num_pages: 394
description: What accounts for Shakespeare’s transformation from talented poet and playwright to one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this gripping account, James Shapiro sets out to answer this question, "succeed[ing] where others have fallen short." (Boston Globe) 1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare’s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.
language: English
title: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599
titlecomplete: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599
characters: William Shakespeare
genres: Historical, Biography, Theatre, British Literature, Drama, Nonfiction, Literature, Biography Memoir, History, Literary Criticism
ratings_count: 3831
places: United Kingdom
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, awardedAt: 1672560000000
name: The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
category: winner of winners
publisher: HarperCollins