Month: February 2006

Shakespeare’s Standard Biography Could Shatter into “A Million Little Pieces”: I suppose this is a logical thing to expect after the whole Oprah / James Frey fiasco. The Oxford Society issues a press release saying that all existing Shakespeare biographies are fiction.

Keeping in mind, of course, that the whole purpose of the Oxford Society is to basically claim that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is the real author of the complete works.

Technorati Tags: a million little pieces, Shakespeare

Spero News | William Shakespeare: Catholic playwright:

Wow…here’s an article that goes to great depths in its analysis of Hamlet, attempting to extract evidence for or against the case for Shakespeare’s Catholicism. What makes it even more interesting is that it looks at multiple versions of the play and compares notes over how and where it changed. This includes an almost entirely different version of “To be or not to be”:
“To be, or not to be: ay, there’s the point.
To die, to sleep: is that all? Ay, all.
No to sleep, to dream: ay marry, there it goes.
For in that dream of death, when we awake,
And borne before an everlasting judge,
From whence no passenger ever returned,
The undiscovered country at whose sight
The happy smile and the accursed damned –
…

I have no time to read this all now but I’m definitely bookmarking it for study. I’ve just noticed something very interesting. There is a big gaping question that many people have with the speech as it is traditionally known — why does Hamlet use the expression “The undiscovered country from which no traveller returns” when in fact his father has come back and told him all about it? But in this version of the speech the differences are important — borne before an everlasting judge, from whence no passenger ever returned, the undiscovered country at whose sight the happy smile and the accursed damned. So here he’s explicitly saying to go before God and get into Heaven. But his father was actually in Purgatory. So it is correct to say that he did not return from Heaven. I suppose then the question would be whether someone in Purgatory has supposedly already gone before God and been judged. I honestly don’t know.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare

Enfolded Hamlet: Enfolded Text:

I hadn’t seen this before. The “enfolded” Hamlet merges First Folio and Second Quarto editions of the play into one listing, so you can see exactly what has changed. I’m not sure what the difference is between “first folio” and “first folio only” in the options, though. Perhaps it is “show what is only in the first folio”, because when you choose the only option you only get snippets of text, not any semblance of the play itself.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare

I wish I could find a direct link to this, but it appears to strictly be an iTunes thing. Stanford has begun releasing several lecture series as podcasts within iTunes. What that means, if you’re new to the terminology, is that you can “sign up” for regularly scheduled downloads of audio content for your ipod. (Normally I’d say “mp3 player” in general, but iTunes only works with iPods). Highly recommended technology if you have not yet experienced it. It’s really an outstanding way to fill your player with something beyond the same music you’ve been listening to for years. You can get news, sports, talk shows, novels, old time radio…you name it.

Among the cool finds on the Stanford feed is “Sex, Lies and Theatre : Shakespeare for Today” by Ron Rebholz. He does an hour on the “real world” that Shakespeare lived in, and how Shakespeare chose to represent it. Great stuff. I just mentioned recently over on Shakespeare High that I’d rather populate my iPod with people talking about Shakespeare, rather than performing it, and now I’ve got my wish. I hope that ends up being a series.

The podcast in question is about an hour, covering everything from the history of the throne, battles of Catholic/Protestant, and effects of the plague as well as the role of marriage and feelings about sexuality during Shakespeare’s time. There’s also 15 minutes of questions at the end. Be sure to stick around through to the end if for nothing else than to hear the author’s opinion on Taming of the Shrew. 🙂 This, in turn, ends up being a fairly deep discussion about the strength of Shakespeare’s female characters and goes on to cover Juliet, Ophelia, and many others.

He’s also asked to give his opinion on the numerous books that came out on Shakespeare this past year – Greenblatt and Bloom to name two — and to recommend his own favorite text.

And lastly, though I could not hear the question, there’s a funny bit where I can only assume that somebody asked him to comment on the similarities between Prince Hal and President Bush, with the expected results.

Technorati Tags: ipod, podcast, podcast review, stanford, Shakespeare

Here’s something interesting — this blogger walks through Sonnet 138 in preparation for performance. He breaks down the scansion, picking out words that may not readily appear to break into the iambic form and figuring out the proper way to pronounce them. He even digs into when Shakespeare breaks the rhythm of the recitation and hints at why he might choose specific spots to do it (although most of them as “stick around for the next part of this series”). This is part 2, I never saw part 1 come up. But I’m glad I found it.

Technorati Tags: iambic pentameter, Shakespeare, sonnet