The Year of Lear : Shakespeare in 1606

342 Pages·2016·10.43 MB·English

by  Shakespeare

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster eBook.
Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from
Simon & Schuster.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

Contents
List of Illustrations
A Note on Quoting the Plays
Map of Shakespeare’s London c.1606
Prologue: January 5, 1606
1. The King’s Man
2. Division of the Kingdoms
3. From Leir to Lear
4. Possession
5. The Letter
6. Massing Relics
7. Remember, Remember
8. Hymenaei
9. Equivocation
10. Another Hell Above the Ground
11. The King’s Evil
12. Unfinished Business
13. Queen of Sheba
14. Plague
Epilogue: December 26, 1606
Photographs
A Note on Dating the Plays
Acknowledgments
About James Shapiro
Bibliographical Essay
Index
Image Credits
For Mary and Luke
List of Illustrations
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
Shakespeare’s portrait, by Martin Droeshout (1623)
Title Page of the Quarto of King Leir (1605)
‘The Unite’ Coin, minted in 1604
Title Page of the Quarto of King Lear (1608)
“Demonic Possession,” Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires Prodigieuses (1598)
The Monteagle Letter (1605)
Detail from “A Map of Warwickshire,” by John Speed (c. 1610)
The Gunpowder Plotters, by Crispijn de Passe the Elder (1606)
Le Combat à la Barrière, by Jacques Callot (1627)
Title Page of “A Treatise of Equivocation,” by Henry Garnet (c. 1598)
Detail from “The Powder Treason” (c. 1620)
Henry IV of France Touching for Scrofula, by Pierre Firens (c. 1610)
Lady Anne Clifford as Cleopatra (c. 1610)
Tomb of Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey, after Maximilian Colt (c.
1620)
“Lord Have Mercy on Us,” from Thomas Dekker, A Rod for Runawayes (1625)
Final Page of the Quarto of King Lear (1608)
PLATE SECTION
1 King James
2 A View of London from Southwark
3 King Christian of Denmark
4 Queen Anne
5 The Execution of the Gunpowder Plotters
6 The Execution of the Gunpowder Plotters
7 The Powder Treason
8 Shakespeare, the Chandos Portrait
9 Ben Jonson
10 Lancelot Andrewes
11 Richard Burbage
12 Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury
13 Sir John Harington
14 Designs for the First Union Flag
15 Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford
16 Effigy of Catherine of Valois (Queen of Henry V)
A Note on Quoting the Plays
Quotations from Shakespeare’s plays—with the exception of King Lear—are
cited from David Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th ed.
(New York, 2008). For King Lear I quote from Stanley Wells’s edition, based on
a text prepared by Gary Taylor (Oxford, 2000), that derives from the 1608
quarto and so is closer to what was staged in 1606 (and is divided into twenty-
four scenes, rather than five acts). Like almost all recent editors, Bevington and
Wells modernize Shakespeare’s spelling and punctuation; I’ve done the same
with the words of Shakespeare’s contemporaries throughout the book.