DOCSLIB.ORG

Prologue: Questions 1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Prologue: Questions 1 Notes Prologue: Questions 1. Paul Menzer, The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008). 2. Brian Walsh, Shakespeare, the Queen’s Men, and the Elizabethan Performance of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 3. Patrick Cheney, Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 4. Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 5. See Zachary Lesser, Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), and in particular Zachary Lesser and Peter Stallybrass, “The First Literary Hamlet and the Commonplacing of Professional Plays,” Shakespeare Quarterly 59 (2008): 371–420. 6. Hugh Craig and Arthur Kinney, Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 7. Hamlet, ed. Terri Bourus, Sourcebooks Shakespeare (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2006). 8. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986; rev. 2nd ed., 2005). 9. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006); and William Shakespeare, Hamlet: 1603 and 1623, ed. Thompson and Taylor (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006). Throughout this book, I normally cite the modernized Arden texts of the three versions (as Hamlet 1603, Hamlet 1604, or Hamlet 1623), and their respective line-numbers, unless there is something peculiar to the original printings that is important to the argument. 10. The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 11. Liam E. Semler, Teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe: Learning versus the System (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 1, 5. 12. My image of the spiral is intended to revise Robert Darnton’s model of the “circuit of communication,” which has been so influential among 214 M Notes book historians: see “What is the History of Books?” (1982) in The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (1990), 107–35. Although Darnton’s model, based on eighteenth-century French print culture, is complicated by Gary Taylor’s model, based on Jacobean London’s mix of print, manuscript, and theatre, Taylor retains Darnton’s circular logic: see “Preface: Textual Proximities,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007), 24–8. 13. I have discussed the idea of performance as experiment in two essays: “Poner in Escena: The History of Cardenio,” in The Creation and Re-creation of Cardenio: Performing Shakespeare, Transforming Cervantes, ed. Terri Bourus and Gary Taylor (New York: Palgrave, 2013), 297–318; and Terri Bourus and Gary Taylor, “Measure for Measure(s): Performance-testing the Adaptation Hypothesis,” Shakespeare 10.2 (2014), already available online, forthcoming in paginated print. 14. See Tiffany Stern, “Watching as Reading: The Audience and Written Text in the Early Modern Playhouse,” in How to do Things with Shakespeare, ed. Laurie E. Maguire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 136–59. 15. Robert Andrews, “Video Nasties Gallery: Fifteen Years of Anti-Piracy Warnings,” The Guardian, 8 April 2009 (accessed online 22 February 2014). 16. Adrian Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 5. 17. Alfred W. Pollard, Shakespeare’s Fight with the Pirates and the Problems of the Transmission of His Text (London: Moring, 1917), recently reprinted by Cambridge University Press (2010); Johns, Piracy, 5 (quoting the vari- ant first line of “To be or not to be”), 13 (piracy “was reputedly rife in the main thoroughfares of Shakespeare’s London”). 1 Piratical Publishers? 1. Ira Nadel, Double Act: A Life of Tom Stoppard (London: Methuen, 2002), 162–94, 390–401. 2. On the history of intellectual property rights, see William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3. Peter W. M. Blayney, The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1:xvii. For misrepresentations of copyright, in particular, see also 2:860–61. 4. Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 95. 5. Peter W. M. Blayney, The Bookshops in St. Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: Bibliographical Society, 1990). 6. Laurie E. Maguire, “The Craft of Printing (1600),” in A Companion to Shakespeare, ed. David Scott Kastan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 438. Notes M 215 7. On the change from Chamberlain’s Men to King’s Men, see J. Leeds Barroll, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater: The Stuart Years (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 32–3. 8. “Q1” is an abbreviation for “First Quarto,” quarto being a bibliographical description of a book printed with sheets of paper folded twice, thereby producing four leaves (i.e., eight pages). 9. William Prynne, Histrio-Mastix: The Players Scourge, or, Actors Tragedie (London, 1633), sig. **6v. 10. Lukas Erne, Shakespeare and the Book Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 7. 