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May 26, 2009

Playing Shakespeare

PlayingShakespeare The wait is over.  John Barton's lectures on Playing Shakespeare featuring now world famous RSC actors, Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love, Iris), Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Schindler's List), and Peggy Ashcroft (A Passage to India), Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings, Gods and Monsters), Patrick Stewart (X-Men, Star Trek: The Next Generation), and David Suchet (Agatha Christie's Poirot), and others, will now be available on DVD.  The release date is scheduled for June 2 in the USA:

"Sit in on nine intensive acting workshops conducted by the legendary John Barton of the Royal Shakespeare Company. How does this world-renowned troupe make classic plays accessible to modern audiences, without compromising the text's integrity? How do actors search Shakespeare's verse for hidden clues to their characters' motivations? How do they balance intellect and passion to make theatre's most famous soliloquies seem fresh?"


The 4 disc, 456 minute set comes with:

  • 20-page viewer's guide includes key points, discussion questions, avenues for further learning, a history of the RSC, and "Vocabulary of Verse and Stage."
  • Actor biographies and RSC stage credits
  • Exclusive web extras

Appreciations:

"If you are interested in Shakespeare and performing Shakespeare, this series is for you. Just about every great British Shakespearian actor/actress is accounted for here acting in various scenes from the plays and discussing/analyzing them at length. Fascinating and informative."

"I'm thrilled that this magnificent collection is now available on DVD. It's such a treat to see young, highly trained actors (McKellen, Dench, Stewart) from the RSC participating in Barton's Shakespeare instructional course. Barton discusses the most basic techniques on how to find clues within Shakespeare's text in order to perform it well. It is truly amazing that by simply approaching Shakespeare in a technical way; finding antithesis, lists, irony, and contrast-helps the actor figure out what is happening in a scene or monologue."

"Through detailed Shakespeare direction, Barton has provided a series that will delight all lovers of the celebrated playwright. Additionally it will encourage the viewer who is newly attempting appreciation of Shakespeare and his works. Novice Shakespearean audiences will want for more, want for a complete play to view."

View clips from the series:  1  |  2  |  3

May 22, 2009

Shakespeare Road Trip, Part 3

OldGlobe School is out.  It's time for fun, sun and, yes, Shakespeare.  If you are coming to Southern California--and who isn't?--you have got to go to San Diego's Old Globe Theatre's summer festival, this year featuring only two Shakespeare plays, unfortunately, but guaranteed to be great.  I have attended the Globe many times and the productions rarely fail to live up to the very highest standards of excellence.  This year on the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Stage (and who wants to be indoors on a SoCal evening?) Twelfth Night, Coriolanus and Cyrano De Bergerac will be in repertory. 

Twelfth Night directed by Paul Mullins--and how can you miss with Twelfth Night?--will begin June 17.  "Filled with Shakespeare's most indelible comedic characters and side-splitting situations, our summer season rockets into high gear with this magical comedy."  OK, so we don't need the blurb, and side-splitting may be a stretch, "indelible" and "magical" besides being a godsend to publicists are, in this case accurate.

Coriolanus directed by the great Darko Tresnjak will begin June 20.  It is a play whose time has come, it seems, with Ralph Fiennes even mounting a movie version.  "Shakespeare's final tragedy is also considered one of his greatest."  Beware, by the way, when a publicist uses the word "considered," but in Tresnjak's hands it will have to be great.

Finally--and why couldn't we have the traditional third Shakespeare, I wonder?--there is Cyrano, beginning June 13 and also directed by Tresnjak, so undoubtedly very good.  Like Twelth Night, though not so much, of course, it is hard to miss with this one.  Swashbuckling and sentimental by turns, it ought to be a romp.

Come on, get in the car before gas reaches $4 again and motor west.  See you in the park.


May 19, 2009

Soul of the Age

Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate

Jonathan Bate is one of the great Shakespeare scholar/editors of the late 20th-early 21st century.  He belongs in the company of such early 20th century greats as E. K. Chambers, J. D. Wilson and Alfred Harbage; capable of speculation, but with an unerring centrifugal instinct to fact and truth.  Bate's The Genius of Shakespeare is a groundbreaking summation of the perception of Shakespeare's works, his Arden Third Series edition of Titus Andronicus is the best I know, and his (and Rasmussen's) masterful RSC Complete Works is, well, masterful.  With a buildup like that, it would be hard to say his latest, Soul of the Age, is anything but a very good book, and indeed it is.  That is not to say great.  Great books on Shakespeare are extremely rare, but very good from this scholar is nearly as good as it gets.  The only caution I would suggest is that it is not a beginner's book.  Considerable familiarity with the works of the period and the various controversies over Shakespearean biographical details would be helpful to the reader.  Following the close arguments in several of the set pieces throughout the book would be quite challenging without at least a basic understanding of 16th and 17th century British history and literature.

This book purports to answer the dual questions, "What was it like being Shakespeare? and, What are the most telling ways in which Shakespeare's works embody—or rather ensoul—the world-picture of his age?"  It does so by using Jacques' Seven Ages speech from As You Like It as a substrate on which to build expanding notions of Shakespeare's consciousness and historical notions of the significantly intersecting Elizabethan and Jacobean "moments."  Bate's goal is nothing less than to create an "intellectual biography of the man in the mind-set into which he was born and out of which his works were created."  At first blush the Seven Ages devices would seem a poor fit, but in practice it works well.  Not each "age" is intimately connected with Shakespeare, as we will discuss below, and Bate often shows the Shakespearean moment to transcend the "age."  The approach is not nearly as chronological as the structure might suggest, and the material not neatly, demonstrably internal to the mind of Shakespeare.  It is, however, nonetheless fascinating.

