I enjoyed this. More involved/involving on the plays themselves rather than the surrounding history perhaps. It was a quick read, but still could have lost a hundred pages or so. Still, it's a novel approach and taught me a lot I didn't know. The highly speculative nature of some of it really does show up the extent to which we all invent a Shakespeare in our own image.

A very enjoyable mix of narrative history, mild literary analysis and the placing of what is known about Shakespeare's life in this period within the broader context of events in London, England and a campaign to subjugate/pacify Ireland. I'm in no position to judge the accuracy or completeness any any of this, but it was well-written and communicated the right mix of authority and uncertainty. I would certainly try another of Shapiro's histories.

I'm also glad of the spur it gave me to read Henry V and to put As You Like It on my list of next-to-read Shakespeare.

A dense read but fascinating!

“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 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.

Every now and then you read a book that is so achingly good, that excels so exceptionally at what it's trying to do, that genuinely shocks and surprises the reader on almost every page. This is one of those books.

I cannot believe how much I enjoyed this book. Not only is the history of what was happening in Elizabethan England in 1599 fascinating, but the way Shapiro links the political, the social conversations and conventions to the work Shakespeare was producing at the time is nearly flawless. His textual analysis is compelling and convincing. I found this book nearly impossible to put down; a true page-turner in every sense of the word, and well-deserving of the Baillie Gifford 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award.

1599 was the year that the famous Globe theatre was built and the year that Shakespeare created Hamlet - probably the first character in the history of the theatre to wrestle so intelligently and so eloquently with his own demons. These circumstances must have played a role in James Shapiro's decision to focus on 1599 when he set out to write his "intimate history of Shakespeare", as the blurb on the back of the book puts it.
But very little documentary evidence exists relating to Shakespeare's life, apart from his plays and sonnets, and therefore Shapiro felt obliged to draw heavily on the historical events of that year to flesh out his intimate history. The history would be very interesting and informative if Shapiro didn't intersperse it constantly with a huge amount of conjecture as to what Shakespeare might or might not have been thinking or doing at any given moment, indulging in empty theorizing that adds nothing to the readers' pleasure. He develops certain minor themes extensively, eg a possible trip on horseback from London to Shakespeare’s home in Stratford, only to draw weak and almost pointless conclusions: "There's simply no way of knowing how he felt unsaddling at New Place on this or other visits." or on page 203, “The answer to this would tell us a great deal about what kind of person Shakespeare was; but we don’t have a clue what he did.”
When Shapiro points out that the historian John Hayward, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, understood “how invented speech made the past come alive”, the reader wonders if Shapiro himself could not have learned from that and fictionalized this “intimate history”. Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall comes to mind as a fine example of invented speech allowing the past to come alive. Such a device might have helped the pace of Shapiro's book as well; the first two hundred pages drag quite a bit. Then on page 211, Shapiro mentions Hamlet and the reader sits up. However, Shapiro immediately deflates her expectations: “But this is getting ahead of our story.” The reader thinks: Please, please let us get ahead of the story!

Shakespeare in context. #3wordbookreview

I first discovered James Shapiro by accident when stumbling across a documentary called "Shakespeare, The King's Man". This show demonstrated how contemporary events found expression in his writing, especially in the early years of King James' reign. I was totally inspired by his train of thought, which prompted me to purchase this volume; it covers a year near the end of Elizabeth's reign, driven by totally different influences. As a result, my understanding of Shakespeare has undergone a massive shift.

In this book, we get much more than just a year in Shakespeare's life. We get a better understanding of how his style changed as he matured; we see how he abandons traditional Elizabethan theatre which relied strongly on the clown (or what we think of as comedian), who often improvised and even joked with the audience at the end of scenes. However, "No less gnawing a problem for Shakespeare was the clown's afterpiece, the jig. It may be hard for us to conceive of the conclusion of Romeo and Juliet—with the image of the dead lovers fresh in our minds—immediately followed by a bawdy song and dance, but Elizabethan audiences demanded it." The company's star, Will Kemp was wildly popular with audiences, but his ego combined with Shakespeare's determination to make it a "playwright's and not an actor's theater" precipitated a rupture that sent London's favorite star packing. Shakespeare weaned his audience away from the expected jigs by replacing the worn-out tradition with something altogether new: a more "naturalistic drama" and characters filled with depth that would challenge his audience to think.

I love the specifics in this book, and it will require more than one reading to absorb everything. What I did take away showed me just how much I still have to learn about Shakespeare. For instance, I knew he used Holinshed as a source for Macbeth and other histories; what I didn't know was that he lifted every play from something else (although his sonnets were all original). "There are many ways of being original. Inventing a plot from scratch is only one of them and never held much appeal for Shakespeare." Whether it was old favorites or complete histories, Shakespeare had no problem taking an existing story and revising it with his especial brand of genius. Even Hamlet was lifted "from a now lost revenge tragedy of the 1580s, also called Hamlet, which by the end of that decade was already feeling shopworn." Apparently everybody did it.

