In the summer of 1605 John Wright began selling copies of a newly printed play called The True Chronicle History of King Leir, which had first been staged around 1590. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
For anyone interested in Shakespeare, this is an indispensable book. “His great gift is to make the plays seem at once more comprehensible and more staggering” ( The New York Review of Books). He places them in the context of their times, while also allowing us greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions. “Exciting and sometimes revelatory, in The Year of Lear, James Shapiro takes a closer look at the political and social turmoil that contributed to the creation of three supreme masterpieces” ( The Washington Post). He ended this astonishing year with a third masterpiece no less steeped in current events and concerns: Antony and Cleopatra. It was against this background that Shakespeare finished Lear, a play about a divided kingdom, then wrote a tragedy that turned on the murder of a Scottish king, Macbeth. The aborted plot renewed anti-Catholic sentiment and laid bare divisions in the kingdom. The foiled Gunpowder Plot would have blown up the king and royal family along with the nation’s political and religious leadership. It was a memorable year in England as well-a terrorist plot conceived by a small group of Catholic gentry had been uncovered at the last hour. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn- King Lear-then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. In the years leading up to 1606, Shakespeare’s great productivity had ebbed. “ The Year of Lear is irresistible-a banquet of wisdom” ( The New York Times Book Review). Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro shows how the tumultuous events in 1606 influenced three of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies written that year- King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.
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