Infancy.

The infancy section, for example, has almost nothing to do with infancy.  It ranges widely to encompass Galileo, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, the Reformation, Elizabeth and Simon Forman, the plague, the legal year, the importance of maps in Elizabeth's reign, Florio's World of Words, Leonard (both of them) and Thomas Digges, the Copernican universe, Horace's distinction between negotium and otium, with their obvious parallels to Shakespeare's business and country lives, and so on.  The broad brush strokes that prepare the canvas are followed by the detailed strokes that paint the life of the theatre beginning in the 1580s leading to Shakespeare's eventual emergence some time near the end of that decade.  A fascinating section deals with English "chorography"—"or the geographical and historical description of a particular region."  Bate cites William Lambarde's Perambulation in this respect, and not for the last time do we meet Lambarde in the course of the book.

Of course Bate does not neglect biographical certainty where it can be obtained, such as the many Warwickshire allusions in the works that make them certainly the work of the boy who grew up in Stratford; but neither does he overdo this obviously well worn material.  His is a fresher, more detailed, more intriguing approach.  He notes, for example, mention in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew of Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, and then reveals that there actually was a Hacket family living there in 1591.  So it goes.  A grand synthesis of overarching trends of the age combined with intimate details of the mental life of our playwright from his known history.

The Schoolboy.

The second age is that of the schoolboy, and while this is the section that has the greatest correspondence with biographically known probabilities, it also broadens to embrace Renaissance humanism's theories of education and government, and moves from there to one of the book's several long set-pieces: an analysis of The Tempest. Finally it ends in a fascinating discussion of the books likely to have been owned by Shakespeare, one of the best sections of the book.

Among many other specialties, Bate is an Ovid specialist of sorts, and has contributed a great introductory essay, "Shakespeare's Ovid," to Nims' definitive modern edition of Golding's 1567 translation of The Metamorphoses.  We get much of Ovid along with a description of Shakespeare's education in the King's New School in Stratford:  "...it is demonstrable from his work that of all the writers on the syllabus Ovid was the one who appealed to him most strongly, and whom he sought out—albeit mostly in English translation—after he left school."  And again, "Scholars have calculated that about 90 percent of Shakespeare's allusions to classical mythology refer to stories included in that epic compendium of tales."

Bate also notes the often overlooked fact that Shakespeare's first acting experience probably occurred in his grammar school:  "...there is no reason to suppose that a pageant of the deserted Ariadne, probably based on the poem written in her voice in Ovid's Heroides, might not have been staged in Stratford in an earlier year, with one of Shakespeare's schoolfellows in the title role.  Or even Shakespeare himself."  In addition to acting, Shakespeare would have been exposed—exposed is probably too tame a word—to Latin to English, English to Latin translation.  "Shakespeare's provincial grammar school education gave him sufficient Latin to base his Rape of Lucrece on a story in Ovid's Fasti that was not translated into English in his lifetime."

From Ovid we are also treated to an analysis of the influence of Seneca on the English tragedy and the importance of Jasper Heywood's translations.  After Ovid, however, no more important source for Shakespeare's works exceeded that of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, and Bate duly considers his influence on Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.

The Lover.

The lover's age must embrace Shakespeare's marriage and his self-revelations, if any, in the Sonnets.  With regard to his marriage, Bate brings forth the remarkable fact, which I cannot remember to have seen stated elsewhere, that among Shakespeare's contemporaries (based on examination of Stratford parish records for 1570-1630) "only three were in their teens when they married" (which may be a bit deceiving because the age of all men at marriage cannot be determined based on the parish records, but never mind that).  Even more remarkably, there is "only one identifiable teenage Stratford husband in the whole sixty-year period whose bride was pregnant on the day of their marriage: the glover's son, eighteen-year-old William Shakespeare."  In other words, the shotgun wedding supposition seems to be myth, at least based on social norms, and a teenage boy-older pregnant woman "was a very unusual combination."  In his marriage, as in all else, Shakespeare seems to have been unique.  Bate suggests sexual precocity as a possible explanation for Shakespeare finding himself the father of three before age twenty.  Certainly his virtuosity with the language of sex in his works suggests an abiding concern, if not obsession.

While noting the tendency of biographers to flights of fancy regarding Shakespeare's sex life, and possible venereal diseases, Bate's discussion is restrained and fair minded.  Shakespeare clearly imagined himself to have been the victim of marital infidelity, but the operative word is imagined, as Bate points out.  There is no way to know the reality of his sex life based on his language in the plays or the poetry.  The perennial conundrum is the bequest of the second best bed in the will, and it remains a conundrum.  More perplexing is absence of mention of the Blackfriars gatehouse, purchased in 1613, or Shakespeare's shares in the Globe, but here again, so much has been swallowed by silence, and Bate is too cautious a scholar to fantasize.  After a thoroughgoing discussion of the sonnets, Bate tentatively identifies—though hardly insists upon—the rival poet as John Davies of Hereford, spinning a unique interpretation of Mr. W. H. being flattered by Davies' famous penmanship.  Bate admits the possibly fanciful nature of this guess, but it is indeed charming.

