so far, so fascinating.... And now that I'm done: A deeply researched, lively and totally engaging summation of not only a fateful year in the life of England but a year or so of unparalleled creativity from Shakespeare - including his re-working/transformation of the existing story of Hamlet. Worth the read as both history and biographical snapshot.

When the seventeenth-century biographer John Aubrey asked those where were acquainted with Shakespeare what they remembered about him, he was told that Shakespeare "was not a company keeper," and that he "wouldn't be debauched, and, if invited," excused himself, saying "he was in pain."

"the most passionate among us to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of love."

Whitehall was where ambassadors were entertained, bears baited, domestic and foreign policy determined, lucrative monopolies dispensed, Accession Day tilts run, and Shrovetide sermons preached."

The riches contained in the palace were distantly related to those found in that sixteenth-century phenomenon called the wunderkammer, or wonder-cabinet. Ancestor of the modern museum, the wonder-cabinet was usually a room set aside to display exotic objects. The finest of these in London probably belonged to Walter Cope, a merchant-adventurer and a member of Elizabeth's Society of Antiquaries. During his London visit in 1599, Thomas Platter visited Cope's wonder-cabinet, "stuffed with queer foreign objects in ever corner": an African charm made of teeth, the bauble and bell of Henry VIII's fool, an Indian stone ax and canoe, a chain made of monkey teeth, a Madonna constructed of Indian feather, a unicorn's tail, and shoes from around the globe. In another, unnamed house of curios on London Bridge, Platter even saw "a large live camel."

Clowns -- closer to what we would call comedians -- traced their lineage to older, popular forms of festive entertainment, to the Lord of Misrule, to the Vice figure of morality drama, to traditions of minstrelsy, rusticity, song and dance. Their origins also encouraged leading clowns to think of themselves as the true stars of their companies.

It could not have been easy surrendering to the clown the last word.

"in open presence"

"careless and insensible dullness."

"able to endure labor, watching, and hunger."

"If she were purged, and her head-vein let blood."

Spenser's hearse was "attended by poets, and mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, thrown into the tomb."

"Though imprisoned at Richmond in 1554 by her half sister Mary, in later years she had grown increasingly fond of the palace and came to think of it as "the warm box to which she could be entrust her sickly old age."

"Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them."

It was agreed upon that, unlike the Rose, the stage at the Globe would be entirely in afternoon shadow. Playgoers rather than the actors would have the sun in their eyes; they'd have to squint at times, but they'd feel warmer.

"bugswords" = Coded terms

John Aubrey was told that when Shakespeare "was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but whenever he killed a calf he would do it in high style and make a speech."

"The genius and the mortal instruments are then in council; and the state of man, like to a little kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection."

In London, John Stow lamented, the great Midsummer celebrations of his youth had all but died out by midcentury. A young Shakespeare may have asked his elders about what they did on Midsummer, but by the time he was old enough to hear their stories, those rites (some of which would be reimagined in his Midsummer Night's Dream) were fading memories.

The theologically tinged language, the casual references to Elizabethan dress codes, professions, guilds, and shops, chimney tops and windows, and soon enough to pulpits, clocks, books with pages, and nightgowns, all contribute to a sense that either Shakespeare cared little about historical accuracy, or wanted to collapse the difference between classical Rome and Elizabethan London.

The earliest printed map of London, it first appeared in 1574 in the second edition of G. Braun and F. Hogenberg's "Civitatis Orbis Terrarum" an atlas of European cities.

"For her Majesty's special use; haste, post haste for life; haste, haste, post haste for life."

Shakespeare kept close at hand a sheaf of forty or more folded sheets, each sheet with four writing sides, covered with sonnets in various states of completion (it wasn't until the early seventeenth century that writers began using single sheets of paper).

"What wit sets down is blotted straight with will; this is too curious-good, this blunt and ill. Much like a press of people at a door throng her inventions, which shall go before."

"When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room"

"infinite riches in a little room"

"Cleanse the foul body of th' infected world"

Greenaway probably had as good a sense of how Shakespeare juggled his roles as London playwright and well-to-do Stratford citizen as anyone, but what passed between the men perished with them.

"Weary with toil, I hast me to my bed, the dear repose for limbs with travel tired; but then beings and journey in my head, to work my mind when body's work's expired."