11. I will refer to this edition as “1604” (its actual date of printing and first release) throughout this book. Theoretically, either “1604” or “1605” might be an error in the printing of the title page, but it seems unlikely that a compositor would forget what year it was, and the recurrence of such variants in other books manufactured by different printers (see next note) indicates that it was a routine business practice. 12. For other examples of books published by Ling with two dates on differ- ent copies, see STC 11622 (“1594”) and 11622.5 (“1595”), 7193 (“1597”) and 7193.2 (“1598”), 15685 (“1597”), and 15685.5 (“1598”). “STC” numbers come from A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of English Printed Books Printed Abroad, 1475– 1640, ed. A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, rev. ed. 3 vols. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–91). 13. On the “clear tendency . for age to depress value,” see John Barnard and Maureen Bell, “The Inventory of Henry Bynneman (1583): A Preliminary Survey,” Publishing History 29 (1991): 5–46, esp. p. 10. Any modern bookseller knows the same thing. 14. Kirk Melnikoff, “Nicholas Ling’s Republican Hamlet (1603),” in Shakespeare’s Stationers: Studies in Cultural Bibliography, ed. Marta Straznicky (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 95–111, esp. 97. The manuscript from which “the 1603 Hamlet” was printed might have been Elizabethan, but Melnikoff is specifically refer- ring to the printed book. 15. If Q1 had been printed late in 1603, we might expect some title pages to read “1604.” But only two copies of Q1 survive, and only one of those includes the title page. We therefore have no way of knowing whether there were variant title page dates. 16. See William Carroll, ed., Love’s Labour’s Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 181–4, for the lost “1597” first edition; for the 1598 edition as a typical reprint, see Paul Werstine, Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 44–7. 17. The only Jacobean quarto with “Shakespeare” (variously spelled) on the title reprinted before 1642 more often than Hamlet was Pericles, but that is now recognized as a play coauthored with George Wilkins. I argue that 216 M Notes Q1 Hamlet is a different aesthetic object than Q2, and Q2 is certainly not a simple reprint of Q1; consequently, one might argue that these are different books, and should not be lumped together as a single bestseller. But most scholars believe that Q1 and Q2 are different representations of the same play, and I argue that both were written by the same author; in evaluating the success of a book, we normally consider all its versions and revisions (as we do, for instance, in the case of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). If Q1 were a play written by Thomas Kyd, we would need to treat it as a separate book; but I don’t know of any scholar who believes that. 18. Zachary Lesser and Peter Stallybrass, “The First Literary Hamlet and the Commonplacing of Professional Plays,” Shakespeare Quarterly 59 (2008): 371–420, esp. 373. The complete lack of documentation for this conjec- ture is apparent from the absence of footnotes on this page, as opposed to the preceding page (and most others) of this otherwise important article. 19. Peter W. M. Blayney, “The Publication of Playbooks,” in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kasten (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 383–422. 20. If they wanted copies of the new, “enlarged” edition, they would also presumably want the wholesaler to buy back from them their unsold cop- ies of the first edition—which would, of course, transfer the loss from all those retailers back to the publisher. In either scenario, the publisher would have had a strong disincentive to publish the second edition before the first had sold out. 21. W. Craig Ferguson, Valentine Simmes (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1968), 14 (noting that Ling often fails to name a printer). 22. The term “publisher” is anachronistic, but as Blayney notes, “financing and distribution (the basics of what even a modern publisher does) are not the same as retail bookselling, and it is impossible to explain the early trade in printed books without either inventing a word or borrowing an anachronism” (Stationers’ Company, 1:30–33). I will hereafter use “pub- lisher” for Ling and other stationers performing the same function. 23. R. B. McKerrow, Printers’ and Publishers’ Devices in England and Scotland, 1485–1640 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1949), p. 118 (#301). For the near-anagram (Honisucal = Nicholas/Nicholus), see D.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Lesson Plans and Resources for There There by Tommy Orange
