Following the biographical style of }1599{, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and a top ten bestseller, }1606{ concerns the year Shakespeare transformed an old and anonymous Elizabethan play into his most searing tragedy. It was a grim year for England in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, and with an outbreak of plague, but an exceptional one for Shakespeare himself. Now in paperback Following the biographical style of 1599, this book 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.
