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Interview: James Shapiro
All the
King’s Men
James Shapiro discovered so much about Shakespeare when exploring a single year, 1599, that he resolved to repeat the process. The result is a new book, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, that opens a window into Shakespeare’s stellar career as a King’s Man during the reign of James I.
Interview by Pat Reid Author photo by Mary Creggan
You’ve said that your Shakespeare journey began when you were visiting London in the late ’70s and you got hooked on watching Shakespeare plays – seeing literally hundreds of productions in the space of a few years. Is this what propelled your approach as an academic – taking Shakespeare studies out of the ivory tower and returning it to the sweaty cockpit of London’s theatreland?
“I’ve never really thought of those two sides of my identity – cultural historian and theatergoer – as quite
so separate as your question implies. They are really complementary. It’s true that I didn’t enjoy Shakespeare in high school and never took a Shakespeare course at university, and only became interested in Shakespeare after seeing scores of productions in the late ’70s and early ’80s in London and Stratford-uponAvon. But seeing those performances made me all the more eager to investigate the circumstances of their creation. I’ve spent the past three decades in archives on both sides of the Atlantic delving deeply into how those plays were a product of their times. Over the past few years I’ve summed the circle, and now spend
a good deal of my time advising theater companies about the cultural pressures that helped shape the plays.” When your book 1599 came out a decade ago, it felt like a periscope into the past. Readers like myself were excited and inspired by how it allowed us to imagine Shakespeare’s life and work in the context of a historical moment.
“I stumbled on the idea about writing about a single year quite by accident. I felt that I needed to learn everything I could about SHAKESPEARE magazine
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