The Soldier

Since there is no evidence Shakespeare was ever a soldier (despite some strained theorists) this section is largely concerned with things militaire: Elizabeth as warrior and her great "Tilbury" speech (which Bate says may have been inauthentic, after expanding on it for several pages!); the Armada year; the history plays with their multiple battles and warrior-poets; and more.  This section is home to the book's longest set-piece, where Bate attempts to prove that Shakespeare's Richard II was a source for John Hayward's controversial The First Part of the Life and Reign of King Henry IV, dedicated to the unfortunate Lord Essex whose head suffered much for it.  Bate calls it "A Political Tragedy in Five Acts," and it is a tightly spun, intricate argument which carries us far afield from Shakespeare biography, if not of the catchall "age".  As noted above, this book is not one for beginners, and particularly this section.  The uninitiated will find it heavy sledding.  It may be worth noting that Bate rests his argument on verbal imagery "unlikely to be coincidence," in the manner of authorial attribution in the fifties and sixties, but ultimately it is hard to see that it much matters.  This is a specialist's section.

The long argument about Richard II, Haywood and the Essex rising of 1601 is followed by an apparent afterthought on "Moorish" culture, and an after-after thought on Jacobean geopolitics which feel like remnants too good to waste but apropos of nothing in particular.

The Justice

This sections concerns itself primarily with tracing Shakespeare's possible legal "training" (or "knowledge," as displayed in the plays).  It has him as his fathers early representative at Clement's Inn during the "lost years," and is as good a guess as any.  Shakespeare's unusually deep knowledge of legal terminology have led many to posit just such a connection, and suppose him to have been at least for a time "some sort of noverint or apprentice lawyer."  One is apt to credit these arguments, even though they are based on the same sorts of fantasies that argue other matter, simply because Shakespeare so commonly adopts the neutral anonymity of a lawyer.  The suppositions about law expand to politics, and Bate concludes that "Shakespeare's political beliefs are as elusive as his religion, his sexuality, and just about everything else about him that matters."  It is the biographer's common lament.

The Pantaloon

The pantaloon is a stock character in the commedia dell'arte: the lean and slippered authority who thwarts the will of the young lovers, the laughable older man now the butt of jests by his lively children.  Whether this fits Shakespeare in any significant way is dubious, but Bate sticks with the Seven Ages metaphor faithfully.  This section does contain the best brief summary of "the contours of Shakespeare's career,"  that I have read, and this section alone, from pages 333-342, are worth the price of the book.  Bate makes much, and deservedly so, of the fact that Shakespeare cannot be shown to have acted after 1603, when he is listed as an actor in Jonson's Sejanus, coupled with the "shame" sonnets which linguistic analysis seems to date from this same period:  "The inference must be that he stopped acting around the time of the 1603-4 plague outbreak.  Perhaps the sense of shame that he alludes to in sonnets 110-112, written around this time, had something to do with his decision."  Of course, this is hardly proved, but the temptation to some sort of certainty is so great that even as careful a scholar as Bate gives it rather more weight than it can bear.  In any event, the curative sentiments of the book that explode the "myth" of Shakespeare's retirement after around 1611 are welcome, if the mystery remains.

As with all biographers starting with Rowe, Shakespeare's biography always becomes the occasion for literary criticism.  If it were not so, the biographies would be slim indeed.  Never mind, because this section deals with King Lear in a delightful chapter titled "The Foolosopher" that does not need the excuse of biographical relevance. 

Oblivion

This final "age" is interesting because it labels Shakespeare an "epicurean":  "Add to Stoicism an acknowledgment of the needs of the body and the raw materiality of things, then what do you get?  The answer is a powerful philosophy that had a largely bad press in the Renaissance, but that might actually have been the closest Shakespeare came to belief."  These are rather startling words, but Bate goes far in supporting them.  After an extended discussion of Shakespeare's love for certain of his characters, Bate says "Enobarbus might just be the closest Shakespeare came to a portrait of his own mind."  Enobarbus, Bate notes, "embodies the pliable self."  This biography, if more brittle in several of its arguments than pliable, is still a very good one, remarkable for careful analysis and possessing a charm in the way it  teases weighty meaning out of airy events.  If it is at times ponderous, it redeems itself more often in winning clarity.  It is MUST reading for Shakespeareans.

May 14, 2009

A Gilded Age View of Richard Grant White

The following is extracted from the pages of Shakespeariana, Vol. VI, Sept. 1889, pp. 406-409.  It is part of a series run by that venerable organ on the American Editors of Shakespeare, but is more like an undisguised fan letter to the first truly original American editor Richard Grant White.  As you read I think you will agree it is more than over the top, and, by the way, completely wrong about White's influence, but its charm is attractive.  For those unfamiliar with the Collier forgeries see my entries on Collier.  Unfortunately this panegyric discusses just about everything about White EXCEPT his edition of Shakespeare, but never mind that.  We will cover it in detail soon.  For now, enjoy

A Gilded Age View of Richard Grant White

When the world, hardly more than fifty years ago, began with Cooper and Irving to read "an American book,'' we can imagine the curl of the British lip at a suggestion that an American opinion might be worth taking. Indeed, the question as to when there began to be any American opinion at all upon matters Shakespearian, might well be made a very perplexing one. Criticism is hardly to be expected unless the thing criticised is at least potentially present. Where there is no sea there are not apt to be sailors. The question as to when American criticism of Shakespeare began, would naturally depend upon the answer to a prior question, as to when Shakespeare and Shakespearian history began to be printed and read in America.

