A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare PDF Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061840904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 620

Get Book

Book Description
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 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.

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare PDF Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061840904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 620

Get Book

Book Description
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 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.

1606

1606 PDF Author: James Shapiro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571235797
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 423

Get Book

Book Description
"An intimate portrait of one of Shakespeare's most inspired moments: the year of King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. 1606, while a very good year for Shakespeare, is a fraught one for England. Plague returns. There is surprising resistance to the new king's desire to turn England and Scotland into a united Britain. And fear and uncertainty sweep the land and expose deep divisions in the aftermath of the failed terrorist attack that came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot. James Shapiro deftly demonstrates how these extraordinary plays responded to the tumultuous events of this year, events that in unexpected ways touched upon Shakespeare's own life ... [and] profoundly changes and enriches our experience of his plays--Publisher's description.

Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year

Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year PDF Author:
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525506217
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Get Book

Book Description
"Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year is not just for Christmas, but for all time." —Helena Bonham Carter A magnificent collection of 365 passages from Shakespeare's works, for the Shakespeare scholar and neophyte alike. Make Shakespeare a part of your daily routine with Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, a yearlong collection of passages from Shakespeare's greatest works. Drawing from the full spectrum of plays and sonnets to mark each day of the year, whether it's a scene from Hamlet to celebrate Christmas or a Sonnet in June to help you enjoy a summer's day. There are also passages to mark important days in the Shakespeare calendar, both from his own life and from his plays: You'll read a pivotal speech from Julius Caesar on the Ides of March and celebrate Valentine's day with a sonnet. Every passage is accompanied by an enlightening note to teach you its significance and help you better appreciate the timelessness and poetry of Shakespeare's words. Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year will give you a thoughtful way reflect on each day, all while giving you a deeper appreciation for the most famous writer in the English language.

Shakespeare in a Divided America

Shakespeare in a Divided America PDF Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525522298
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book

Book Description
One of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year • A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • A New York Times Notable Book A timely exploration of what Shakespeare’s plays reveal about our divided land. “In this sprightly and enthralling book . . . Shapiro amply demonstrates [that] for Americans the politics of Shakespeare are not confined to the public realm, but have enormous relevance in the sphere of private life.” —The Guardian (London) The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned. From Abraham Lincoln’s and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s, competing Shakespeare obsessions to the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer has been more embraced, more weaponized, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history.

Contested Will

Contested Will PDF Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416541632
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life PDF Author: Dani Jansen
Publisher: Second Story Press
ISBN: 1772601225
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book

Book Description
Alison Green, desperate Valedictorian-wannabe, agrees to produce her school’s disaster-prone production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her second big mistake is accidentally saying yes to a date with her oldest friend, Jack, even though she’s crushing on Charlotte, the star of the play.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition)

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition) PDF Author: Stephen Greenblatt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079848
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Get Book

Book Description
Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare PDF Author: Ari Berk
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763647942
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 17

Get Book

Book Description
Describes Shakespeare's experiences in London and his retirement to the country in a fictional account that includes excerpts from his works.

The Book of William

The Book of William PDF Author: Paul Collins
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596911956
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
A history of the Bard's competitively pursued First Folio traces the author's travels from the site of a Sotheby auction to regions in Asia, throughout which he investigated the roles played by those who have sought and owned the Folios.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare PDF Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061983659
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air," "foregone conclusion," "one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.