2018 Study Guide

Home , Henry Condell, John Heminges, William Jaggard

2018 Study Guide

The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson

Set model by Christopher Acebo kirsten lara getchall definitions

• Folio: A large book made from folding sheets of paper in half to create four pages per sheet.

• Quarto: A small book made from folding sheets in quarters to create eight pages per sheet.

• King’s Men: When King James I ascended the throne in 1603, he Lauren Gunderson William Shakespeare’s portrait in the First Folio became the royal patron of the lauren gunderson shakespeare company Shakespeare worked for, and they became known as Lauren Gunderson was born in • Born around April 23, 1564. the King’s Men. Atlanta in 1982. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Emory • Married Anne Hathaway at • The Globe: A theatre on the University in 2004 and an MFA in the age of 18. They had three South Bank of the Thames River Dramatic Writing from NYU in 2009. children between 1583 and built and owned by shareholders, As a playwright, she is fascinated 1585. including Shakespeare, Burbage, by historical figures. She has written Heminges and Condell. plays about scientist Isaac Newton, • Became an actor and lead astronomer Henrietta Leavitt and playwright for the Lord • Sides: A script consisting of one’s physicist Emilie du Chatalet. Her Chamberlain’s Men, which own lines and the few words other professional interest is in became the King’s Men when spoken before those lines as writing comedies based on Shake- King James I was crowned in opposed to a script containing speare’s plays. The Book of Will, 1603. the entire play. which premiered in 2017 at the Denver Center for the Performing • Wrote 37 plays, 2 epic poems • Populist: One who promotes Arts, combines these two playwrit- and 154 sonnets over a 25- the interests of or whose work ing interests. Its many productions, year career. appeals to the masses. along with the continued success of her other work, make Gunderson • Died in his hometown of the most-produced living play- Stratford-upon-Avon on wright in America for the 2017-2018 April 23, 1616. season. • Buried in Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church. Before seeing/reading the play

1. Research playwright Lauren Gunderson. These and other websites provide information: www.playscripts.com/playwrights/bios/1347 www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/youve-probably-never-heard-of-americas-most-popular-playwright

2. What is the First Folio? How does it differ from a quarto? These and other websites provide information: www.folger.edu/what-shakespeare-first-folio www.bl.uk/collection-items/shakespeares-first-folio www.biblio.com/book_collecting_terminology/quarto-157. html

