Focused too much on the history around Shakespeare than his actual life, but all in all, it was a good read.

Acudí al Bardo de Stratford upon Avon para llenar mis soledades e incertidumbres, pero ahora desde otro punto de vista no necesariamente el de su obra, quise hurgar un poco en su vida y en sus inspiraciones, sumergirme en su biografía, en sus razones y en sus incertidumbres. Mucho se ha dicho del genio de Shakespeare, de su conocimiento del alma humana y en vano he tratado de entender la grandeza de sus obras y de su pensamiento. A veces pienso que su obra para mí resulta un pozo muy hondo y oscuro del que no alcanzaré a vislumbrar nunca qué es lo que hay en el fondo. En esta ocasión no acudí propiamente a una obra suya, sino a un libro acerca del gran escritor inglés, libro que, entre otras cosas, abrió en mí una fascinante curiosidad para averiguar o investigar acerca de lo siguiente: William Shakespeare el hombre de pueblo y poco instruido, actor de teatro, hijo de un artesano ¿fue realmente el que escribió esa obra magnificente y profundamente humana? ¿Fue él, un simple actor de teatro, el genio dramático detrás de Hamlet, MacBeth, Romeo y Julieta y tantas más? Se ha atribuido a varias personas la autoría de sus obras, la más reciente teoría nos dice que el autor en realidad fue un noble inglés que vivió siempre entre las cortes de su país, entre la rancia nobleza de Inglaterra y cuyo nombre fue Edward de Vere. ¿Algún día se tendrá plena certeza acerca de la autoría de esta obra atribuida todavía al nativo de Stratford upon Avon? La primera parte del libro es muy abundante en datos y parece no avanzar lo que la hace un poco pesada de leer, pero la segunda destila un sabor a trama e imaginación. La curiosidad sobre el verdadero autor de esta monumental obra ha quedada sembrada en mi imaginación. ¡Hermosa curiosidad!

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro is a must read if you're looking for an intriguing Shakespeare biography as well as a deep dive into one year of his life. It's a fascinating read and I'm so glad I decided to listen to the audiobook production. The author does a good job narrating the story, and it even includes a few excerpts from the plays the Shakespeare wrote in 1599. The author does a fantastic job analyzing real world events and how they influenced the author and his immortal stories. I appreciated the level of detail that went into putting all of this together. What a year! I'll have to check out Shapiro's The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 in the future as well.

This book was an engaging read, but at the same time very tiring and meandering. There were some chapters that I really, really loved (such as 'A Battle of Wills' and 'Simple Truth Suppressed'), as they actually explored something that was about Shakespeare and what he did in 1599, but other chapters I found myself not taking in or just skipping over, because, to me, they didn't feel relevant or interesting. I can see where the author was coming from on the events and people he wrote about, but I still don't see how over 20 pages about the Earl of Essex's revolt on Ireland had a place in a biography of William Shakespeare. This going off subject is something I've noticed is guilty of most Shakespeare biographers (not just in books) - probably because we know so little about his life - but still. Really?

I do appreciate and like the originality of this book; how it focussed on a single year of Shakespeare's life, and the writing was good, especially when I started reading it aloud around halfway through (ironically this is what I do with real Shakespeare too). I would recommend you read the plays talked about in this book before reading it (most notably Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet, but also Henry V if you wanted to). It's not essential, as I haven't read Julius Caeser or Henry V, but I definitely got a lot more out of the chapters about the plays I'd read rather than the ones about plays I hadn't. Good book, but could have been better.

I’m not a Shakespeare aficionado but I was drawn to this book because of its focus on Elizabethan England in 1599 and the interaction of that particular year’s social and political events with Shakespeare’s writing and performances. Shapiro takes this approach in lieu of a traditional biography in part because he believes we just know too little about Shakespeare as a person.

