1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A01=Susan Dwyer Amussen
Anne Hathaway
anti-Stratfordians
Author_Susan Dwyer Amussen
authorship question
Ben Jonson
Category=DNBF
Category=DS
Category=DSG
Category=NHTB
Christopher Marlowe
early modern drama
early modern theatre
Edward Alleyn
Edward de Vere
Elizabethan England
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
First Folio
Hamlet
Hamnet
Henry V
James Shapiro
Jessie Buckley
Julius Caesar
King Lear
London
Lord Chamberlain's Men
Macbeth
Maggie O'Farrell
Much Ado about Nothing
New Place
Othello
Paul Mescal
playwrights
Prospero
Richard III
Shakespeare authorship controversy
Shakespeare's Globe
Sir Francis Bacon
Stanley Wells
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stuart England
the Bard
the Bard of Avon
the Globe Theatre
the King's Men
The Merchant of Venice
the stage
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Thomas Kyd
Twelfth Night
What Was Shakespeare Really Like
Who Was William Shakespeare?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction
William Stanley
Product details
- ISBN 9781526191908
- Weight: 462g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 24 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book offers a vivid journey through Shakespeare’s England and provides a compelling contribution to the authorship question. It asks how we know Shakespeare was truly Shakespeare, and whether the glover’s son who left school at fifteen could have written Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. Historian Susan Amussen answers with an emphatic yes, transporting readers to early modern England to trace Shakespeare’s path from Stratford to the London stage. This was a society undergoing rapid change: grammar schools opened classical education to commoners, touring players brought theatre to wider audiences, and London exposed ordinary people to courtly culture and European influences. No serious historian doubts Shakespeare’s authorship. Amussen explains why, showing that his England offered everything a talented young playwright needed to develop his craft and fuel his imagination.
Susan D. Amussen is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Merced.