    Lesson Plans and Resources for There There by Tommy Orange Table of Contents 1. Overview and Essential Questions 2. In-Class Introduction 3. Common Core Standards Alignment 4. Reader Response Questions 5. Literary Log Prompts + Worksheets 6. Suggested Analytical Assessments 7. Suggested Creative Assessments 8. Online Resources 9. Print Resources - “How to Talk to Each Other When There’s So Little Common Ground” by Tommy Orange - Book Review from The New York Times - Book Review from Tribes.org - Interview with Tommy Orange from Powell’s Book Blog These resources are all available, both separately and together, at www.freelibrary.org/onebook Please send any comments or feedback about these resources to [email protected]. OVERVIEW AND ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS The materials in this unit plan are meant to be flexible and easy to adapt to your own classroom. Each chapter has discussion questions provided in a later section. Through reading the book and completing any of the suggested activities, students can achieve any number of the following understandings: - A person’s identity does not form automatically – it must be cultivated. - Trauma is intergenerational -- hardship is often passed down through families. - A physical place can both define and destroy an individual. Students should be introduced to the following key questions as they begin reading. They can be discussed both in universal terms and in relation to specific characters in the book: Universal - How has your family cultivated your identity? How have you cultivated it yourself?
    [Show full text]
  • Non-Traditional Authorship Attribution Studies of William Shakespeare’S Canon: Some Caveats
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Firenze University Press: E-Journals Journal of Early Modern Studies, n. 5 (2016), pp. 307-328 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13128/JEMS-2279-7149-18094 Non-Traditional Authorship Attribution Studies of William Shakespeare’s Canon: Some Caveats Joseph Rudman Carnegie Mellon University (<[email protected]>) Abstract The paper looks at the problems in conducting non-traditional authorship attribution studies on the canon of William Shakespeare. After a short introduction, the case is put forth that these studies are ‘scientific’ and must adhere to the tenets of the scientific method. By showing that a complete and valid experimental plan is necessary and pointing out the many and varied pitfalls (e.g., the text, the control groups, the treatment of errors), it becomes clear what a valid study of Shakespearean non-traditional authorship attribution demands. I then come to the conclusion that such a valid study is not attainable with the limits of present-day knowledge. Keywords: Attribution, Authorship, Shakespeare, Statistics, Stylistics It is not possible, in the compass of a single essay, to deal with very many – let alone all – of the tests by which investigators in their wisdom or folly have sought to prove authorship by style. (Schoenbaum 1966, 197) 1. Introduction There are a few ‘givens’ framing this paper: 1) William Shakespeare was an actor and playwright – exactly who he was is not relevant here. 2) The First Folio constitutes the basis of what has come down to us as Shakespeare’s canon.1 1 Non-traditional authorship attribution studies are those that make use of stylistics, statistics, and the computer.
    [Show full text]
  • Natural Folly and Subversion in Much Ado About Nothing*
    Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji Bölümü Dergisi Journal of Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji Bölümü Dergisi 32, (2021): xx-xx DOI: 10.26650/jtcd.861023 Research Article / Araştırma Makalesi Dog’s Day: Natural Folly and Subversion in Much Ado About Nothing* Ben Haworth1 ABSTRACT This essay argues that Shakespeare’s natural fools, clowns, rustics, and buffoons provide far more than light comic relief. Using the example of Dogberry, from Much Ado About Nothing, I demonstrate that in allowing his fools to usurp their position of clownish caricature, to move outside of their normal social spheres, Shakespeare exposes the folly within societal institutions. Though an examination of language, namely the use of malapropisms, and the manipulation of traditional licence extended to natural fools, I contend that such theatrical *This article is prepared with reference to the master dissertation titled “Early Modern depictions of folly opened the way for social commentary, parody and inversions Motley: The Function of Fools and Folly on the of hierarchies of power on the stage. Shakespearean Stage”, completed in 2016 at Keywords: Shakespeare, Subversion, Folly, Malapropism, Dogberry Nottingham Trent University UK. 1Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University, English Faculty, UK ORCID: B.H. 0000-0002-3318-8666 Corresponding author / Sorumlu yazar: Ben Haworth, Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University, English Faculty, UK E-mail/E-posta: [email protected] Submitted/Başvuru: 14.01.2021 Revision Requested/Revizyon Talebi: 05.02.2021 Last Revision Received/Son Revizyon: 05.02.2021 Accepted/Kabul: 15.03.2021 Citation/Atıf: Haworth, Ben. “Dog’s Day: Natural Folly and Subversion in Much Ado About Nothing” Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji Bölümü Dergisi 32, (2021): xx-xx.