"moist, rotten"

Shadow court

"You have broken the heart of our best troops and weakened your strength upon inferior rebels, and run out the glass of time which can hardly be recovered."

Jacob Van Neck: A True Report of the Gainful, Prosperous and Speedy Voyage to Java in the East Indies, Performed by a Fleet of Eight Ships of Amsterdam

stranger shores.

Shakespeare was as good as his word in Hamlet that the "purpose of playing" was to show "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure"

Shakespeare clearly wanted audiences to work hard, and one of the ways he made them do so was by employing an odd verbal trick called hendiadys. Though the term may be strange, example of it -- "law and order," "house and home," or the Shakespearean "sound and fury" -- are familiar enough...Take for example Hamlet's description of "the book and volume of my brain." It's easy to get the gist of what he's saying, and the phrase would pas unremarked in the course of a performance. But does he mean "book-like volume" of my mind? Or "big book of my mind"? Part of the problem here is that the words bleed into each other -- "volume" of course is another word for "book" but also means "space."

"unpack" his "heart with words"

"It is the mind that can distal the whole world, all ages, all acts, all human knowledges within the little, little compass of a brain." William Cornwallis

"This is th' imposture of much wealth and peace that inward breaks, and shows no cause without why the man dies."

Scores of lesser gifts followed: some gave gold, others perfumed gloves, and still others clothing (Elizabeth had several thousand outfits in her wardrobe and welcomed more).

The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman by Barbara Traister

Numerous biographies of Shakespeare exist, most of which follow the usual pattern of 1564-1616 connect-the-dots narrative speculations that map the landscape of Shakespeare studies. They are worthwhile, and most are insightful regardless of whether the reader agrees with the conclusions drawn. Most of what we know will rely upon the parcels of data we have as well as the interior evidence of the plays and poems themselves.

What James Shapiro masterfully achieves is to look in depth at a key moment of Shakespeare's life - the unusually eventful 1599 - and draw conclusions between the socio-political history of courtly relations and chart their influence on Shakespeare's writing in this more-or-less calendar year. Four plays were written and/or performed in this year - Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and the first draft of Hamlet - and Shapiro deftly ties the interior evidence of references to real life events in the plays to the historical events that inspired them. England was engrossed in the fear of a new Spanish Armada, the Irish rebellion, the Essex intrigues, and the anxiety of Elizabeth's succession, and they all appear in Shakespeare's plays. By looking at the small details that usually are passed over in a larger focus, Shapiro illuminates what it meant to Shakespeare to be a jobbing actor, writer, and shareholder. Brilliant stuff for the experienced Shakespearean.

A friend recommended this book to me and while I agreed to read it I had some reservations. To select one year in the life of Shakespeare seemed arbitrary, but to my surprise Shapiro makes it clear that 1599 was a pivotal year for both Shakespeare on a personal level and for England on a national level.
t
Shakespeare worked on three plays that year, “Henry V”, about the Battle of Agincourt fought in France, “Julius Caesar,” about the assassination of Caesar, and “Hamlet”, yet another play about the transition of power. The first two were performed that year, the last one probably in 1600. What was going on that year figures in all three plays, and gives added interest to Shapiro’s history.
t
In the summer of 1599 there were rumors that the Spanish had launched another Armada to attack and conquer England. It was also the year that the Earl of Essex invaded Ireland with a large force to put down Irish rebellion, an invasion that completely failed. It was the year the East India joint stock company was formed, the beginning of expansive British power. Finally, Queen Elizabeth was getting old (she would die two years later) and a question of who would succeed her was crucial.
t
All of these events created uncertainty which influenced Shakespeare in his “Henry V” a historical play which would find England winning a decisive battle against the French forces, at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and had the effect of increasing the morale of the public nearly 200 years later.
t
In a similar way, in “Julius Caesar,” while it may not increased anyone’s morale, Shakespeare was able to tap into a concern about succession, and by which means it ought to come about. The violence of Caesar’s assassination, as with movie violence today, was a sure crowd pleaser and made it a very popular play.
t
Questions about succession would lead into Shakespeare’s next play, his troubled “Hamlet” which much more than “Julius Caesar” would probe the effects of public policy upon private individual. Young Hamlet has difficulty in carrying out his dead father’s orders, and even questions the legitimacy of such orders, leading to all kinds of complications.
t
It’s not that these three plays are being held up necessarily as Shakespeare’s best plays; it’s just that they are examples that show events in contemporary life influencing Shakespeare’s creative imagination. It’s as he had a unique ability to incorporate real life sources into his work, but simultaneously float free and transcend them. It’s quite possible to see or read Shakespeare without knowing any of the events going on around him, but that knowledge, it seems to me, makes this an interesting study and of course enriches an appreciation of the plays.
t
While Shakespeare was unquestionably a brilliant creator, as the same time, he was a businessman, and concerned about making money from the thousands who paid to see his plays. 1599 was the year that he invested heavily in building a new theater, the Globe, and while he was alert to the political realities swirling around him, he had to tread carefully so as not to invite censorship and a shutdown of his acting company.
t
Shapiro does a masterful job in balancing Shakespeare’s artistic achievement and the everyday events that swirled around him in a one critical year. I haven’t read it yet, but Shapiro repeats the process in THE YEAR OF LEAR, 1606, I hope with as much success as 1599.

