In his new book The Year Of Lear: Shakespeare In 1606, James Shapiro offers a portrait of one of the most inspired moments in William Shakespeare's career, the extraordinary year he completed King Lear and then went on to write the two other great tragedies Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. Shapiro, a preeminent Shakespeare scholar and author of the previous books, A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 and Contested Will sheds new light on these plays by placing them in the context of their time.
James Shapiro is the Larry Miller professor of English at Columbia University; he is a governor of the Folger Shakespeare Library; a member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company; Shakespeare scholar in residence at New York's Public Theater; and was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Originally aired in October 2015.
