Shakespeare Magazine 9

Interview: James Shapiro
“James I didn’t really understand his
English subjects, and couldn’t control
Parliament as Elizabeth had”
Shakespeare and his world – what he
read, what was going on politically
and economically at the time,
how Shakespeare got to and from
Stratford, even what the weather
was like. I had to set a limit, of
course, and the one I chose was
chronological – stick to one year.
I chose 1599 because that was the
year in which the Globe Theatre was
built. It took me 15 years to research
and write that book, and by the end
of that time I had a much clearer
understanding of Shakespeare’s
working conditions – and a finished
manuscript that I could share
with others equally curious about
experiencing his world in this way.”
In 1599 there was a strong
sense of anxiety and paranoia
about current events – the
Spanish threat, unrest
in Ireland, the Queen’s
declining years – that fed
into Shakespeare’s output
during that time. In 1606,
if anything, the situation in
England is even worse?
“In retrospect, the crises of 1599
quickly passed. Within five years the
Irish rebels were crushed, a peace
treaty was signed with Spain, and
the aging and childless Queen was
succeeded by James VI of Scotland,
who had a male heir and a spare –
Prince Henry and Prince Charles.
The problems of 1606 would not be
resolved quite so easily. The Union
of Scotland and England, which
James so avidly promoted, would
not occur for another century. The
aftermath of that failed terrorist
attempt to topple the king and
destroy the royal family and the
nation’s political and religious elite –
the Gunpowder Plot – would leave
deep scars. The great hopes for the
Jacobean regime were all but over by
the end of this year.”
You’ve been a prime mover
in encouraging readers to
think about the Jacobean
Shakespeare who succeeded
the Elizabethan one. For
many of us it’s still a
revelation that Shakespeare
was not only alive during the
Gunpowder Plot, but that
in Macbeth he apparently
penned a response to it…
“I began as one of those scholars
who always spoke of Shakespeare
as an Elizabethan, never fully
acknowledging that he spent the
last decade of his writing life as a
King’s Man, in a playing company
patronized by James himself.
And in my book on 1599 I only
reinforced the image of Shakespeare
as an Elizabethan. So I’ve spent
much of the last decade trying to
make amends, first researching
and presenting a three-hour BBC
documentary on the Jacobean
Shakespeare, then writing a book
about a remarkable Jacobean year.”
It’s also staggering to think
that Macbeth, Antony and
Cleopatra and King Lear
could all have been written
in the same year. Would this
have been mind-blowing for
Shakespeare’s colleagues and
audiences? Or just business as
usual in the rapid-turnover
world of the Jacobean
playhouse?
“If I recall correctly, Thomas Dekker
wrote or collaborated on ten or more
plays in 1599. Writing three plays a
year was not unusual for Elizabethan
and Jacobean dramatists, nor had it
been for Shakespeare from, say, 1595
to 1599… But the years between
Hamlet and Lear were fallow ones
for Shakespeare, in which he wrote
one or at most two plays a year. He
tended to write plays in inspired
bunches (and would again in 1611-
12 when he wrote three romances
– Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and
The Tempest). We’re just fortunate
that he found his footing in 1606
and wrote three remarkable – and
quite different – tragedies.”
As an addendum to the
Shakespeare Authorship
Question you addressed in the
excellent Contested Will, I’ve
noticed a growing number
of people who’ve chosen
to believe Shakespeare
was a Catholic or Catholic
sympathiser. What do you
think about this? While
researching 1606, did you find
anything that might support
or disprove this notion?
“Most of the evidentiary claims
for the Catholic Shakespeare have
been demolished of late. My own
position is that we don’t and can’t
know with any confidence what
he professed. His religious beliefs
remain hidden from us, and anyone
28 SHAKESPEARE magazine