Nicely opens up the history of those times, it's worth a read.

I love Shakespeare and am not an anti-Avonian. I started reading this book as a birthday present to me and I am glad that I did.

I am absolutely agog over the brilliance of James Shapiro. Granted, there are many -- many, perhaps most -- writers who tackle Shakespeare who might as well be writing fiction. Shapiro does veer into this category but there is so little known about Shakespeare that speculation is inevitable and speculation does, at times, become certainty.

Shapiro, however, presents some fresh analysis. Chapter Four, A Sermon at Richmond, is among my favorite parts of the book. Shapiro links the presence of the Chamberlain's Men at Richmond with the presence of one of the Elizabethan Era's great preachers, Lancelot Andrewes. The sermon, which commented on the Queen's Irish war, was published and Shapiro draws parallels between Andrewes' rhetoric and the Band of Brothers' speech in Henry V, which would soon debut.

Shapiro's analysis goes beyond the plays. Although Shakespeare was a boy of just 7 or 8 when the chapel at Stratford was painted over, Shapiro uses that event to speak to the many small changes the Protestant Reformation made in the lives of ordinary people, among them the loss of holidays which were so often rooted in Catholic liturgy but which meant a rest from labors to most of the populace.

Shapiro's analysis delves into the politics of the time, the appropriation of religious expression by those in power, the regular defacing of idols and Julius Caesar.

This is a book for those who take their Shakespeare seriously.

Once again (well not really 'once again' as this book preceded 1606- I just read them out of order) Shapiro has woven a complex and narratively engaging tapestry of literary history.

When I read Shapiro's books I do feel a lot closer to Shakespeare than I do reading almost anything else. Shapiro is acutely aware of how little concrete evidence we have on the man, the mystery, that is Shakespeare which would allow us to make assumptions about what kind of man he really was. Instead, Shapiro focuses on concrete historical events across the year 1599 and traces their influences on the plays written by Shakespeare at this time. This circumlocution gives a surprisingly good insight into the life of Shakespeare.

This book, 1599, deals largely with Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet and so is particularly relevant for any students of these texts. It also traces closely Elizabethan policy in Ireland, England and the Spanish Armada, and of course, English political circumstances in London and Stratford.

An extremely readable no-fic, I really can't praise what Shapiro has done here enough! I am currently doing my own research into 1611 as I have been INSPIRED, and although I will never be able to rise to the kind of pinnacle of scholarship this book has, I think it'll be an interesting topic to attempt for my first essay of the new university year!

That's it for Shakespeare non-fic however! Please come and talk to me about all things Shakespeare/Early Modern though!

Booklove,
Grace

"More so, perhaps, and any other writer before or since, Shakespeare held the keys that open the hearts and minds of others, even as he kept a lock on what he revealed about himself."

Review to come shortly.

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My Book Blog: ---> http://allthebookblognamesaretaken.bl...