Shapiro makes the case that 1599 was a turning point year for England and for Shakespeare. England was dealing with an uprising in Ireland as well as threats from the Spanish Armada. With an aging monarch, the Tudor era was coming to an end and there was much uncertainty about the future. In post-Reformation England, familiar religious icons and holidays were replaced with secular celebrations and the theater increasingly became a common cultural touchstone for Elizabethans. The age of Chivalry was fading and, with the birth of the fledgling East India Company, the adventurous knight was being usurped by the adventurous merchant.

This was the year that the Globe Theater opened with Shakespeare as one of its owners. Shakespeare’s creative genius is on display as he writes plays that in some important ways move away from the traditional fare of the day and that both reflect what was happening in society and at the same time demand much more from his audience. Shapiro does brilliant in depth social/political analyses of As You Like It and Hamlet.

Entertaining and informative.

I found the title slightly misleading. When I hear or read "A Year In The Life..." I usually expect it to focus fairly tightly on the subject that comes next. This book had a good bit about Shakespeare, but it spent a lot of time on events happening that year, some with the most tenuous connections the great playwright.

1599 was a very eventful year. Shakespeare's company built the Globe Theater, and even that was something of an adventure involving "creatively acquired" lumber. Shakespeare himself wrote four of his best plays that year: Henry V, Julius Ceasar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. He also made one of his rare journeys from London back to Stratford.

There was a lot else going on, as well. There was a rebellion in Ireland that had a lot of people nervous. A knight named Essex was sent to stop it, and managed to get himself in a lot of trouble through both bad judgment and ego. Elizabeth was on the throne, and she had a lot to worry about and was dangerous to cross. Essex found that out a few later when she had him beheaded. There was a panic about a second Spanish Armada moving to attack England, which had the population hysterical, and proved eventually to be totally false. Add in a few notable storms, many going hungry or landless, and censors examining everything written, and you can see a lot of Shakespeare's challenges.

The author is clearly a fan of the Bard ,and it shows through in various ways. The book can be a bit dry in places. Recommended for devotees of Shakespeare and his work, or people interested in English history.

Shakespeare is probably one of the most myth-enshrouded men in theatre. Who doesn't know his name, his plays, his stories? But what hides behind the persona remains a mystery for most part. And yet, literary critics like James Shapiro do their best to bring some light into the dark.



1599 was an important year for both England as well as the playwright. It was not only the year Shakespeare wrote four of his plays (Henry V, As You Like It, Julius Caesar and Hamlet), but also when the Globe theatre got built. The late 16th century was also tumultuous for England as a country: military effort against Irish rebels were preoccupying Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish were rumored to plot against the Crown.

This book tries to illuminate Shakespeare's life by recreating the world around him. Unfortunately the reason we don't know much about Shakespeare as a person is because sources to confirm any claims or beliefs just do not exist. Shapiro didn't unearth anything revolutionary, but instead works with what we know to give us an insight into what he was likely to have been like.

It's an entertaining mix of history and literary criticism. Shapiro explains what was happening in Elizabethan England at that time and puts Shakespeare's effort into that context. I feel like I would have gotten more out of it if I had had a stronger foundation of historical knowledge to build upon, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend this as a starting point for either Shakespeare or English History. You are being thrown into the action, as the narrative focusses on one particular year and it's quite a lot to take in if you don't quite know where to put things in your head!

All in all, this is the most we will probably get to find out about Shakespeare. It's an admirable effort and a scholarly one, too, yet it remains frustrating to a degree as it made me come to terms with how Shakespeare will always remain a mystery and reconstructing his world is the closest we'll ever get to the most significant playwright that might have ever lived.

After finishing Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell I was curious and this book was recommended. I did not read it cover to cover, but selected chapters because of their particular emphasis. Because little is really known about Shakespeare, looking at his life through this lens was effective. The politics, religion, the theater, business, family life, etc. ...it is all described in the course of the year 1599. I learned A LOT. The author quotes Shakespeare's sonnets, plays, other writers of the time, and other historians. He compares drafts of certain plays and discusses the changes Shakespeare makes. I hesitate to give it a rating because I did not read it all the way through, but if you're interested in "the Bard", you might want to pick this up.

