Shapiro on Shakespeare

Shapiro then explains better than I have read anywhere else the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and how his performances before the Queen and his understanding of the royal taste affected his decisions when he wrote his plays.

Best of all, Shapiro connnects Shakespeare's development of the soliloquy with his reading of Montaigne's Essays, and he convincingly demonstrates how in 1599 Shakespeare invented what we think of as "Shakespearean" tragedy when he realised that Montaigne's literary innovation could be an instrument for depicting the inner consciousness of a character on the stage.