Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, author of
Shakespeare in a Divided America, shows how the tumultuous events in
1606 influenced three of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies written that
year--King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.
"The Year of Lear is irresistible--a banquet of wisdom" (The
New York Times Book Review).
In the years leading up to 1606, Shakespeare's great productivity had
ebbed. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again,
finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn--King Lear--then
writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.
It was a memorable year in England as well--a terrorist plot conceived
by a small group of Catholic gentry had been uncovered at the last hour.
The foiled Gunpowder Plot would have blown up the king and royal family
along with the nation's political and religious leadership. The aborted
plot renewed anti-Catholic sentiment and laid bare divisions in the
kingdom.
It was against this background that Shakespeare finished Lear, a play
about a divided kingdom, then wrote a tragedy that turned on the murder
of a Scottish king, Macbeth. He ended this astonishing year with a
third masterpiece no less steeped in current events and concerns:
Antony and Cleopatra.
"Exciting and sometimes revelatory, in The Year of Lear, James Shapiro
takes a closer look at the political and social turmoil that contributed
to the creation of three supreme masterpieces" (The Washington Post).
He places them in the context of their times, while also allowing us
greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such
events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions.
"His great gift is to make the plays seem at once more comprehensible
and more staggering" (The New York Review of Books). For anyone
interested in Shakespeare, this is an indispensable book.