    [Show full text]
  • The Moral Basis of Family Relationships in the Plays of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: a Study in Renaissance Ideas
    The Moral Basis of Family Relationships in the plays of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: a Study in Renaissance Ideas. A submission for the degree of doctor of philosophy by Stephen David Collins. The Department of History of The University of York. June, 2016. ABSTRACT. Families transact their relationships in a number of ways. Alongside and in tension with the emotional and practical dealings of family life are factors of an essentially moral nature such as loyalty, gratitude, obedience, and altruism. Morality depends on ideas about how one should behave, so that, for example, deciding whether or not to save a brother's life by going to bed with his judge involves an ethical accountancy drawing on ideas of right and wrong. It is such ideas that are the focus of this study. It seeks to recover some of ethical assumptions which were in circulation in early modern England and which inform the plays of the period. A number of plays which dramatise family relationships are analysed from the imagined perspectives of original audiences whose intellectual and moral worlds are explored through specific dramatic situations. Plays are discussed as far as possible in terms of their language and plots, rather than of character, and the study is eclectic in its use of sources, though drawing largely on the extensive didactic and polemical writing on the family surviving from the period. Three aspects of family relationships are discussed: first, the shifting one between parents and children, second, that between siblings, and, third, one version of marriage, that of the remarriage of the bereaved.
    [Show full text]
  • The Fools of Shakespeare's Romances
    Sede Amministrativa: Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari (DISLL) SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN: Scienze Linguistiche, Filologiche e Letterarie INDIRIZZO: Filologie e Letterature Classiche e Moderne CICLO XXVI “Armine... thou art a foole and knaue”: The Fools of Shakespeare’s Romances Direttore della Scuola : Ch.ma Prof.ssa Rosanna Benacchio Supervisore : Ch.ma Prof.ssa Alessandra Petrina Dottoranda : Alice Equestri Abstract La mia tesi propone un’analisi dettagliata dei personaggi comici nei romances Shakespeariani (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale e The Tempest) in particolare quelli creati appositamente per Robert Armin, attore comico di punta dei King’s Men in quel periodo. Nel primo capitolo traccio la presenza di Armin nei quattro testi, individuando cioè gli indizi che rimandano alla sua figura e alla tipologia di comicità tipica dei suoi personaggi precedenti in Shakespeare e di quelli presenti nelle sue stesse opere. I quattro personaggi creati per lui da Shakespeare vengono analizzati in profondità nei seguenti capitoli, raggruppandoli a seconda dei loro ruoli sociali o professioni. Nel secondo capitolo mi occupo dei fools criminali, considerando Pericles e The Winter’s Tale, dove i personaggi di Boult e Autolycus sono rispettivamente un ruffiano di bordello e un delinquente di strada. Nel terzo capitolo mi concentro invece sui personaggi che esibiscono o vengono discriminati per una reale od imputata deficienza congenita (natural folly): il principe Cloten in Cymbeline e Caliban in The Tempest. Per ciascun caso discuto il rapporto del personaggio con le fonti shakespeariane ed eventualmente con la tradizione comica precedente o contemporanea a Shakespeare, il ruolo all’interno del testo, e il modo in cui il personaggio suscita l’effetto comico.
