1599 – A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

Shapiro, a Columbia University scholar in all things Shakespearean, has thoroughly researched a year which was critical to the development of Shakespeare’s craft and bore much significance in English history and has presented it in an engaging if somewhat academic work. The research he must have done to write this book must have been painstaking and time-consuming because his bibliography occupies no less than 50 pages in a chapter titled Bibliographical Essay! The wonderful thing about this book is that it doesn’t merely focus on Shakespeare. It draws you into the events and people that shaped and were shaping England in 1599 and how they intersected with and influenced Shakespeare’s work. An aged Queen Elizabeth is anxious both about her much prized looks and the prospect of an uneasy succession, a consequence of her childlessness. England simmers with plots of Catholic sedition and the spectre of a Spanish invasion looms large in the form of the ‘invisible armada’ whilst the state tries to desperately cling on to its only colony – Ireland. Ensconced within these events, Shapiro shows us how Shakespeare must have drawn inspiration for the plays he wrote in this year, Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet.  

It’s amazing how much information remains of Shakespeare’s professional life. One also learns a lot of interesting titbits about the plays themselves. For instance, As You Like It is a send-up of one of Marlowe’s works and Hamlet’s plot was recycled from plays and stories that had been in existence for centuries. I also came across the term ‘hendiady’* for the first time and idiotically feel greatly enriched. However, you have to love the Bard’s work to truly appreciate this kind of a book. I haven’t really read any of Shakespeare’s plays beyond the ones I must have hyper analysed for English Literature in school. I saw an excellent contemporary version of Measure for Measure several years ago and a strange poly-lingual adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Beyond these and the odd movie, my Shakespearana is really rusty. This was a bit of a handicap to enjoying what Shapiro’s writing has to offer in all its comprehensiveness and complexity. And the fact that I was reading A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare concurrently with CELTA didn’t help.  

*One by means of two: the use of two conjoined nouns instead of a noun and a modifier such as “He came despite the rain and weather” instead of "He came despite the rainy weather.” Examples from Hamlet include “the book and volume of my brain”, “a fantasy and trick of fame” and “angels and ministers of grace defend us.”