1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare's life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play,
The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy,
King Lear.
1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague. But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare, unrivalled at identifying the fault-lines of his cultural moment, who before the year was out went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times:
Macbeth and
Antony and Cleopatra.
Following the biographical style of
1599, a way of thinking and writing that Shapiro has made his own,
1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear promises to be one of the most significant and accessible works on Shakespeare in the decade to come.
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Information
Subtopic
History of ArtIndex
LiteratureTable of contents
- Cover
- Landing Page
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- A Note on Quoting the Plays
- Map of Shakespeare’s London in 1606
- Prologue: 5 January 1606
- 1: The King’s Man
- 2: Division of the Kingdoms
- 3: From Leir to Lear
- 4: Possession
- 5: The Letter
- 6: Massing Relics
- 7: Remember, Remember
- 8: Hymenaei
- 9: Equivocation
- 10: Another Hell above the Ground
- 11: The King’s Evil
- 12: Unfinished Business
- 13: Queen of Sheba
- 14: Plague
- Epilogue: 26 December 1606
- A Note on Dating the Plays
- Bibliographical Essay
- Acknowledgements
- Index
- Plates
- About the Author
- By the Same Author
- Copyright
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Yes, you can access 1606 by James Shapiro in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & History of Art. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.