James Shapiro – författare

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' award in 2023How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year we follow what he reads and writes, what he saw and who he worked with as he invests in the new Globe theatre and creates four of his most famous plays - Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet.This book brings the news, intrigue and flavour of the times together with wonderful detail about how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman and playwright, to create an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.'A brilliant study, which carefully unpacks a single year in Shakespeare's life ... The audacious focus on just one year pays off magnificently.' Sunday Times'A far richer, more intimate portrait of our greatest author than you're likely to find in any cradle-to-grave biography.' Daily Mail'Gripping and illuminating.' Telegraph'A fascinating and entirely believable portrait of a talented workaholic ... Shapiro's informed enthusiasm and energetic prose is addictive.' Guardian

'

A sweeping compendium of British verse from Old and Middle English to the present, including the best work of poets from every corner of the British Isles, The Columbia Anthology of British Poetry offers the most up-to-date and comprehensive single volume available. Carl Woodring and James Shapiro, the same experienced editorial team who brought students and lovers of literature The Columbia History of British Literature, now present a volume that resonates with contemporary significance, yet also takes into account the centuries-old poetic tradition that planted Great Britain centrally in the canon of Western Literature. The Columbia Anthology pays tribute to the renowned works that any include--Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Eliot, Auden. But the book also resurrects the voices of excellent poets, particularly women--such as Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Ingram, and Christina Rossetti--who have been unjustifiably ignored until recently. Contemporary British poetry is fully represented as well, with the work of Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Liz Lochhead, and Paula Meehan bringing The Columbia Anthology up to the minute.Unencumbered by extensive notes that divert attention from the spirit of verse, The Columbia Anthology of British Poetry allows readers to discover the poems for themselves. It is a collection poetry lovers will want on their shelves for years to come, to read and enjoy again and again.

First published in 1996, James Shapiro's pathbreaking analysis of the portrayal of Jews in Elizabethan England challenged readers to recognize the significance of Jewish questions in Shakespeare's day. From accounts of Christians masquerading as Jews to fantasies of settling foreign Jews in Ireland, Shapiro's work delves deeply into the cultural insecurities of Elizabethans while illuminating Shakespeare's portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. In a new preface, Shapiro reflects upon what he has learned about intolerance since the first publication of Shakespeare and the Jews.

The story of Othello’s American life, showing that the hero’s tragedy is America’s own—from a best-selling writer and expert scholarWhile Shakespeare’s Othello, with a Black man as its tragic hero, was first staged in 1604, over two hundred years would pass before anyone other than a White actor in blackface played him. And it wasn’t until Paul Robeson’s star turn in 1943 that a Black actor played Othello on Broadway. Othello’s American life has long been intertwined with that of the nation, a journey marked by slavery, judicial lynching, Jim Crow, and the ongoing struggle for Black equality—a past that some would prefer to whitewash.In this deeply researched book, James Shapiro retraces Othello’s American afterlife and challenges those sanitizing efforts. Othello was the name of a slave ship that sailed from Rhode Island. It was the name of an enslaved man executed for allegedly participating in a slave uprising in colonial New York. And it was the name Benjamin Franklin chose to call a child he had enslaved. Othello’s American life is a story of triumph as well as tragedy, embodied in the performances of such exceptional Black actors as Ira Aldridge, Paul Robeson, and Denzel Washington.Drawing on literary, social, political, and theater history, Shapiro shows that Othello’s tragedy is inseparable from America’s own, reminding us of all that remains unresolved in the nation’s history.

For two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays.Since then dozens of rival candidates - including The Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe - have been proposed as their true author. Contested Will unravels the mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays (among them such leading writers and artists as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, and Sir Derek Jacobi)Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro's fascinating search for the source of this controversy retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, calls for trials, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined. If Contested Will does not end the authorship question once and for all, it will nonetheless irrevocably change the nature of the debate by confronting what's really contested: are the plays and poems of Shakespeare autobiographical, and if so, do they hold the key to the question of who wrote them.

