![]() ![]() The Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro makes this case forcefully and with great narrative power by concentrating on one year in which there was a nasty war going on in Ireland, the threat of a renewed Spanish Armada, a queen growing old, and growing anxious enough to order satirical books be burned, a population worried about the succession, and a playwright approaching his peak. ![]() Theatre in Britain can never have been both so influential on and so reflective of the society it served. Congratulations to Professor James Shapiro for winning the Ballie Gifford Annual Prize for his book, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. Put another way, that 15 per cent would very likely have been watching a play by Shakespeare, again a statistic to which the present day cannot begin to aspire. 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro is tonight, Thursday, April 27, named winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Winner of Winners Award. ![]() Take a popular play and a run of just a fortnight and around 15 per cent of London's adult population would have seen it. ![]() In the last year of the 16th century, London had a population of 200,000. In 1599, perhaps the decisive year in Shakespeares life, art and politics collided to an extraordinary degree. ![]()
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