1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: Winner of the Baillie Gifford Winner of Winners Award 2023

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A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare , by James Shapiro, is an intimate history of Shakespeare, following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature. The book is really a wonderfully deft interweaving of historical and cultural context, physical and social description, the politics and economics of Shakespeare’s work as a professional actor and co-owner of the Globe theatre. From now on, there would only be one book for sale about Henry IV in London's bookstalls, Shakespeare's. Partly, 1599 is a rediscovery of the worlds that shaped the poet's development and which, in his maturity, were becoming lost - the bloody Catholic past; the deforested landscape of Arden; a dying chivalric culture.

There was little touring theater, few books, hardly any musical instruments, no paintings to speak of, the aesthetic monotony broken only by painted cloths that adorned interiors (like the eight that had hung in Shakespeare's mother's home in Wilmcote).A Year in the Life of William Shakespeareby James Shapiro is tonight, Thursday 27 April, named winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction ‘Winner of Winners’ Award. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. Read these as well and make up your own mind - they certainly give another fascinating alternative perspective to the familiar plays (especially Hamlet, that features prominently in Shapiro's book). From the deliciously vivid first pages, in which a group of armed theatricals make a dash through the snow in the dead of night to filch a theatre's timber frame and transfer it to the site of the Globe, Shapiro weaves a tantalising narrative out of what could have been a fairly dry piece of scholarship. O livro de Shapiro não tem nada disso e, trazendo-nos para a terra como um cometa, tem como objetivo entender, conforme Greenblatt disse, como Shakespeare se tornou Shakespeare, vivendo em um mundo de peste, conspiração e invasão.

Os capítulos sobre "Como Gostais" e "Hamlet" revertem para análises textuais mais convencionais, interligados com especulações biográficas e digressões; por exemplo, a viagem de Rosalinda a Arden pode ter sido inspirada em sua viagem anual de Londres a Stratford para visitar esposa e filhas. Shakespeare provavelmente viu o primeiro incidente (ocorreu em uma apresentação judicial de sua empresa) e ouviu sobre o segundo (o que pode ter inspirado a cena do quarto igualmente chocante em Hamlet, que também envolve uma rainha e um jovem indecoroso, impetuoso e armado). They've had to grapple with some of the most brilliant non-fiction books written in English in the last quarter century and have done so with astonishing seriousness and engagement. In a provocative study of the influence of Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare on each other’s plays, poems and legacies, James Shapiro considers the parodic recollections that reveal these rivalries, illuminating the complex ways in which their mutual influence made its presence and pressure felt. Elizabeth's entrance followed traditional protocol: a mile out of town she was received by Lord Mayor Stephen Soame and his brethren, who were dressed in "velvet coats and chains of gold.His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the New York Review of Books, among other places.