Shakespeare Magazine 9

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-upon-
Avon. 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 27