Shakespeare himself was alive, and at the very summit of production, when Captain John Smith settled in Virginia. But the Immigrant seems not to have brought a chance Quarto among his personal baggage, and the fad for collecting antiques, which a few years ago turned the old colonies into markets for city dealers, while ransacking the venerable houses and yielding richly in claw-footed furniture and blue china, seems never to have turned up to the light one of these priceless pamphlets or a broadside of the date. The first settlors of these shores brought no books except the Bible and devotional works. There were plenty of copies of Fox's Martyrs, and Baxter's Saints' Rest, and Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs, but no Shakespeares.  Such being the case, it was natural enough that the utterances of Shakespeare's first critics, Rowe, Pope, and Theobald—and the so-called criticism of Rymer, Warburton, and others, who were supposed to be critics—found no echo, a century later, over here. Passing over another century, no outermost circle of the Ireland episode reached these shores, nor did the great work of Ireland's great contemporary, Malone—the first lawyer who took poor Shakespeare out of the clutches of the Poets and Poets Laureate—find in the United States any readers or sympathizers, much less disciples. The silence that follows discovery was noisy compared to the silence of America as to the greatest name in their inherited literature.

But, just about fifty years after the Ireland forgeries, came the Collier frauds, and to the surprise of scholars, up from this side sprang, all at once, without preparation, the Malone for Mr. Collier's Ireland, the critic who was to smash their pretensions as Bentley had smashed the Letters of Philaris— basing, on pure internal evidence, conclusions of fact which every other character of evidence, circumstantial, physical, and material, was to confirm and establish beyond gainsay.

When Mr. Collier produced his "Perkins Folio," and its "new reading's" agitated all Letters, a l'instant a lithe, clean limbed American warrior, stepped firmly into the field, and took that whole field for his province. And out of that war of pamphlets and pamphleteers, it was to Richard Grant White, the American, that the honor belonged of demonstrating, finally, that William Shakespeare and the Perkins "readings" were not contemporary. Armed cap-a-pie, with a perfect equipment at every point, nerved to a great effort, with a presumption against him as a combatant at all, from an unexpected quarter of the universe, Mr. White knew whereof he wrote. First of all, a grammarian and a comparative philologist, an attempt to deceive him by a piece of Victorian, palmed off as a piece of Elizabethan, English appeared to be about as hopeless an effort as would be an effort to satisfy a comparative anatomist like Huxley with a Barnum mermaid or a New Haven sea-serpent of lath and canvas. The records, easily extant, bear witness to the reception accorded to "Shakespeare's Scholar" (under which title Mr. White collected his magazine contributions upon "Perkins Folio" matters), and how speedily the name of the book transferred itself to its author. Its great merit, its absolute exhaustiveness, its minute accuracy, and its shrewd postulates of fact and of logic were immediately conceded. As a rule, mere windfall approbation of a book is of as little value as an estimate drawn from its preface, or its binding, or from personal acquaintance with its author, in divers and sundry suburban newspapers. But, in this case, the first approval of "Shakespeare's Scholar" became its deliberate valuation. And even when, finally, Sir Francis Madden, an expert in chirography, and Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, a chemist, went to work with the Perkins Folio itself before them—the one with his microscope and the other with his acids—they found the marginalia of that notorious copy of the second Folio as of the exact dates to which Mr. White, without an inspection but from philological testimony alone, had referred them.

The controversy is dead. If Mr. White's book is dead, too, it is because it closed the work it was written to perform. Time, the fulness of learning, discovery, and the constantly bettering consensus of scholars, (which new elements in solution and induction are constantly accruing), have verified every single one of Mr. White's prophesies, and established the worthlessness of every single one of the "readings" he rejected. This is the highest praise at any time. But at the threshold of the Shakespearian criticism of a continent, it is an achievement in the empire of literature. Since then American scholarship has made great strides. But, just as three centuries of English letters since Shakespeare has not brought English speech back to where he left it in himself, so American Shakespearian criticism has not, to date, done more—and it is difficult to see how it could do more—than Mr. White, at its very threshold accomplished.

About Mr. White's only infirmity was a certain difficulty of temper, which is not altogether an unknown quantity in this Preserve. But, however often this infirmity was allowed to find its way into his first drafts and occasional contributions to his subject matter, it was rarely suffered to appear in their collected and revised forms.

Mr. White's place as a Shakespearian commentator is secure. The value of his work is held to be of the highest. And it is exceedingly doubtful if an annotated edition of the great dramas has appeared since the first Grant White edition, or will hereafter appear, in which Mr. White's contributions, notes, or memoranda have not or will not have a representation.


Note:  The illustration above is also taken from the frontispiece of the Sept. 1889 edition of Shakespeariana.

May 12, 2009

First Title Page

LLL Title Page 1598 The first appearance of Shakespeare's name on the title page of a printed play was the quarto publication of Love's Labour's LostThe first quarto, and only authoritative text, of Love's Labour's Lost appeared in 1598 with the following title page:

A pleasant conceited comedie called, Loues labors lost. As it was presented before her Highnes this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere.
Imprinted at London: by W. W. [William White] for Cutbert Burby, 1598.

