The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606

Unless you consider yourself a Shakespeare scholar (or aspire to be one), you will probably find this book dense and tedious. That’s not to say it doesn’t contain a plethora of worthwhile information. I learned much about King James’ obsession to unify England and Scotland, Jacobean attitudes towards witchcraft and sorcery, and the Gunpowder Plot. Of the three plays Shapiro focuses on, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, I most enjoyed Shapiro’s analysis of King Lear and I found the chapter, “Leir to Lear” intriguing - I had no idea King Lear was based on an older play, King Leir. However, by the time Shapiro got to the “Equivocation” chapter, my attention began to wander.

Ultimately, I learned more about the historical context of the year 1606 than I did about Shakespeare. Suppositions in this book abound; things Shakespeare might have read, done, or seen are included without any evidence. Educated guesses are intriguing, but not reliable scholarship. There’s a reason a number of Shakespeare scholars came together for the publication of a rebuttal book, Contested Years: Errors, Omissions, and Unsupported Statements in James Shapiro’s ‘The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.’ According to the Amazon synopsis, it is “an essential companion to one of the most flawed and misleading works by an accredited academic professor of the last decade.” Yikes. I think this is one of those books that is better fit to be picked apart in a classroom than it is for personal reading, but more power to you if you decide to wrestle with it on your own.