Shapiro’s discoveries of long-lost sources and missed connections make this a fascinating tale. His well-written, scholarly...
Shakespearean scholar Shapiro (English/Columbia Univ.; Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, 2010, etc.) links the tumultuous events of 1605 and 1606 to three of the Bard’s greatest works.
The author examines King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, all written in 1606. For readers seeking the nitty-gritty of historical connections and sources, Shapiro does not disappoint. Adjusting to the new Scottish king, James I, Elizabethan playwrights had to forego being English for British. Unfortunately, the union of crowns wasn’t official without the consent of Parliament. It was a sensitive issue both in England and Scotland, and artists presenting plays had to tread carefully. The plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 and a rumor of the king’s murder created a fraught atmosphere. The recurring plague transformed Shakespeare’s company, his competition, and the audiences to which they played, requiring further alteration to his plays. Shakespeare knew to disguise any events that spoke of broken kingdoms—not only in Lear, but also in Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. He used the latest buzzwords—e.g., “equivocation” and “allegiance”—to expose the darkness in men’s (and women’s) hearts. King James was fixated on demonology, and Shakespeare used Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures to describe demonic possession and to reflect on social ills and the reasons people commit evil acts. Shakespeare adapted Lear from an older play staged 10 years before, and he strongly leaned on Plutarch’s biography for Antony, often using dialogue verbatim. He also used Plutarch’s account of a soothsayer in Macbeth, although his main source was Holinshed’s Chronicles. Shapiro points out the connections of Shakespeare’s plays to his own earlier work but also to whatever was at hand.
Shapiro’s discoveries of long-lost sources and missed connections make this a fascinating tale. His well-written, scholarly exploration will stand as an influential work that is a joy to read.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4164-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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