Richard Burbage costume rendering by Susan Tsu. 3. Compare Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech between the first Quarto and later editions. This and other websites provide information: After seeing/reading the play www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/muchado/ 1. Refer to your research on the different versions of the “To assignment5.html be or not to be” speech. What are the differences between them? In what ways is the message or point of the speech 4. What was memorial reconstruction? This and other changed? What would have been lost if we had no other websites provide information: editions of Hamlet except the first Quarto? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_reconstruction 2. Refer to your research on Burbage, Heminges and 5. Research Richard Burbage, John Heminges and Henry Condell. What does it tell us about these three men that Condell. These and other websites provide information: Shakespeare remembered them, and no one else from his www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/richardburbage. professional life, in his will? In what ways does Lauren html Gunderson use and build on this in The Book of Will? www.britannica.com/biography/John-Heminge www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/ 3. Why is the death of Richard Burbage so important to my-fellows-john-heminges-and-henry-condell/ the events of the play? How does his passing galvanize John and Henry? 6. Who was Ben Jonson? What was his connection to William Shakespeare? This and other websites provide 4. What impression does the play give us of the type of information: man Shakespeare might have been? In what ways are the www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/benbio.htm impressions we get from the Heminges and Condell fami- lies different from the impressions we receive from Emilia 7. Research Ed Knight and Ralph Crane. These and other Lanier? From Anne Hathaway Shakespeare and Susannah websites provide information: Shakespeare? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Knight_(King%27s_ Men) 5. Compare and contrast the marriages of the Heminges and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Crane the Condells. How are they similar? How are they different? How do they compare to what we glimpse of Ben Jonson’s 8. Research the burning down of the Globe Theatre. This marriage? Of Shakespeare’s? and other websites provide information: www.bardstage.org/globe-theatre-fire.htm 6. Compare the parent/child relationships in the play: John and Alice Heminges, William and Isaac Jaggard, William and 9. Who was Emilia Lanier? What is her possible connection Susannah Shakespeare. How do these personal relationships to William Shakespeare? This and other websites provide enhance the impact of the events portrayed in The Book information: of Will? How important is the next generation in securing www.poemhunter.com/aemilia-lanyer/biography/ one’s legacy? What does the play say about ageing? What of us dies, and what can be passed on? What can become 10. Research the printing press, William Jaggard and the immortal? “False Folio.” These and other websites provide information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jaggard 7. Why did John give up acting? In what ways has this https://wikivisually.com/wiki/False_Folio been a good choice for him? What does he miss by making www.internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/ this choice? How does this change for him by the end of publishing/press1.html the play? 8. Refer to your research on the False Folio. What does the legal situation regarding rights to a play tell us about how The Strange History of Pericles plays were viewed as literature? You hear a lot in The Book of Will about the play 9. Refer to your research on Ben Jonson. In what ways Pericles. Henry Condell loves it, others not so much. does the play portray him and Shakespeare as opposites? When Pericles was first published in 1608, it was printed In what ways were they similar? Whose work does Alice as being “by William Shakespeare.” But when, seven suggest is more lastingly important, and why? What does years after his death, all of his plays were published The Book of Will suggest about the way we should approach together in the First Folio, Pericles was omitted. We don’t Shakespeare’s works today? know the reason for this omission. It may have been, as is portrayed in The Book of Will, a technical issue involv- 10. Refer to your research on the First Folio. What plays of ing the current ownership of the rights to the play. But Shakespeare would we not have today if Heminges and it may also have been that Heminges and Condell knew Condell had not taken the risk of publishing it? What iconic Shakespeare had collaborated with another playwright lines would we not have? How many other works of art; on Pericles, and deemed it not enough by Shakespeare how many movies, operas, ballets and songs that quote to put in the collection. from or adapt Shakespeare would not exist without the First Folio? Even a casual reader of the play will notice an abrupt change in quality and style of writing between the first 11. In the play, Henry Condell says, “I don’t know how men do two acts and the final three. There are many theories it without good women.” As imagined by playwright Lauren about the origin of the play, and nothing can be prov- Gunderson, what contributions do Elizabeth Condell, Alice en at this late date, but the majority of scholars have Heminges and Rebecca Heminges make to the First Folio come to agree that the play is probably a collaboration project? In what ways would the project not have succeeded between Shakespeare and the young playwright George without them? Wilkins, who then wrote a novelization of it that was published when the theatres were closed because of 12. Refer to your research on Emilia Lanier. In what ways do the plague. her interpretation of past events and Henry’s differ? How do her reminiscences add to our understanding of Shakespeare Numerous textual clues analyzed by experts who and his friends? understand all this way more than we need to have led to the prevailing theory that Wilkins wrote the first 13. Lauren Gunderson paints a picture of a close group of two acts and Shakespeare the last three. Shakespeare, friends who have known each other for a long time. What as the senior playwright, then edited and revised does their shared vernacular tell us about them? What does Wilkins’s work, but there remains a definite change of their unique professional history and institutional memory style once Shakespeare takes over completely. It should add to the themes of the play? be noted that some scholars still believe that Shake- speare wrote the entire play. According to them, the 14. After her death, Rebecca, or a dream of Rebecca, tells John stylistic differences are either purposeful on his part or that the reason a quiet church was never a comfort to him due to the printer not having the company’s text and in times of loss was that he needed words, and specifically relying on two different people from the cast reporting Shakespeare’s words. How might these words have helped it back to them. heal John after his losses? In what other ways do words help or heal characters in the play? Everyone agrees that the play is at least in part by Shakespeare, and yet it wasn’t published in the First 15. Henry says, “Stories are real in their own way.” In what Folio or in the Second Folio ways can fictional stories be considered “real?” Why do of 1632. It finally appeared stories need to be told? in the Third Folio, printed in 1663. 16. What does the act of creating the First Folio ultimately mean to Henry and John? To Alice? Elizabeth? Isaac Jaggard?

17. What is the importance of the play’s ending? Other than a book, what gift do John and Henry give to Anne, and especially to Susannah?

18. If you are also seeing Romeo and Juliet, compare the married couples in the plays. How does the Capulet’s Right: John Heminges relationship compare to the Heminges’s and the Condell’s? costume rendering by Susan Tsu. Left: Ben Jonson costume The Even Stranger History of rendering by Susan Tsu. Below: Emilia Bassano Lanier Copyright Laws in Shakespeare’s Time costume rendering by Susan Tsu.

The English Renaissance was a time of strict adher- ence to civil law, and lawyers made a killing handling lawsuits over any number of financial and business transgressions. And yet, a playwright or theatrical company could not sue a publisher for printing their play without their permission. As John Heminges tells us in The Book of Will, companies only owned the rights to their plays “for performance, not printing. The rights to print the plays go to whoever prints it first.” This may seem terribly unfair to us today, but scripts were not really considered important literature, and therefore were not offered copyright protection. It wasn’t until 1710, almost 100 years after the events of this play, that English law extended copyright protection to playwrights.

There was one earlier exception to the “right to print goes to whoever prints it first” rule. In 1619, when William Jaggard and Thomas Pavier tried to print 10 plays of the King’s Men theatre company in a single volume as “10 plays by William Shakespeare,” the King’s Men complained to the Lord Chamberlain and received what today we would call an injunction, requiring the permission of the company to publish any of their plays. This was an unheard-of exception to the rules, so it seems there was some tangible political clout in being the King’s personal theatre company. But the injunction only applied to new pub- lications. So Jaggard printed false cover pages making the plays look like un-sold copies of earlier printings from years before, and continued to sell them singly. How can we today tell the difference between, for example, an authentic copy of the 1608 printing of King Lear and one of Jaggard’s illegal printings from 1619? It turns out the paper stock Jaggard used was slightly larger than the usual quarto format, making it easy for modern scholars and book collectors to tell them apart.

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