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

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In fact, 1599 might just as easily be described as what Huang called "a chronicle of failure". Henry V has never been as loved or admired as Henry IV. Although middle-aged Shapiro may think that the relationship of Rosalind and Orlando is more "complex" and "real" than the passion of Romeo and Juliet, what actor ever made his reputation by playing Orlando? Nowadays Rosalind may or may not be Shakespeare's "most beloved heroine", but in Elizabethan England Thomas Lodge's "Rosalind" was much more popular than Shakespeare's. Shapiro argues persuasively that Shakespeare welcomed, and may even have provoked, the departure of the great clown Will Kemp from his acting company, but who would rather see Touchstone than Falstaff? James Shapiro's 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear (Faber) brings to dazzling life the world from which sprang the best crop of new plays in theatre history. ' Nicholas Hytner, Observer The year 1599 was when Shakespeare completed "Henry V", wrote "Julius Caesar" and "As You Like It", and produced the first draft of "Hamlet". In his winning book, Shapiro shows the Bard’s progression from his tale of two star-crossed lovers to "Hamlet", exploring how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. With the lightest touch and the most formidable scholarship, James Shapiro, once again, proves himself to be an irresistible storyteller. And what an exhilarating and disturbing tale he has to tell. Here is proof that Shakespeare's power remains undiminished in our divided and unhappy world."--Simon Russell Beale

In this case, what Shapiro does is create a biography about one of the greatest writers who ever lived, about whom we know almost nothing. And he does that without ever cheating, by actually marshalling this huge amount of evidence to uncover not the life of the person, but the life of a mind.” By giving us an account of what Shakespeare must have read, heard and seen that year, Shapiro goes further than any other biographer in accounting for the relationship between those words and his life.”-- Frances Wilson, The Daily Telegraph Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-231-07540-5 Here Shapiro differs dramatically from Huang. The Chinese historian, writing for an academic press, insists from the outset that "nothing of great significance happened in 1587". The American Shapiro, writing for a commercial publisher, is more upbeat and ambitious, seeing 1599 as "the tipping point" that leads both England and Shakespeare to world power. Spenser's death symbolically heralds the death of the chivalric world celebrated in The Faerie Queene. Shapiro juxtaposes the house arrest of the Earl of Essex, in September 1599, with the simultaneous foundation of the East India Company: "the death of chivalry," he concludes, "coincided with the birth of empire." Shakespeare, with his special "sensitivity to moments of epochal change", registered that shift in a play that lifted him out of the parochial register of English poets and made him into an international cultural hero. "Hamlet," Shapiro claims, was "born at the crossroads of the death of chivalry and the birth of globalisation".

Footnotes

If you have any interest in Shakespeare at all, you won't be able to put it down…for my money, A Year in the Life really shows how books like this ought to be written.” -- Hans Werner, The Toronto Star Churchwell said each book had to be judged on its merits, but added: “We also had to recognise there were structural inequalities, in bookselling, in publishing, over the last 25 years that were being reflected.” Superbly illuminating....as a synthesizer and as a guide—in clear prose underpinned by considerable learning, worn lightly—[Shapiro] deserves whoops of applause.” -- Sam Leith, The Spectator

Shakespeare in a Divided Americashows that no writer has been more closely embraced by Americans, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history. Indeed, it is by better understanding Shakespeare's role in American life, Shapiro argues, that we might begin to mend our bitterly divided land. Shapiro's rich portrait of 1606 is every bit as compelling as his excellent 1599, handling huge amounts of research with a winningly light touch.' Claire Lowdon, Sunday Times The entry for "1599", in my edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide, says only that it is the title of a popular song by The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Hamlet. Shapiro's guide to 1599 is much more encyclopedic and reliable, but even the best guides occasionally get lost in the Forest of Shakespeare. Shapiro treats us to one deep-dive vignette after another, most of which center on Shakespearean nuggets from America's past that have vanished from view even among seasoned fans of this country's neglected cultural curios."--Tom Carson, Bookforum

Books

Cowley said: " 1599 is a remarkable and compelling book. A history of four masterpieces and of so much more, it produces a life of Shakespeare, about whom so little is known, through an ingenious fusion of history, politics, and literary criticism. The result is a poised and original re-imagination of biography. The winner was announced by chair of judges Jason Cowley, at a ceremony hosted at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh on 27th April. The one-off award marks the 25th anniversary of The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction by crowning the best work of non-fiction from the last 25 years.

Robert McCrum: "To hold a mirror up to his nature", The Observer, June 5, 2005 (review of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare).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. Partly, it is a record of a writer reading, writing and revising to meet a succession of deadlines. Authors: 'A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare', NPR radio program Talk of the Nation, October 18, 2005 (audio stream file and excerpt from the first chapter). An Interview with James Shapiro", The Literateur interviews James Shapiro on the subject of Shakespeare conspiracy theories and authorship. First aired in April 2012 as a BBC4 3-hour documentary: “The King and the Playwright: A Jacobean History." Directed by Steven Clarke. Short-listed for the Grierson Award for the Best Historical Documentary, 2012. Now available as a DVD for North American viewers. Shaffi, Sarah (27 April 2023). "James Shapiro wins Baillie Gifford anniversary prize with 'extraordinary' Shakespeare biography 1599". The Guardian . Retrieved 30 April 2023.

Shapiro has received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Huntington Library, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for his publications and academic activities. He has written for numerous periodicals, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, and The Daily Telegraph. In 2006, he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow as well as a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In 1599, Shakespeare completed Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar and As You Like It, and produced the first draft of Hamlet. In his book, Shapiro, who is professor of English at Columbia University, looks at how the political and social context of the time influenced the work. She said: “We felt that each book had to just be judged on its merits, but we had to also recognise that there were structural inequalities in the industry — in bookselling, in publishing — over the last 25 years, that were being reflected. Because this is a cross-section of the books out there that people have admired over the past 25 years.” Shapiro won the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize as well as the 2006 Theatre Book Prize for his work 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, which Robert Nye described as "powerful" in Literary Review, set apart by Shapiro's precise and engrossing commentary on the sea-change in Shakespeare's language during the year 1599. [2] [3] In 2023, the book won the Baillie Gifford Prize's "Winner of Winners" award. [4] [5]

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?’ serves as the first full-length discussion of the big authorship question by a Shakespeare pro in 100 years, maybe the first ever. It's worth the wait. Shapiro is a powerful, engaging writer with a gift for connecting great generalities and illustrating them with telling examples. "Contested Will" explores the origin and development of the authorship question with unexpected openness and some insights that will be new even to the most seasoned of authorship buffs.” (Ward Elliott, Los Angeles Times)