The Stage

Shapiro’s book on Shakespeare scoops STR book prize

Published Tuesday 11 April 2006 at 12:15

US scholar James Shapiro’s latest book - 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare - has won the Society for Theatre Research’s 2005 Theatre Book Prize.

STR president Timothy West presented the award to Shakespeare academic Stanley Wells, who accepted it on Shapiro’s behalf. The judging panel was made up of director and actress Yvonne Brewster, critic Ruth Leon and Jan McDonald, professor of theatre studies at the University of Glasgow and former chair of Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre. They began with a list of more than 50 books dealing with British theatre.

“Shapiro decodes bits of dialogue that I’ve puzzled over for years,” said Leon. “It is probably the best book about Shakespeare, his life, his times, and his adopted city that I have ever read.

“He is able to introduce us to a Shakespeare in close-up whom we have only ever before seen in long-shot. Along with a solid narrative divided into the seasons of a single year, there are some wonderful side-trips. I now know exactly how many pieces of timber I would need if I wanted to build a playhouse and how to get to Stratford on horseback.”

Shapiro is professor of English at Columbia University. He has written numerous books on Shakespeare and his latest focuses on a single year in the playwright’s life and shows us London and his theatrical world in detail.

The other five books to be shortlisted were The Coming of Godot: A Short History of a Masterpiece by Jonathan Croall; Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660-1914 edited by Edith Hall and Fiona Macintosh; Fanny Kemble: A Reluctant Celebrity by Rebecca Jenkins; Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and his World by Jeffrey Richards and Peter Brook: and the Way of the Theatre by Michael Kustow.

The Theatre Book Prize was first awarded in 1997 to celebrate the jubilee of the STR. Previous winners include National Service by Richard Eyre and Margot Fonteyn by Meredith Daneman.