Disclaimer: The thoughts in this "review" are personal in nature and do not reflect strongly on the content of the book.

I'm in a period just post a PhD in literature. I am an early modern scholar and I've gained a decent amount of skill as a bibliographer and editor of early poetry. Reflecting back, I was probably unprepared to engage in a PhD when I began. Does anyone really know what they are getting into when they begin? (I hazard to say, "no...probably not.") I was in my first year of my PhD (nearing a decade ago, for some context) when a friend who was completing their ninth year (something I just completed in June) made the comment: "In the end, your PhD will not really be about whatever you think it is right now. Maybe the content will be similar, maybe the research question will be tangentially related, maybe you'll be doing something in the period you initially chose - but in the end it will be about none of that. It will be about you, your character, and your own pscyhological fortitude to complete it."

Oh, yes. Agree completely. My PhD made me grow (and suffer) in ways I didn't even realize were possible. There were many moments where I personally struggled balancing my life with my studies. I had two children in the midst of my graduate studies. I also never really quit working throughout, and before it was finished I began a career as I was completing the full dissertation manuscript and worked full time. I both made my experience more complicated with these additions and gave my regular life space to breathe by not becoming that hermetically-sealed, esoteric-spouting and eccentric scholar you see bent over a small light in a library who only sees the sun occasionally. I even worried about developing a reader's "hump" from always being bent over a book or computer for the unrelenting march of hours of reading necessary day after day. There were some days where I didn't even get out of bed, or would lay on the floor and just read and wrote from unnatural postures. I was simply just trying to find a way to keep straight enough in my posture and not bent over like some kind of crustaceon. Beyond those kinds of personal absurdities and balancing acts, I also went through the psychological dark nights. "The psychological fortitude to complete it," is not a simple comment about the discipline of sitting your butt in a chair every night, every weekend for months (read: years) on end to simply write. Nor is it simply about grappling with material that challenges you in every way possible intellectually. (That kind of fortitude is assumed.) There are so many more "fortitudes" required - those I just could not be prepared for in making the decision to do a research project in an Arts department. I went through a complete failure of confidence in myself, my work, my writing, my supervisor, and my peers, and I never fully recovered my first joy, confidence or the pride I used to hold in the meaningful importance of my work. I was critiqued relentlessly for years on every aspect of my thinking, writing, teaching, and even whether I could do a job where I felt too attached to my "moral self-worth" - many aspects of my character and professional demeanor needed to be excised, or as one professor put it "removed with the expert precision of a surgeon." My life was also the work of my mentors in cutting me down, reconstituting me as an expert, and as a side bonus: attempting to make me into an image of their own work. I worked with many difficult people and it ultimately left me questioning the meaning in the field, comments made where long-tenured professors would admit they no longer believed in the things they taught "but the argument still hangs together regardless," left me questioning the life of the mind. I was mentored in my teaching by a matter-of-fact type who let me know that there's nothing glorious in literature it's a path to depression. My writing partner also struggled with becoming a depressive wreck if his job prospects didn't pan out exactly as he hoped, and they didn't pan out. I also began early on to question all the accolades around me as completely false-faced and confronted the reality of a job market that would not accommodate the privledge of reading books and teaching them. The world was moving on from such offers, and deep down, I completely understood. I came to understand some of the internal pain points of the profession in real life department politics where I was entangled in an argument as a pawn between two tenured professors who used me to harm one another. My peers often grew to hate the institution for what it did to them and found convenient spaces to project our woes upon one another as fellow sufferers who became simply began to participate actively in a culture that was already toxic. One of my favourite final moments, after an accumulated life span of 15+ years of writing about literature, was being asked "do you even know what a comma splice is?" by a professor who only read and was meant to approve a final 250 word abstract for the external reviewer. Nearing the end, all I thought about month after month was: I'm going to quit, I both can't take it anymore and this just isn't worth it.

My PhD is over (with a very strong period at the end of this sentence).

