Got Writer's Block? Productivity Tips From Shakespeare

In the years leading up to 1606, which saw the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare’s great productivity had ebbed. Many believed that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again, finishing King Lear and then writing two other great tragedies: Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

In The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro shows how the tumultuous events in England in 1606 affected Shakespeare and shaped the three great tragedies he wrote that year.