1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

I wondered if I would like this book so soon after reading Will in the World. Well, I loved it, and I think I might enjoy reading it again. I read it last year.

It's an account of the plays of 1599, and what Shakespeare's world was like in 1599, with a great emphasis on the political events in London that year. In fact, this book is really "about" how political events affected Shakespeare's work and I found this account both entertaining and a great improvement to my understanding of the plays. Henry the V, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar were the plays Shakespeare wrote in 1599, and I enjoyed the discussion of Julius Caesar the most.

The book opens with a wonderful adventure story: Shakespeare and his fellow Globe shareholders take apart The Theatre, their playhouse just north of London's city limits, and carry it off to re-erect it as The Globe in Southwark. They'd lost their lease to the land on which The Theatre stood. They'd built the theatre, but anticipated trouble with the landlord over removing The Theatre building, so this was a covert operation.

Sadly, the book closes on a less festive note: with Essex's rebellion and execution. The queen was increasingly unpopular, in part because she would not name a successor, leaving everyone with a sense of uncertainty. Perhaps also because the very fact that she was so old meant that it was time for something new and the younger generation was impatient for something new to begin. Finally, there were exclusive licenses being given to favorites, and this caused resentment. The impression that I carried away was that Essex was all out of chances; without a court position he was broke. He'd lost favor when he was sent to Ireland and, in the eyes of many, bungled it. Shapiro's view is that Essex had a vision of service and gallantry that was outdated.

Shapiro discusses censorship in this period, and I found myself feeling surprised that Shakespeare never ran afoul of the censors. In fact, the character of Falstaff was first named for a censor; the name had to be changed and it was changed to Falstaff. In a sense, he did not get away with that - but I think Jonson was imprisoned more than once. How did that smart mouth Mr. Shakespeare get away with that? I guess he was just that popular.

Mr. Shapiro is a Shakespeare scholar who has made quite a few public appearances and presented a television show on the historical Shakespeare. You can find these on YouTube.

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt

I have been reading Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. I was attracted to it because I remembered reading favorable reviews of it ten years ago when it came out, because it had an attractive cover, interesting color plates, and because I read a little bit and found myself swept along by Greenblatt's lively, handsome and accessible writing. I was intrigued when Greenblatt explained that Shakespeare is one of our greatest biographical puzzles because while there is a large amount of certain kinds of documentation, such as criminal charges, lawsuits, property records, church attendance records, and wills, there are no personal letters, no diaries, and little eyewitness account.

I believe it is intended to be a biography in which the author's own creative output is used to illuminate the biography. It's intended for a general audience, rather than a scholarly one, and if you have been watching Will on TNT and want to know more about the life of William Shakespeare, this book is an excellent choice.

If you are specifically interested in the "lost years," the seven years between Shakespeare's marriage and the first mention of him in London living as an actor and a playwright, you will be disappointed. Greenblatt mentions the usual suppositions: that he worked as a tutor for one or more wealthy Northern recusant families, that he traveled in Italy, that he worked for his father and possibly, worked for a touring acting company. I should mention that almost nothing is known about these seven years of Shakespeare's life. There are no diaries or letters to or from Shakespeare in this period, and no universally accepted records of his employment. Records that we do know about are the schoolmasters of the Stratford Grammar School that Shakespeare himself had attended for some time; Greenblatt shows that there is evidence that three schoolteachers had links to the Catholic recusant movement (Catholics who did not attend Church of England services and English and other priests, educated and ordained on the Continent), which means that he could have had the connections to work in that capacity.

If you are interested in knowing whether it's likely that Shakespare's life was touched by Catholic thought and politics, or the politics of the Tudor era, this book would be a good resource because Greenblatt explains this very well. He talks about the references to Catholicism in his plays and other aspects of Shakespeare's biography that appear in the plays: references to the processes of curing leather, for instance, something Shakespeare knew from having worked in his father's glove business.

I found that aspect alone fascinating; I took Elizabethan Era History in college and cannot recall anything about "recusants," or about how the Elizabethan police state and the continuing loyalty to the Catholic faith in rural England, especially the north, created ongiong fear and tension. (At this time, everybody was expected to go to a Church of England church.) In fact, Greenblatt argues that there are many references to Catholic ritual in the plays and Shakespeare may have viewed the theatre as a sphere in which some of the communal concerns of a population that felt the absence of a former practice and cultural dislocation might feel some acknowledgment of their feelings.

There is a great deal here about Shakespeare's life in London, and about the aspects of Shakespeare's life that influenced his playwriting. Especially, Greenblatt makes some interesting inferences about Shakespeare's life: 1) That he regretted his early marriage at 18 (he finds references to the foolishness of marrying young in his work); 2) that he detested his wife; 3) That Hamlet was not only informed by the loss of his son and the impending loss of his father but by his awareness that Protestantism's relationship to the dead was very different from that of Catholicism, and less comforting; 4) That his father's reversal of fortune made the theme of restoration a recurring one in Shakespeare's work; 5) that the late plays' recurring father-daughter relationships reflected Shakespeare's close relationship with his elder daughter, Susanna. Greenblatt also discusses the biographical aspects of the sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece. I have not read these poems and only a few of the sonnets, but I found this discussion very interesting.

There is much evidence of factual events Shakespeare's life but it comes almost entirely from legal documents: lawsuits, contracts, references to his father's life as a local public official and Shakespeare's own will.

For students, I think the chapter notes at the back of the book may be quite helpful in locating books that deal with certain questions in greater depth.