1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare's life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear.1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague. But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare, unrivalled at identifying the fault-lines of his cultural moment, who before the year was out went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times: Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.Following the biographical style of 1599, a way of thinking and writing that Shapiro has made his own, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear promises to be one of the most significant and accessible works on Shakespeare in the decade to come

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week'Excellent.' New Statesman'Outstanding.' Irish Times'Enthralling.' Guardian'Shapiro at his best.' Daily Telegraph From the author of 1599, a fresh perspective on the history of the United States - and a timely reminder of Shakespeare's indelible influence.Shakespeare's position as England's national poet is unquestionable. But as James Shapiro illuminates in this revelatory new history, Shakespeare has long held an essential place in American culture too. Why, though, would a proudly independent republic embrace England's greatest writer? Especially when his works enact so many of America's darkest nightmares: interracial marriage, cross-dressing, same-sex love, tyranny and assassination? Shapiro leads us to fascinating answers and startling stories.

'GRIPPING AND FIERCELY URGENT.' - FINTAN O'TOOLE'FASCINATING, TIMELY, AND DEEPLY RESEARCHED.' - THE SPECTATOR'AN ABSORBING, NECESSARY BOOK.' - AYAD AKHTARFrom the 'Winner of Winners' of the Baillie Gifford Prize, a timely and dramatic story of a utopian American experiment, and the self-serving politicians that engineered its downfall.1935. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's progressive New Deal, the Work Progress Administration is created to support unemployed workers, including writers, artists, musicians and actors. The Federal Theatre Project, a major part of that programme, begins to stage critically acclaimed, subsidised and groundbreaking productions across America, including Orson Welles's directorial debut, a landmark modern dance programme and shows that sought to tell the truth about racism, inequality and the dangers of fascism.1938. An opportunistic Texas congressman, Martin Dies, head of the newly formed House Un-American Activities Committee, successfully targets the Federal Theatre, exploiting rising tensions over communism and creating a new political playbook based on sensationalism, misinformation and fear - a playbook that has proved instrumental in our current culture wars.From one of the world's great storytellers, The Playbook is an invigorating re-enactment of a terrifyingly prescient moment in twentieth-century American cultural history.

'Tremendous.' DAVID HARE'An absorbing, necessary book.' AHAD AKHTAR'Fascinating and energising.' FINANCIAL TIMESFrom the 'Winner of Winners' of the Baillie Gifford Prize, a timely and dramatic story of a utopian American experiment, and the self-serving politicians that engineered its downfall.In 1935 the American public was presented with a radical opportunity. Established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the Federal Theatre Project would employ 12,000 artists, writers, and actors; stage more than 1,000 productions; and reach over 30 million people. Its output included Orson Welles' directorial debut, a landmark modern dance programme, and shows that sought to shed light on the reality of racism, inequality and the dangers of fascism.But within three years, an opportunistic Texas congressman had embarked on a campaign to destroy it, inventing a playbook that echoes into the culture wars of today.From one of the world's great storytellers, The Playbook is an illuminating account of a terrifyingly prescient moment in twentieth-century American cultural history.

A brilliant and daring account of a culture war over the place of theater in American democracy in the 1930s, one that anticipates our current divide, by the acclaimed Shakespeare scholar James ShapiroFrom 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. At its helm was an unassuming theater professor, Hallie Flanagan. It employed, at its peak, over twelve thousand struggling artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller, would soon be famous, but most of whom were just ordinary people eager to work again at their craft. It was the product of a moment when the arts, no less than industry and agriculture, were thought to be vital to the health of the republic, bringing Shakespeare to the public, alongside modern plays that confronted the pressing issues of the day—from slum housing and public health to racism and the rising threat of fascism. The Playbook takes us through some of its most remarkable productions, including a groundbreaking Black production of Macbeth in Harlem and an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s anti-fascist novel It Can’t Happen Here that opened simultaneously in 18 cities, underscoring the Federal Theatre’s incredible range and vitality. But this once thriving Works Progress Administration relief program did not survive and has left little trace. For the Federal Theatre was the first New Deal project to be attacked and ended on the grounds that it promoted “un-American” activity, sowing the seeds not only for the McCarthyism of the 1950s but also for our own era of merciless polarization. It was targeted by the first House un-American Affairs Committee, and its demise was a turning point in American cultural life—for, as Shapiro brilliantly argues, “the health of democracy and theater, twin born in ancient Greece, have always been mutually dependent.”A defining legacy of this culture war was how the strategies used to undermine and ultimately destroy the Federal Theatre were assembled by a charismatic and cunning congressman from East Texas, the now largely forgotten Martin Dies, who in doing so pioneered the right-wing political playbook now so prevalent that it seems eternal.