The W. W. is thought to be William White (d. 1615).  Cuthbert Burby (d. 1607) owned the copyright to this play and to Romeo and Juliet, transferred on his death to Nicholas Ling.

Q1 served as the text for the Folio printing, but it has been revised inconsistently, giving rise to a theory of a lost Q0, but there is no other evidence for a lost quarto (except for the "Newly corrected and augmented" tag printer on the Title page of Q1.  It is often noted that the stage directions in Q1 are unusually full and descriptive, indicating perhaps an absence from the playhouse and/or a production for non-professionals.  Once again, this is only a theory.

Because it is full of inside jokes and parodies, a case has been made for Love's Labour's Lost having been written for a private party, probably involving Southampton and his circle, and later adapted for the stage.  It does seem to have strong associations with the Southampton circle, though this theory is by no means universally accepted.  Those who advance it usually place the play in about 1593-94, in the period of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, with which it has obvious affinities.  A popular theory of Shakespeare's life has him serving as Southampton's secretary or literary assistant during this period of closure of the public playhouses.

Peter Ackroyd in his Shakespeare: The Biography says  that LLL is "so highly allusive and ironic that it hardly seems designed for the public playhouses...there has even been speculation that it was first performed in Southampton House or at Titchfield.  In a ground plan for Titchfield House there is an upstairs chamber designated as the 'Playhouse Room,' just to the left of the main entrance...it has been variously interpreted as a playful satire upon Southampton and his circle, upon Lord Strange and his supporters, upon Thomas Nashe, upon John Florio, upon Sir Walter Raleigh and the notorious 'school of night.'  There are references to a thundering rival poet, George Chapman, and to other Elizabethan notables who are now less well known...and it may indeed refer to all of them." 

If indeed the play was acted for the Southampton circle, it must later have been translated to the Theatre repertory.  It is known to have been acted before Queen Elizabeth in 1597 (see the text on the title page), and Southampton had it performed for the family of King James at Southampton House in 1605.

What is definitely known is that it appears in the list of Shakespeare's plays in Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia in 1598.  It is also (in all likeliehood) referenced in Robert Tofte's Alba, or The Month's Mind of a Melancholy Lover, also published in 1598: "I once did see a play ycleped so," (see Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, p. 305.  The play was most likely written, therefore, between 1593 and 1597, though may be a revision of a much earlier work.

May 06, 2009

Fractals in Arcadia

It is a bit of a long ride, but worth it.  Here is Manil Suri (The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva) explaining what is behind some of the math in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.



Arcadia description:  "Arcadia is a brilliantly inventive play that moves back and forth between centuries, populated by a varied and vastly entertaining cast of characters who discuss such topics as the nature of truth and time, the difference between the classical and the romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life-according to the author, "the attraction which Newton left out."

For those who did pay attention in math class(es), or just want to have fun with complex concepts, here are links to a couple of the sites mentioned in the video.

A Fractal Generator

Landscapes Generated by Fractals

Cobweb Plotting A and B

Find a couple more links at the Folger web site, where I first found this video linked.


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May 05, 2009

Aetatis 53

A bit of confusing evidence comes from the funerary inscription beneath the famous bust (the image of a "self-satisfied pork butcher" as described by John Dover Wilson) in Holy Trinity Church.

Sh-funeraryinscriptionx650

It takes good eyes, but the subscription in the lower right says he died in the year 1616 on 23 AP. AETATIS 53.  Now, if he was one day past his 52nd birthday, he would have been in his 53rd year, but this neither was nor is the common method of reckoning age.  One would still have said, normally, he was 52 for the entire year of April 23, 1616 through April 22 1617, had he lived.  The 53 may well simply be a mistake, a slip of the graver's chisel, as it were.  The author of the English doggerel, and the rather more obscure Latin tag (meaning approximately, "A Nestor in wisdom, a Socrates in genius, a Virgil in poetic art; Earth covers him, the people mourn for him, he is with the gods."  Nestor was referred to in the Iliad as "Pylian Nestor," thus "Pylium."  Virgil's name is Publius Vergilius Maro, thus "Maronem") may have been the poet's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, but this is not known for certain.  Some authors have stretched the AETATIS 53 inscription to indicate that Shakespeare was born prior to April 23, but again, we cannot be absolutely sure.

The illustration above is from Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, p. 284.

May 04, 2009

Birth and Baptism

Shakespeare's baptism is recorded in the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon dated April 26, 1564.  The usual delay between birth and baptism was 3-4 days, making the date of birth most likely April 22 or 23.  Since Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and the engraving on his monument lists him as aged 53, it is assumed he was born on April 23.  At least, that is how scholars in the absence of any other information have been willing to leave it.  April 23 is also St. George's day, an appropriate day for the birth of the national poet.

A facsimile of the registry of the baptism of William Shakespeare, from The Works of William Shakespeare, by E. K. Chambers, vol. I, 1901, p. 1, is given below.

The entry in Latin reads "Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere" or, in English, "William son of John Shakspere".

Jonathan Bate in Soul of the Age notes that "There were no more than twenty deaths [noted in the parish register of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon] in the first half of 1564, well over two hundred in the second...the cause is duly noted in a marginal annotation...hic incepit pestis.  Here begins the plague" (pp. 3-4).