    [Show full text]
  • HAMLET: PRESS RESPONSES Almeida & West End (2017) Shakespeare
    HAMLET: PRESS RESPONSES Almeida & West End (2017) Shakespeare www.roberticke.com FINANCIAL TIMES Ian Shuttleworth ★★★★★ I have been privileged to see several first-class Hamlets this century: Simon Russell Beale, Samuel West, David Tennant, Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake, arguably Lars Eidinger. Andrew Scott is at least as outstanding as any of those, and right now I’m inclined to rank him in front. His Prince is almost always self-aware, but not self-understanding; on the contrary, his keynote is a kind of bemused wonder at goings-on both within and beyond his skin. The great soliloquies seem new-minted, every word a separate question. The playfulness at which Scott so excels (most notably as Moriarty in BBC-TV’s Sherlock) is here kept under a rigorously tight rein. I did not see this production when it opened at the Almeida a few months ago, but my impression is that neither Scott’s nor anyone else’s performance has been ramped up for a venue two and half times the size; the consequent occasional intelligibility problems are far outweighed by the sense of human scale. For this is the glory of Robert Icke’s production. It does not consist of a superlative Prince Hamlet, a clutch of fine supporting performances and a number of sharp directorial ideas stitched together into a plausible fabric; rather, it is whole and entire of itself. Angus Wright’s cool, disciplined Claudius, Juliet Stevenson’s besotted-then-horrified Gertrude, Jessica Brown Findlay’s Ophelia (at first at sea like Hamlet, finally psychologically shattered in a wheelchair), David Rintoul’s doubling of the Ghost and the Player King .
    [Show full text]
  • STUDY GUIDE Introductiontable of Contentspg
    STUDY GUIDE IntroductionTABLE OF CONTENTSPg. 3 Pg. 4 Top Ten Things to Know About Going to the Theatre Cast and Creative Team Credits Pg. 5 Mysterious Shakespeare Pg. 6 Inside Vertigo Theatre- An Interview with Anna Cummer Pg. 8 Pre-Show Projects and Discussion Questions Pg. 10 Ghostly Appearances It's Time To Soliloquize Your Burning Questions Pre-Show Activities- To Get You Up On Your Feet Pg. 15 Making Up Meter The Dumbshow Post Show Discussion Questions Pg. 20 The Art of The Theatre Review Pg. 21 About Vertigo Theatre Pg.22 Vertigo Theatre is committed to creating a welcoming atmosphere for schools and to assisting teachers and parent chaperones with that process. It is our wish to foster and develop our relationship with our student audience members. It is our intention to create positive theatre experiences for young people by providing study guides and post-show talk backs with our actors and theatre personnel, in order to enrich students’ appreciation of theatre as an art form and enhance their enjoyment of our plays. IntroductionWelcome to the Study Guide for Vertigo Theatre's, The Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth's production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story by William Shakespeare, adapted by Anna Cummer. In this guide you will find information about this new adaptation of Hamlet and Shakespeare’s connection to mystery theatre. It also includes information about the creative team and performers involved in the production, as well as a variety of activities to do with your class before and after the show. There are topics suitable for class discussion, individual writing projects, as well as games and exercises that get students moving around and learning on their feet.
