scatterbrainlibrarian.co.uk

“How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? Here at last is an intimate history of Shakepeare, following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature.”

I really loved this book and spent the Christmas holiday carrying it around with me everywhere. It’s a fascinating depiction of a year in Shakespeare’s life that covers everything from life at court, the wars in Ireland, the threat of Spanish invasion, censorship, publishing and the colourful world of the theatre. I have gained a more vivid understanding of the late Elizabethan era from this book than from any other.

Shakespeare himself still remains an enigma as (the author admits) we can know so little about him. Drawing conclusions about the man through his plays is incredibly difficult and there are relatively few other sources. On a number of occasions the author says that he would love to know how Shakespeare reacted to such-and-such or behaved in response to so-and-so but admits we have no idea.

What is fascinating is that the book focuses on the four plays Shakespeare wrote this year. They are four very different plays and I admit at first I was sceptical as to how they could be linked together. What this book offers is a broader picture of a versatile writer given at last more freedom to experiment (due to being a part-owner of the newly constructed Globe Theatre) and to push himself and his audience. It is the year in which he dispenses with jigs and clowns and moves to deeper, wordier, more complex plays. He treads the line between crowd-pleasing and boundary-pushing perfectly and it is this new found freedom that enables him to become the playwright capable of creating Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth.

The four plays written in 1599 that this book focuses on are ‘Henry V’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘As you Like It’ and ‘Hamlet’ (which he was completing at the year’s end). Through exploring these plays in depth the author is able to demonstrate how rapidly Shakespeare changed and how rapidly things changed in the world around him. The plays are examined firmly in the context of their time focusing on their presentation of heroism and war, the ideals of chivalry and a romanticised past, and the consequences of revolution and ambition. The greatness of Shakespeare, the reader comes to feel, is in his ability to make any story and any setting speak directly to the experiences and feelings of his Globe audience and also across four centuries to communicate the same ideas and feelings to us today.

Personally, the bit liked best was the focus on Hamlet towards the end, the soliloquies quoted reminding me of the brilliance of my favourite play. Hamlet is a magnificent creation and one of the most ‘real’ characters in literature mainly because he is complex and multi-faceted but also because he is given the words to express the turmoil and chaos inside. What was most fascinating of all in this book was the tale of how different versions of Hamlet came into existence and how both have been merged ever since. When I get home I am definitely going to check my copy and try to work out which one it is! I also feel a great urge to go and read Montaigne’s Essays and that’s not something I’ve been motivated to do before…

Anyway, I could go on for some length about this wonderfully interesting and stimulating book but I had better end it here. I do recommend it though. It’s a very readable book and I rate it highly amongst my non-fiction reads.