And yet, in spite of my experiences in fortitude I find the resilience of my experience marked throughout my my day-to-day life, I will tell people with a kind of wry grin - btw, I'm a person who edits 16th century poetry...just saying. It's because in my current job I work with a lot of professors mainly in Science and Engineering - and I like messing around by letting them know just how little I know about what they do. But in reality, I rarely speak about my studies, my writing, my topic, my research or my experience because the psychological fortitutde to complete and the reflection back upon it has been completely overwhelming.

I am a Doctor of Philosophy in Early Modern Literature. Now begins a new journey - what does that even mean in light of what I have gone through?

I give it thought now and then at the appropriate wee hour of the morning, and then get up the next morning and participate in my regular life. I do actually already work in higher ed, albeit not in my exact field - although, I think...I intend to enter into the academic job market in September? Maybe? I don't really know. All I know, is what I really need is some time to figure out if I want to do more research and writing on early modern topics. What I need is perspective, and that is only really achieved through time passing, and I am only little over a month post graduation. In the meantime, I decided I'd just read some biography type histories like 1599, which i am thoroughly enjoying...

I never knew so much about Robert Devereaux (the Earl of Essex) - what a rogue he is! He's not quite the same kind of lover of the queen as Raleigh was (she should have stuck with Walter; Robert is a petulant child who is just too young for her at 34 years her junior). Still, political love affair angles aside - she shouldn't have executed him. (You can read a little about them here: https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/...).

Shapiro has given me a lot to think about with Devereaux, the campaign in Ireland and Shakespeare's Henry the V. I love that kind of historical/literary enmeshment. Which leads me to a truth: I actually quite like my own research area, which centered around Thomas Moffett, entomologist/chemist/doctor who also wrote poetry while completing an encyclopedia on insects. Devereaux was Moffett's insect encyclopedia patron prior to his execution and Moffett never really recovered from his loss in that particular writing project. He may not be as interesting as some of the larger than life figures, but he had his own kind of charm that I was able to work with in the end. The way Shapiro writes with historical figures, context and literary material interwoven in the most readable fashion - is just a joy to read. If I could move forward, I'd like to write more like this, less like a scholar making what feels like ridiculous and heavy handed statements that need to read like rock solid arguments. I've never felt akin to the stated argument. I've always leaned toward exploring through a person in their time.

I like learning with a strong focus on context, and the very small slice of time I enjoy also benefits from having an absolutely extraordinary amount of literary content: 1590 - c.1610. So, a book devoted to 1599 is going to be of strong interest to me. It adds to other content I've picked up along the way that I really enjoy. For instance, I like a lot of the content around Walter Raleigh and his voyages, I really enjoyed learning about Raleigh's math man, Thomas Harriot. My favourite glimpse of Harriot remains and impassioned letter he writes for more time and funds to the heads of state after his patrons Raleigh and Northumberland are locked away with the keys thrown away:

'The present misery I feel, being truly innocent in heart and thought, presses me to be a humble suitor to your lordships for a favourable respect. All that know me can witness that I was always of honest conversation and life. I was never any busy meddler in matters of state. I was never ambitious for preferments. But contented with a private life for the love of learning that I might study freely. Wherein my labours and endeavours, if I may speak it without presumptions, have been painful and great. And I hoped, and do yet hope by the grace ofGod and your Lordships' favour, that the effects [of this study] will show themselves shortly, to the good liking and allowance of the state and common weal."

My own labours and endeavours also led me to read another dry work that I had to clock out of half way through about Walsingham, the Queen's spy, which gave me a lot of the wars and the Netherlands intrigues. I love learning about the Low countries, and I'm especially interested in the first voyages to the New World. If there is a book on Robert Cecil...I'd give that a go. And I have it in mind to read a couple books on Drake (including Barrows edition of his letters). And I do have in mind another project that engages Samuel Hartlib. All this to say - I'm still very interested in my PhD field and some of the contextual history...but I also feel confused.