    [Show full text]
  • Remembrance of Things Past: Shakespeare’S Comedies on French Television
    Remembrance of Things Past: Shakespeare’s Comedies on French Television Sarah HATCHUEL and Nathalie VIENNE -GUERRIN This essay explores how Shakespeare’s comedies were adapted, appropriated and transformed by French television, with a focus on the early days of television. The first striking fact is that, if one is to except stage productions that were filmed and then broadcast, Shakespeare has not been adapted for French television since 1980. In other words, it has been twenty-eight years since a Shakespeare play was last translated, directed and performed for the exclusive benefit of TV viewers. Shakespeare on French television is not our contempor- ary 1. Through the documentary research for this essay, we went back to a time when the mingling of Shakespeare with television seemed to be less daunting and more economically viable than it is today. From the end of the fifties to the seventies, French television offered a substantial cycle: Twelfth Night was directed by Claude Loursais in 1957, then by Claude Barma in 1962; Othello (dir. Claude Barma) appeared on the TV screens in 1962, soon to be followed by Much Ado About Nothing (dir. Pierre Badel), The Merry Wives of Windsor (dir. Roger Iglesis) and The Taming of the Shrew (dir. Pierre Badel) in 1964, by King Lear (dir. Jean Kerchbron) in 1965, and by Antony and Cleopatra (dir. Jean Prat) in 1967. The seventies saw the broadcast of Measure for Measure (dir. Marcel Bluwal, 1971), As You Like It (dir. Agnès Delarive, 1972) and Romeo and Juliet (dir. Claude Barma, 1973). This cycle of French TV Shakespeare stopped short in 1980 _____ 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead the Play
    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead The Play Act One Two ELIZABETHANS passing time in a place without any visible character. They are well-dressed - hats, cloaks, sticks and all. Each of them has a large leather money bag. Guildenstern's bag is nearly empty. Rosencrantz's bag is nearly full. The reason being: they are betting on the toss of a coin, in the following manner: Guildenstern (hereafter 'GUIL') takes a coin out of his bag, spins it, letting it fall. Rosencrantz (hereafter 'ROS') studies it, announces it as "heads" (as it happens) and puts it into his own bag. Then they repeat the process. They have apparently been doing it for some time. The run of "heads" is impossible, yet ROS betrays no surprise at all - he feels none. However he is nice enough to feel a little embarrassed attaking so much money off his friend. Let that be his character note. GUIL is well alive to the oddity of it. He is not worried about the money, but he is worried by the implications ; aware but not going to panic about it - his character note. GUIL sits. ROS stands (he does the moving, retrieving coins). GUIL spins. ROS studies coin. ROS: Heads. (He picks it up and puts it in his money bag. The process is repeated.) Heads. (Again.) ROS: Heads. (Again.) Heads. (Again.) Heads. GUIL (flipping a coin): There is an art to the building up of suspense. ROS: Heads. GUIL (flipping another): Though it can be done by luck alone. ROS: Heads. GUIL: If that's the word I'm after.
    [Show full text]
  • The Picture of Nobody: Shakespeare's Anti-Authorship
    The Picture of Nobody: Shakespeare’s anti-authorship RICHARD WILSON Contributor: Richard Wilson is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University, London. His books include Will Power, Secret Shakespeare, and Shakespeare in French Theory. He is the author of numerous articles in academic journals, and is on the editorial board of the journal Shakespeare. 1. Bare life At the end, ‘his nose was as sharp as a pen’ as he ‘babbled of green fields’ (Henry V, 2,3,15). In September 1615, a few weeks before Shakespeare began to make his will and a little over six months before his death, Thomas Greene, town clerk of Stratford, wrote a memorandum of an exchange biographers treasure as the last of the precious few records of the dramatist’s spoken words: ‘W Shakespeares tellyng J Greene that I was not able to beare the enclosinge of Welcombe’.1 John Greene was the clerk’s brother, and Shakespeare, according to previous papers, was their ‘cousin’, who had lodged Thomas at New Place, his Stratford house. So the Greenes had appealed to their sharp-nosed kinsman for help in a battle that pitted the council against a consortium of speculators who were, in their own eyes, if ‘not the greatest… almost the greatest men of England’.2 The plan to enclose the fields of Welcombe north of the town was indeed promoted by the steward to the Lord Chancellor, no less. But the predicament for Shakespeare was that it was led by his friends the Combes, rich money-lenders from whom he had himself bought 107 acres adjacent to the scheme.
