This was extremely interesting. I am not deluded enough to think that it would be interesting for everyone. If you like historical analysis of notable literary texts, this book will be your jam. Especially if you are into Shakespeare. I have decided that this combination of historical context and literary analysis is something I really like. One of my favorite books of the last several years was Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, which did something similar, except across Austen’s entire career instead of focusing on only one year (plus several months) in Shakespeare’s life/England’s history.
1606 was the year that Shakespeare wrote King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, and it was also a year full of political upheaval, treason, fear of religious persecution, and plague. King James was still a relatively new King, having only inherited the throne from Good Queen Bess three years earlier. England was still adjusting to their new monarch and his way of doing things, on top of him being a Scot, and pushing very hard to unify Great Britain as a country. He didn’t just want to be King of England and King of Scotland as two separate things. He wanted to be King of Great Britain, which he saw as England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. He was ultimately unsuccessful and unification didn’t happen in his lifetime.
Shapiro did such a great job with this book. His writing is clear, precise, and interesting. He traces the context of the times through Shakespeare’s works, giving new perspective on things I had either interpreted differently before or completely ignored as irrelevant. I have already returned the book to the library so I can’t go into specifics, but the most interesting bits of this by far were those about the Gunpowder Plot. Even though those events happened (or rather, didn’t happen) on November 5, 1605, they loomed large over the following year, changing the political and religious climate (the terrorists were Catholic). Shapiro gives a full recounting of the plot, its participants, and how it was thwarted, and then how that affected James’s reign, England’s culture, and finally Shakespeare’s writing.
Well worth a read.