely felt when he discovered some of his sonnets, which he circulated only privately among a few friends, featured in a book along with others of various quality but all attributed to him! My interest does tend to wane when Shapiro departs from his historical writing to immerse us with his qualitative descriptions of the plays whose compositions he ascribes to 1599: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet; his vocabulary and syntax become somewhat dense and obfuscated when he lapses into literary analysis; moreover, that aspect of the book does not appear to be delivering what the title has promised.

My other disappointment lies in the “bibliographical essay” that consumes forty-one pages of the book. Entries are arranged by chapter and discussion topic within each chapter and are hidden within a structure of sentences and paragraphs. A simple alphabetical bibliography would have been far more usable and beneficial for the reader interested in Shapiro’s sources and related works.

As far as a recommendation is concerned, I would truly regret seeing this book become assigned reading for high school or university students whose interest in Shakespearean drama and in 16th century England in general is tenuous at best. While informative for them, the writing is not sufficiently captivating to ensnare their attention and appreciation, and is likely to be considered another bit of drudgery foisted upon them by an educational system out of touch with reality. Moreover, for the well-read Shakespearean scholar and Elizabethan historian, I doubt that the book contains any revelations that have not been encountered in other sources. However, for the general reader and for the student who enjoys filling in all of the massive gaps in understanding that persist despite high school diplomas and university degrees, Shapiro’s book does give a most helpful, interesting, and usually readable overview of the society that formed Shakespeare and that determined the style and tenor of his long-lived literary creations. If one is at all curious about the “life and times” of William Shakespeare, then the book is certainly worth its purchase price and, more importantly, it is worth the time and effort expended in reading it. show less

A terrific, readable but informative review of a pivotal year in Shakespeare's life. The year when the Globe Theatre was built, it saw the premieres of Henry V, As You Like It, Julius Caesar and, possibly, Hamlet.

The strength of this book is that it sets Shakespeare's literary output in its complex political context, showing through many illustrations how topical his work was, and his creative response to the controversies and preoccupations of his times. It sheds light not only on the four contrasting masterpieces Shakespeare produced that year, but on the whole social and historical context in which he lived and worked. Though the focus is on London, Stratford is not neglected and the writer addresses his efforts to regain the status show more his family lost through his father's financial miscalculations, primarily through Shakespeare's attempts, ultimately successful, to secure a coat of arms. show less

A word you often hear used in reviews of academic works like “A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare” is accessibility. And that makes sense since these books dealing with subjects and issues that probably interest a very small demographic of the reading public need an audience for survival. This book is one of the least accessible books on Shakespeare I’ve ever read, and I’ve read many. I am a retired high school English teacher who taught Shakespeare for 40 years. I taught “Julius Caesar” and “Romeo and Juliet” for most of those years, and even I had a hard time making it through this book. In fact, at the epilogue, I quit. What those interested in Shakespeare need to know and accept is we know little to nothing show more about the man. In fact, in the excellent video “Shakespeare in the Classroom” (produced by the cast of the Academy Award winning film “Shakespeare in Love”), a list of five items is given as the only information we have on the bard: his baptismal date, his death date, the birth of his children, and a mention of Shakespeare in a real estate transaction. That’s it. So everything else that authors write about is speculation. That’s why in this book, you read phrases like, “Shakespeare might have…..” or “Shakespeare could have…..” Much of this book is given to the plays themselves and their impact on society at the time. Additionally, there is much given to the threat of war with Ireland, and Queen Elizabeth’s strained relationship with Essex, far removed from research on Shakespeare or his plays. I really struggled with this book, so I imagine readers who haven’t spent much time with Shakespeare since high school will most likely bail on it early on. True scholars of the bard are most likely the only audience for “A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.” show less

1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare is a book I've been meaning to get around to for ages. James Shapiro is a Professor at Columbia University in New York, who has taken what relatively little we know of the life of Shakespeare, and woven it together with the detailed history of 1599 to create a vivid account of one year in his life. Quite apart from Shakespeare, it's a fascinating period in English history, as the Elizabethean Era drew to a close and a sense of uncertainty hanging everywhere, and Shapiro uses Shakespeare to illustrate that perfectly, just as his plays reflected it at the time.
As well as being a significant year in the history of England, 1599 Shapiro makes a strong argument for 1599 being the fulcrum point show more on which Shakespeare's reputation tunred; it was the year the Globe was built, the year he insisted on - and won - changes to long-standing traditions in English theatre (effectively allowing it to become a more serious medium), the year he wrote Julius Caesar, Henry V, As You Like It and Hamlet. Shapiro has the skill of taking history and giving it the force of a novel, but he doesn't cross the line into fictionalisation - when he's not sure of something, or is making an educated guess, he tells you.
The result is a book that sucks you into both the life of both Shakespeare and Elizabethean England for a year and works both as an excellent history, and as a novel-like story. show less

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 book reads like gripping narrative in parts.
When I saw James Shapiro at the Shakespeare Association of America, he told me he had spent three years revising it. So here is an ideal model for scholars, one unlikely to be followed under the show more pressures for publication. Research and write for years, then revise for three more. show less