Given below are two illustrations of the birthplace.

The Birth Place in Henley Street, as it appeared in 1762
Taken from J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1907, p. 32
The Birthplace renedered more fancifully
from Gentleman's Magazine, 1769
Taken from The Works of William Shakespeare ed. E. K. Chambers, 1901, p. 1

April 30, 2009

Speaking of Conferences

Here is a unique conference dedicated to the Renaissance horse at Roehampton University:

CONFERENCE ON THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN HORSE Roehampton University, London;19 and 20 June 2009

A conference focused on one of the most important animals in the Renaissance and early modern world; and a celebration of the career of Professor Peter Edwards, one of the foremost scholars of the horse in early modern England.

Speakers include Bruce Boehrer, Gabriel Egan, Erica Fudge, Elspeth Graham, Donna Landry, Kevin de Ornellas, Sandra Swart, Lucy Worsley.

For further details and registration, contact Sara Pennell (s.pennell@roehampton.ac.uk) or Peter Edwards (p.edwards@roehampton.ac.uk).


8th ESRA Conference

"Shakespeare and Conflict: A European Perspective"

(Pisa, 19 to 22 November 2009)

Organised by ESRA (European Shakespeare Research Association) and IASEMS (the Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies).
More details and the call for papers are now available on conference website, browsable at www.angl.unipi.it/esra2009.


Local/Global Shakespeares
4th British Shakespeare Association Conference
11  --  13 September 2009
King's College London & Shakespeare's Globe

CALL FOR PAPERS for the Seminar:
"Shakespeare's Europe: Early Modern Contexts"
Seminar Leaders:
Keir Elam (University of Bologna)
Michele Marrapodi (University of Palermo)

This seminar aims to place Shakespeare's drama and poetry within a transnational process of cultural and literary exchange characterizing the migration of ideas, discourses, and influences, together with the transmission of models, topoi, and theatregrams, which contributed to the formation of early modern culture, despite the presence of domestic anxieties and the strength of national divides.

The seminar welcomes papers which bring into focus this 'continental'
context, discussing the impact of European cultural traditions on the theatrical, ideological, linguistic, and rhetorical construction of Shakespeare's drama; the representation of foreign cultures on the Shakespearean stage; or the dialogue between the English and European Renaissance within an intercultural perspective.

Topics may include all areas of influence and intertextuality, ranging from social, educational, and political discourses, together with narrative, dramatic, and iconographic traditions, that may throw light on Shakespeare's works.

Please send your proposal (200 word max) to: Keir Elam (elam@lingue.unibo.it) and Michele Marrapodi (marrapod@unipa.it) Proposals should be submitted by 10 June 2009.

April 28, 2009

J. Parker Norris on Warburton

Warburton's edition of Shakespeare appeared in 1747. 

Warburton was indeed a man out of his depth, but supremely unaware of the fact, a poor scholar, sometimes monstrously hypocritical, yet an avid antagonist.  I have reproduced below J. Parker Norris' summary of the Warburton edition, encompassing, as it does, a long quote from Dr. Johnson and some original (and supplemental, to be sure) criticisms by Norris.  Norris wrote during the gilded age for Shakespeariana, the publication of the Shakespeare Society of New York.



"The Editors of Shakespeare," by J. Parker Norris, from Shakespeariana, Vol. II, 1885, pp. 577-582.

WILLIAM WARBURTON.

William Warburton was born December 24th, 1698, at Newark-upon-Trent, Nottingham, England. His father was George Warburton, an attorney, and also Town Clerk. He was educated by several teachers. His father intended that he should read law, and he commenced the study of that profession, under an attorney named Kirke, at East Markham, Nottinghamshire. He remained with him for five years, and was then called to the bar, in one of the courts at Westminster. Afterward he returned to Newark, where he entered upon the practice of his profession. He practiced for several years, but his love of reading, and dislike for the bar, determined him to enter the church. Accordingly in 1723 he took deacon's orders. The same year he published his Miscellaneous Translations in Prose and Verse from Roman Authors. This work he dedicated to Sir Robert Sutton; who, in 1726, presented him to the vicarage of Gryesly, in Nottingham. In 1726 also, he came to London, and made the acquaintance of a number of literary men; among whom was Lewis Theobald. This was the beginning of a friendship which lasted several years. They kept up a long correspondence about the text of Shakespeare and other kindred subjects, in which they were mutually interested, and Warburton rendered Theobald much valuable assistance in the preparation of his edition of Shakespeare. Theobald gracefully acknowledged this assistance in his preface to that work.

In 1727 Warburton published A Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles as related by Historians, etc. This work he also dedicated to Sir Robert Sutton, who appears to have been a good friend, for he used his influence to have Warburton put on the lists of King's Masters of Arts created when George II visited Cambridge in 1728, and thus he got his degree. The same year Sir Robert presented him to the rectory of Brand-Broughton, in the diocese of Lincoln. Here he remained many years, and devoted his time largely to literary studies.

In 1736 he published The Alliance between the Church and State, etc., a work which attracted much attention at the time. In 1783 the first part of his principal theological work appeared, The Divine Legation of Moses, etc., which met with some adverse criticism. He defended it in A Vindication, etc., and in 1741 the second part was published.