It feels very confusing to finish such a large and long project. The first writing project cuts the deepest is a common statement, and I still feel very strongly the pain and unrelenting discipline that was necessary to simply finish the project. I'm doing my best to work through processing it all through, which likely comes as no great surprise, reading books, reflecting and feeling more free in the writing of it all.

I read this book as research for my novel The Shakespeare Twins.
Provides insightful analysis of four plays by putting them into historical context as well as the context of Shakespeare's life. The plays are: Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like it, and Hamlet.

Shapiro looks at what was happening around Shakespeare in 1599 while he was writing Henry V, Julius Caesar, As you like it, and Hamlet. He looks at how the influence of the Earl of Essex's failed campaign against the Irish may have affected Shakespeare's and his contemporaries views on war. I didn't realize that England conscripted men into the army as well as the navy, whether they wanted to serve or not. Nor did I realize how the change from Catholicism to Protestantism changed even the holidays in England which prior to the reformation had frequently been holy days. Someone more familiar with the plays would probably get even more out of this book.

To begin with, it must be said that I generally can't enough of Shakespeare. It's been a low level passion of mine for decades. The four stars I gave it tell you that I enjoyed this book which attempts to show how the momentous events of 1599 in Elizabethan England may have worked their way into the plays that Shakespeare wrote that year.

Interestingly, 1599 has some things in common with 2013 - a time of unease, societal transformation and changing values. Shapiro explores the failing Irish war and the downfall of the military hero Essex which has echoes of our less than heroic wars and the recent disgrace of famous military men. He tracks the public's emerging admiration for the merchant class as heroic adventurers, rather than the respect formerly granted to the swashbuckling militarism of the nobility. And of course we live in an age when military heroism is not quite as impressive to the public as corporate giants like Steve Jobs. The fear generated (perhaps purposely) by the government around the fear of a second Spanish armada is very reminiscent of our constant anxiety about terrorism and the war fever that ensued after 9/11. Shakespeare's London was coming to the end of Elizabeth's long reign with no heir apparent and her government was tired and dysfunctional. And we know all about dysfunctional governments. Though Shapiro doesn't explore parallels to our time, they occurred to me as I read, making it easier to understand the anxious year of 1599.

As Shapiro explores each of these changes, and others, he links them to the three great plays Shakespeare wrote that year - Julius Caesar, As You LIke It and the masterpiece, Hamlet, finding echoes of those social strains in Shakespeare's plays. Shapiro is careful to be sure you understand that he is only making educated guesses, but along the way, I felt a growing three dimensionality in my view of Shakespeare and his work. Shapiro notes the subtle jibes, asides, well-chosen metaphors that Shakespeare's contemporary audience might have caught that we generally miss. Once caught and explained, however, they vividly reveal Shakespeare as creative genius, commercial playwright, and the literate, and socially aware intellectual producing one masterpiece after another at the newly constructed Globe.

Shapiro also makes the case for a momentous change in Shakespeare's writing - from more familiar heroic history plays, like Henry V, and romantic tales of externalized conflict like Romeo and Juliet, to writing more challenging plays in which the conflicts are internal. The soliloquy changes from a simple exposition of ideas to a moving look at the workings of a human mind with its conflicting emotions and motivations. Brutus ponders killing Caesar and helps us explore the idea of killing someone for his potential danger, for a concept, an idea. Rosalind doesn't only have to overcome external obstacles to be with Orlando; she has to help him grow into a mature lover that she can respect. And of course, Hamlet is no longer just a noble prince bent on avenging his father's death, but a tormented, difficult young man whose soliloquies explore the pros and cons of suicide and the ethical complexities of revenge.

There were moments when I felt Shapiro gave me more information than I needed. At one point, I tossed the book onto the kitchen table saying I wanted to know more about Shakespeare and less about Essex and the Irish wars. But ultimately, I came away with a richer, more nuanced view of Shakespeare, three of his plays, Elizabeth and Essex and stresses of another chaotic time of great social change. A few lapses into excessive detail seems a small price to pay for literary and historical insight.