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The Year of Lear

The Year of Lear

Shakespeare In 1606

by James Shapiro
Paperback
Publication Date: 01/10/2016

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Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, shows how the tumultuous events in 1606 influenced three of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies written that year--King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. "The Year of Lear is irresistible--a banquet of wisdom" (The New York Times Book Review).

In the years leading up to 1606, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn--King Lear--then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

It was a memorable year in England as well--a terrorist plot conceived by a small group of Catholic gentry had been uncovered at the last hour. The foiled Gunpowder Plot would have blown up the king and royal family along with the nation's political and religious leadership. The aborted plot renewed anti-Catholic sentiment and laid bare divisions in the kingdom.

It was against this background that Shakespeare finished Lear, a play about a divided kingdom, then wrote a tragedy that turned on the murder of a Scottish king, Macbeth. He ended this astonishing year with a third masterpiece no less steeped in current events and concerns: Antony and Cleopatra.

"Exciting and sometimes revelatory, in The Year of Lear, James Shapiro takes a closer look at the political and social turmoil that contributed to the creation of three supreme masterpieces" (The Washington Post). He places them in the context of their times, while also allowing us greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions. "His great gift is to make the plays seem at once more comprehensible and more staggering" (The New York Review of Books). For anyone interested in Shakespeare, this is an indispensable book.

ISBN:
9781416541653
9781416541653
Category:
Anthologies (non-poetry)
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
01-10-2016
Language:
English
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
212.72x139.7x27.94mm
Weight:
0.35kg
James Shapiro

James Shapiro is Professor of English at Columbia University, where he teaches Shakespeare. His earlier books have received international acclaim, including The Year of Lear: 1606, which won the James Tait Black Prize; A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize; Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Shapiro is also the author of Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play, Shakespeare and the Jews, and Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and is the Editor of Shakespeare in America (Library of America).

His reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and other publications. He is on the board of directors of The Royal Shakespeare Company, and advises productions for the Public Theatre in New York and other companies. Shapiro was a collaborator on Jacobean Genius, a series he hosted for the BBC and also hosted the BBC The Mysterious Mr. Webster. In 2012 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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