Pope's Essay on Man had meanwhile been published, and had been severely criticised. Warburton appeared in its defence, and in 1739– 40 published A Vindication of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man. This led to a friendship between Pope and Warburton, and when the former died, in 1744, he left Warburton half of his library, and his interest in those works which he still possessed any copyright. Dr. Johnson estimated this legacy to have been worth £400.

In 1744 and 1745 he published answers to the attacks which had been made on his Divine Legation under the name of Occasional Reflections, etc., and in 1745 he married Miss Gertrude Tucker; by the the death of whose uncle, Ralph Allen, Esq., of Prior Park, near Bath, he became possessed (through his wife,) of much valuable property.

In 1738 he had been appointed Chaplain to the Prince of Wales, and in 1744 he was presented to a prebend in the Cathedral of Durham; while in 1747 he was made Dean of Bristol. In 1760 Mr. Pitt (afterward Earl of Chatham,) promoted him to the see of Gloucester, and he is best known to posterity as the Bishop of Gloucester. His mind failed somewhat in his later years, and he died June 7th, 1779, at Gloucester, in his eighty-first year.

His edition of Shakespeare was published in 1747, in eight volumes small octavo. The first title page in Vol. I reads thus :

"The Works of Shakespear in eight volumes. The Genuine Text (collated with all the former Editions, and then corrected and emended) is here settled : Being restored from the Blunders of the first Editors, and the Interpolations of the two Last ; with A Comment and Notes, Critical and Explanatory. By Mr. Pope and Mr. Warburton.—Quorum omnium Interpretes, ut Grammatici Poetarum proxime ad eorum quos interpretantur, divinationem videntur accedere. Cic de Divin... London : Printed for J. and P. Knapton, S. Birt, T. Longman and T. Showell, H. Lintott, C. Hitch, J. Brindley, J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, R. Wellington, E. New, and B. Dodd. MDCCLVII.[sic]"

There is also a second title-page which is as follows : "The Works of Shakespear: Volume the first." etc. Similar ones to the latter are in the other volumes.

The work is tolerably well printed on fairly good paper, and in the first volume there is a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, engraved by G. Vertue. The work is dedicated to Mrs. Allen, of Prior Park, near Bath. Then comes the preface, occupying twelve pages. Pope's preface follows, then Rowe's life of Shakespeare, the grant of arms to Shakespeare's father, and Ben. Jonson's ode to the poet.
"A Table of the Several Editions of Shakespeare's Plays, whether separate or together, made use of, and collated for this edition by Mr. Pope and Mr. Warburton." embraces the first three folios_ and fifty-two quartos. Next in order is a classification of the plays into "Comedies" and "Tragedies" in their order of merit according to Warburton's judgment. In Class I of the former he places first, The Tempest; second, The Merry Wives of Windsor; third, Measure for Measure; fourth, The Merchant of Venice; and fifth, Twelfth Night; while Class II contains first, A Midsummer Night's Dream; second, Much Ado about Nothing; third, As You Like It; fourth, Alls Well that Ends Well; and fifth, A Winter's Tale. Class III has first, The Two Gentlemen of Verona; and second, Love's Labour's Lost; and Class IV : first, The Taming of the Shrew; and second, The Comedy of Errors. "Tragedies" he thus classifies : Class I: first, 1 Henry IV; second, 2 Henry IV; third, King Lear; fourth, Macbeth; fifth, Julius Caesar; sixth, Hamlet; and seventh, Othello. Class II : first, King John; second, Henry V; third, Richard III; fourth, Henry VIII; fifth, Timon of Athens; sixth, Antony and Cleopatra; and seventh, Cymbeline. Class III : first, Richard II; second, Coriolanus ; third, Troilus and Cressida; and fourth, Romeo' and Juliet. Class IV: first, 1 Henry VI; second, 2 Henry VI; third, 3 Henry VI; and fourth Titus Andronicus.

As a speciman of Warburton's taste the above list is very interesting. Few persons at the present time would agree with him.. Of the last class of "Comedies  and "Tragedies" he remarks they "are certainly not of Shakespear. The most that can be said of them is, that he has, here and there, corrected the dialogue, and now and then added a Scene." Regarding The Two Noble Kinsmen he says "the whole first Act . . . was wrote by Shakespear, but in his worst manner."

In his preface Warburton tells us "The whole a Critic can do for an Author who deserves his Service, is to correct the faulty Text ; to remark the Peculiarities of Language ; to illustrate the obscure Allusions; and to explain the Beauties and Defects of Sentiment or Composition." He then explains the character of the notes, which he divides into three classes: first, those which concern the restoration of the text; second, those which explain the poet's meaning, when Warburton conceived it to be obscure "either from a licentious Use of Terms; or a hard or ungrammatical Construction; or lastly from farfetch'd or quaint Allusions;" and third, those which explain Shakespeare's beauties and defects.

Warburton then continues :

These, such as they are, were amongst my younger amusements, when, many years ago, I used to turn over these sort of Writers to unbend myself from more serious applications: And what, certainly, the Public, at this time of day, had never been troubled with, but for the conduct of the last two Editors, and the persuasions of dear Mr. Pope ; whose memory and name

semper acerbum,
Semper honoratum (sic Di voluistis) habebo.