Rating: 4 Stars

Review:

I will be upfront right away and say that I do not believe for one moment that anyone but William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays credited to him - not Bacon or Devereaux or anyone else. For a man who wrote, "The play's the thing" (which I realize is followed by, "wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king", but just go with it here), it makes sense to me that we don't know much about his personal life. The plays, the sonnets, those are what mattered to Shakespeare. Fame did not. If it had been important, he would have taken the route of fellow author and frenemy Ben Jonson, and put together a Folio in his lifetime for himself. While the identity of Shakespeare is not the subject of this particular book, I always feel it is important to mention this, given the amount of ridiculousness out there purporting anyone else to be the true Bard.

I've read Shapiro's work before and one thing I appreciated from this book especially is that he is very up front about what little information we actually know to be fact about Shakespeare. In the introduction he says quite plainly that he does his best to acknowledge when facts are unknown and will not deal with conjecture as much as he can avoid it.

1599 was quite the year for Master Shakespeare, and for England in general. Shapiro weaves the story of the country and the story of the playwright together very well, breaking his book up into four seasons, then within each section chapters varying back and forth between life in London and life for Shakespeare and Company. I can imagine London was not a very comfortable place to be living toward the end of Elizabeth's reign, after decades of religious upheaval, assassination plots (real and imagined), the threat of the Armada, Ireland's constant 'rebellions', and so forth. This was the backdrop against which Shakespeare wrote and performed some of his greatest works - Hamlet, As You Like It, Henry the Fifth, and Julius Caesar. It is in this time frame we truly get a sense of Shakespeare the writer, the actor, and the businessman. We get glimpses of how he related to his fellow writers and actors (Will Kemp, anyone?!) and the rivalries that came with his line of work.

Shapiro details the many books and plays that were banned and burned at this time for fear of their traitorous content, and it seems Shakespeare was lucky enough to be one of the few that escaped any kind of censorship. Imagine if he had not been, we might have even fewer copies of his plays than we already do.

This is a superbly written book that really gives the reader a feel for what life was like across the social spectrum for people in many walks of life in that fateful year. Shakespeare has been one of my favorite writers for as long as I can remember, since I first tried to make sense of Romeo and Juliet way back when I was a 5th grader with a habit of reading every book I could find on my uncle Kraig's bookshelf (that's how I discovered To Kill a Mockingbird the following year and my life was never the same). Many times I have wondered what it would be like to travel the city in Shakespeare's time, to see the sights and sounds of HIS London, to see the people and places and other plays that gave him inspiration. Imagine my pleasant surprise to find this gem so early on in the book (page 81):

"But Shakespeare's was an aural culture, the music of which has long faded. Lost to us are the unrecorded sounds reverberating around him - street cries of vendors, church bells, regional and foreign accents, scraps of overheard conversation, and countless bits of speech and noise that filled the densely packed capital."

Simply, beautiful.

I loved this book (and neglected for far too long, mid-read) as much as his book on Lear. Shapiro's very readable style makes it a pleasure.

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 another Spanish armada, to political tensions and to censorship and the dangers of saying what you think.

He provides compelling evidence for Shakespeare's unique and soaring talent; as the playwright moves beyond the formulaic comedies of his contemporaries with As You Like It, a play where the only real obstacle in the way of the lovers is the need for Rosalind to teach Orlando how to love her for real; as he creates the ultimate complex and conflicted protagonist Hamlet; as he tackles the risky theme (especially risky in Elizabethan England)of assassination in Julius Caesar, not allowing the audience to make an easy judgement on whether or not it can ever be justified.

Little concrete is known about Shakespeare's life, but the author's speculations on the ways in which life and contemporary events inform his art are always entertaining and plausible. From the vivid opening pages, where Shakespeare's company of actors steal timber at the dead of night to build The Globe following a legal dispute, the narrative is lively and engaging to the last page.

Terrible. The author states in the prologue that "rather than litter the pages" with "hedging" words like "maybe, surely, probably" that he has dispensed with them for the sake of easier reading. What emerges is sloppy scholarship-- there is so little information on WS's life and especially his thoughts, that claiming that Shakespeare felt this or that at any point is impossible.

Besides this massive, massive problem there is also the fact that this is basically a textual analysis of Henry V, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. Which is fine and interesting, but not the history promised in the title and prologue.

I could not recommend this book...I could barely finish it.

So good! Even though I know next-to-nothing about Shakespeare or the time he lived in, I found this so interesting!