Shakespeare wrote four plays in 1599: Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet (which wasn't finished until the following year). We learn how the angst of the time was reflected in his work. For instance, in a year rife with assassination attempts against the queen, Shakespeare had Brutus agonizing about his own role in Julius Caesar. The play manages to tread a thin line between making a statement and getting himself into trouble: "Even as Shakespeare offers compelling arguments for tyrannicide in the opening acts of the play, he shows in the closing ones the savage bloodletting and political breakdown that...were sure to follow." Often and again Shapiro showed us how Shakespeare cleverly deflects potential pitfalls, even though his contemporaries often weren't so lucky: "Of all the major playwrights of the 1590s, he alone had managed to avoid a major confrontation with those in power."

Shapiro spends an inordinate amount of time talking about Essex's ill-fated Irish campaign and the pall it spread over the country. I thought he gave a little too much emphasis to these events, as though he forgot he was writing about Shakespeare in his enthusiasm to tell the Essex story. Nonetheless, I was shocked at the number of men who were conscripted into service: "Government figures at the time indicate that 2,800 were forced to serve in 1594 and 1,806 in 1595...The number drafted in the first six months of 1599 alone was 7,300...Local authorities didn't hesitate during Elizabeth's reign to raid fairs, ale houses, inns, and other popular meeting places. The authorities could count on a good haul at the playhouses, too." In 1602, "All the playhouses were beset in one day and very many pressed from thence, so that in all there are pressed 4000." As Shapiro suggests, this would especially have resonated with the audience in "The Second Part of Henry the Fourth" when this issue was dealt with.

I've only scratched the surface here, and as you will see, Shapiro covers a lot of ground...too much, I dare say, for one volume. At times he can be hard to follow and he is not an easy read. But the wealth of information is invaluable, and I'm glad I found the book.

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 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.

An interesting context in which to examine four plays. I wish I had reread the plays before reading this book. The textual analysis called on my memory of the plays and I wasn't always up to the challenge. But I learned a great deal about England during that particular year. Well worth reading.

No doubt being an English lit nerd helps to appreciate this book. That way the endless digression that is probably necessary to encompass not just what Shakespeare wrote in 1599 but the context of it as well won’t gripe you. In fact, you’ll come to give up expecting a recognizable analytical structure and just go with the pleasantly readable flow.

Shapiro lays out the plays of 1599, Henry V, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. Putting out such a list in one year is astonishing enough. And the book would have been worthwhile just explaining that. But it also shows us how Queen Elizabeth was ever more suspicious of threats to her crown, what life was like for residents of London (where Shakespeare worked), what grievances against the government existed – especially those arising out of levies for men and money to support a military effort against Irish rebels, and what play-goers expected to see and what they paid to attend. Throw in formation of the British East India Company, Shakespeare’s efforts to recoup his mother’s inheritance and secure and improve a family coat of arms, and how contemporaries viewed and wrote about the time, and you begin to understand just how much the book actually covers.

You can almost credit yourself with a college course by reading this. And it’s more fun.

Some of this book I really loved and some... was a bit of a slog.
It's not the author's fault, Shapiro does warn you right from the start that a lot of the book is about the social and political climate Shakespeare was living in during 1599, and that patience would be required to see how Will and what he was up to fits into it all, but my god, I wish he hadn't preceded it with an amazing story about Shakespeare, Richard Burbage and their pals doing a real Ocean's 11 on a dodgy landlord and putting the wheels in motion for the building of the Globe. Real 5 star stuff.
I love royal history, so the stuff around Elizabeth I was fine, but there is also a ton about the wars in Ireland and my god, was that not my bag. Every time I got to a new section on military strategy and whatnot my eyes would glaze over and it would put me off picking the book up again.
Shapiro is a very honest writer, which I really like. In addition to the warning above, he's also pretty upfront about the fact we can never really know Shakespeare because he didn't really leave much behind other than his work. And yet when the book does talk about him it's still fascinating, and I did come away feeling like I learned a lot more about him. I'd say things really pick up towards the end (of both the book and the year 1599) when Shakespeare writes Hamlet. The process, the disconnect between writing and performance, the breakdown of its significance in Shakespeare's career and theatrical history as a whole - Shapiro comes some epic stuff. I can already see that next time I read Hamlet I'll be seeing it through totally different eyes and so in that respect I think this book is excellent. It was just a bit arduous to get through (look how long it took me...although I did move house during that time).