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Book Synopsis

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award

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 toget

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

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    A Paperback / softback by Professor James Shapiro

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      Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
      Publication Date: 01/06/2006
      ISBN13: 9780060088743, 978-0060088743
      ISBN10: 0060088745
      Also in:
      Biography: writers

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award

      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 toget

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