    [Show full text]
  • Romeo at the Rose in 1598
    Issues in Review 149 66 Beeston is one of six men at the Red Bull named in an order for repair of the high- ways by the theatre, dated 3 October 1622; see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1.169 n.2. As he had managed Queen Anne’s Men there, and returned there with them after the 1617 riot, it appears that he owned, and continued to own, the theatre. 67 For ‘bifold appeal’ see discussion in Rutter, Work and Play, 110. 68 Exceptions include the Red Bull Revels’ Two Merry Milkmaids, at court in 1619/20, and Gramercy Wit in 1621; see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1.173. Romeo at the Rose in 1598 In two plays of the Lord Admiral’s Men — Englishmen for My Money and The Two Angry Women of Abingdon — echoes of Romeo and Juliet appear.1 The first performances of Englishmen took place at the Rose in 1598. Two Angry Women is likely to have played at the same venue in the same year. What may these echoes tell us about the ethos and practices of the Lord Admiral’s Men, about the dramatists who wrote for them, and about the company’s place in the literary and dramatic milieu of the time? I want to argue that the presence of these echoes reveals a degree of inte- gration into urban literary fashion. And I will also suggest that some of the company’s playwrights exhibit the kind of knowing playfulness that was soon to characterize the repertory of the children’s companies and which was already shaping the satires and epigrams to reach print publication at this time.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Szeged Faculty of Arts Doctoral School of English and American Literatures and Cultures
    CB WSf University of Szeged Faculty of Arts Doctoral School of English and American Literatures and Cultures THE VICE-DEVICE: IAGO AND LEAR'S FOOL AS AGENTS OF REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS PhD THESIS Submitted by Agnes MATUSKA Supervisor Dr. Attila KISS Szeged 2005 THE VICE-DEVICE: IAGO AND LEAR'S FOOL AS AGENTS OF REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS INTRODUCTION 3 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND, METHODOLOGY 11 1. L THE QUESTION OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRISIS 12 1.2 DIALECTICAL TRAGEDY: EPISTEMIC CHANGE IN THEATRE 21 1.3 "IF ACODE IS CRUMBLING..." 25 1.4 REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS IN SHAKESPEARE 28 2. HAPHAZARDLY AMBIDEXTROUS: THE VICE-FAMILY 35 2. L PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION 35 "YOU WILL LEARN TO PLAYE THE VICE": PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION 37 2.2 VICES 48 Merry Report 49 Ambidexter 52 Haphazard 56 Punisher or punished? 60 The Fool in the Vice 66 2.3. VICE-SUCCESSORS AND FOOLS 72 Intriguer villains 73 Sir John Falstaff: The Vice-Fool 77 The "corrupter of-words": Feste 81 Deceiver among deceivers: Parolles 85 Afterlife of post-vices and the common life of lago and the Fool 87 2.4. THE VICE-CLOWN ON THE SHAKESPEAREAN STAGE 91 3. METADRAMA 97 3. L METADRAMA AND THE VICE, A DEFINITION OF THE TERM 97 3.1.1 The Vice as mediator 97 3.1.2 Metadrama in Shakespeare-criticism 102 3.2 MEANING AS AN EVENT - IAGO AND METADRAMA IN OTHELLO 107 3.2.1 Commenting on drama, involving the audience 109 3.2.2 Iago's book of identity and role-playing 110 3.2.3 Plays -within - Iago as director 117 3.2.4 Representation as fiction 121 3.2.5 Iago's metadramatic effect—summary 122 3.3 METADRAMATIC ASPECTS OF THE FOOL 124 3.3.1 The Fool and his audience 125 3.3.2 "All thy other titles " 127 3.3.3 Plays of the fool -within and without.
    [Show full text]