1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: Winner of the Baillie Gifford Winner of Winners Award 2023

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It housed the greatest collection of international art in the realm, its "spacious rooms" hung "with Persian looms," its treasures "fetched from the richest cities of proud Spain" and beyond. That he kept the Chamberlain’s Men on edge with page after page of new and revised text, his Julius Caesar would escape the wrath of the Queen and end up by itself in print as other texts were banned and burned. 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. First, there was the idea that the poet's life was, after all, a proper subject for biographical speculation.

Down through the centuries people have been frustrated by the lack of concrete biographical information about Shakespeare beyond a few scant details. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Just one of his points: Shakespeare was writing for a very sophisticated and knowledgeable audience, inasmuch as it is "likely that over a third of London's adult population saw a play every month. The book explains also very well how Shakespeare went from the initial inspiration, to the various versions, to the represented play to the 1623 Folio.No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins.

Shapiro has given us by his encyclopedic scholarship and lucid narrative a hitherto unknown Shakespeare.But he did not escape unscathed: Jonson was branded with a “T” for Tyburn, Elizabethan London's site of execution, on his thumb.