Shapiro, J. (2022). 1599, A year in the life of William Shakespeare. Translated by E. Lutsenko. Afterword by E. Lutsenko. Ed. by Y. Fridstein. Moscow: Tsentr knigi Rudomino. (In Russ.)

Abstract

Since its original publication in 2005, the book by James Shapiro with the date ‘1599’ in its title has won the reputation of one of the foremost original works of research on Shakespeare. Its factuality is based on a scrupulous reconstruction of the context of one year in which Shakespeare’s work was created and received. Every play comes up, focused at the crossroad of the events where English history involves the everyday life of London theatres, Shakespeare’s Globe newly built among them: Julius Caesar with the Globe carpenters as its first audience; Henry V and its reaction in the Prologues and Epilogue to the Earl of Essex failing in Ireland and falling out with the Queen; how chivalry was dead and empire emerged as a background for Hamlet being written. Shapiro does not insist on dealing in poetics (though a subtlety of penetration is among his qualifications), but his reconstruction of pragmatics in all the variety of events confidently paves the way to pass from the poetics of culture to the poetics of the text.