He was desirous I should give a new Edition of this Poet, as he thought it might contribute to put a stop to a prevailing folly of altering the Text of celebrated Authors without Talents or Judgment. And he was willing that his Edition should be melted down into mine, as it would, he said, afford him (so great is the modesty of an ingenuous temper) a fit opportunity of confessing his Mistakes. In memory of our Friendship, I have, therefore, made it our joint Edition. His admirable Preface is here added; all his Notes are given, with his name annexed, and the Scenes are divided according to his regulation; and the most beautiful passages distinguished, as in his book, with inverted commas. In imitation of him, I have done the same by as many others as I thought deserving of the Reader's attention, and have marked them with double commas.

The faults of Warburton's notes are many, and foremost among them is a spirit of dogmatic assertion and condescension towards his author. He often asserts in the most positive manner that Shakespeare wrote so and so, and he deliberately changes the text to suit his own ideas without the slightest authority. He frequently altered passages which he did not understand, and in others he proposed emendations without any apparent reason except novelty. In Romeo and Juliet, IV, ii, 31, Capulet says of Friar Laurence:

Now, afore God! this reverend holy friar,
All our whole city is much bound to him.

Here Warburton has the following note: "For the sake of the grammar, I would suspect Shakespear wrote,

much bound to HYMN.

i. e. praise, celebrate."

Can this be surpassed? The learned editor is not joking either, for the emendation is proposed in all seriousness.

In others of his notes he takes the poet to task for certain passages that he does not like. One he calls "monstrous," of another he says: "nothing can be worse, or more obscurely expressed; and all for the sake of a wretched rhyme." An image he calls "ridiculous," and another passage is "badly expressed."

Warburton's arrogance is apparent in many of his notes, and he evidently considered himself superior to Shakespeare, whose text he did not hesitate to alter whenever it did not suit him. Thus in As You Like It, III, iv, 14, where Rosalind says of Orlando's kissing,

And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread,

which certainly refers to the sacrament of the Church, Warburton alters this to "holy beard," and says: "We should read beard, that is, as the kiss of an holy saint or hermit, called the kiss of charity. This makes the comparison just and decent; the other impious and absurd." And yet "the other" is beyond all doubt what Shakespeare wrote.

Of course there are some good things in Warburton's notes, and his text is better than Pope's, owing to his having retained many of Theobald's best readings. It is more than doubtful if he collated the folios and quartos himself. He appears to have used Theobald's edition to print from, and thus had the benefit of the best text that had then appeared.

Although there had been a long and friendly correspondence between Warburton and Theobald, (which it will be remembered the latter, in his preface, said had been of the greatest assistance to him in the preparation of his edition of Shakespeare,) there appears to have been some bitter quarrel between these quondam friends. Warburton savagely attacks both Theobald and Hanmer in his preface. He says:

The One [Theobald] was recommended to me as a poor Man; the Other [Hanmer] as a poor Critic; and to each of them, at different times, I communicated a great number of Observations, which they managed as they saw fit, to the Relief of their several Distresses. As to Mr. Theobald, who wanted Money, I allowed him to print what I gave him for his own Advantage: and he allowed himself the Liberty of taking one Part for his own, and sequestering another for the benefit, as I supposed, of some future Edition. But, as to the Oxford Editor, who wanted nothing, but what he might very well be without, the Reputation of a Critic, I could not so easily forgive him for trafficking with my Papers without my Knowledge; and, when that Project fail'd, for employing a number of my Conjectures in his Edition against my express Desire not to have that Honour done unto me.

Warburton's arrogance, and his unnecessary changes of the poet's text provoked much criticism, and several writers exposed his blunders. Foremost among these was John Upton's second edition of his Critical Observations on Shakespeare London: 1748, wherein he exposed many absurd mistakes that Warburton had made. Next Thomas Edwards published A Supplement to Mr. Warburton's Edition of Shakespeare, London: 1747. This was a bitter satire on Warburton's work, and met with great success, for no less than seven editions of it were issued, the third of which bore the title of The Canons of Criticism. The latter title was also used in all the subsequent editions. The criticisms in this work are very severe, yet they were deserved. Then came Dr. Zachary Grey, with his Critical, Historical, and Explanatory Notes on Shakespeare, London : 1754, whose criticisms of Warburton's failure as an editor are very just. Benjamin Heath followed, in a volume entitled A Revisal of Shakespeare's Text, London : 1865, and contributed his quota of very severe comments on Warburton's blunders.

Dr. Johnson thus alludes to Warburton :

Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak. Respect is due to high place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration to genius and learning; but he cannot be justly offended at that liberty of which he has himself so frequently given an example, nor very solicitous what is thought of notes, which he ought never to have considered as part of his serious employments, and which, I suppose, since the ardour of composition is remitted, he no longer numbers among his happy effusions.

The original and predominant errour of his commentary is acquiescence in his first thoughts; that precipitation which is produced by consciousness of quick discernment; and that confidence which presumes to do, by surveying the surface which labour only can perform, by penetrating the bottom. His notes exhibit sometimes perverse interpretations, and sometimes improbable conjectures; he at one time gives the authour more profundity of meaning than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader. But his emendations are likewise often happy and just; and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and sagacious.

Of his notes, I have commonly rejected those, against which the general voice of the publick has exclaimed, or which their own incongruity immediately condemns, and which, I suppose, the authour himself would desire to be forgotten. Of the rest, to part I have given the highest approbation, by inserting the offered reading in the text; part I have left to the judgment of the reader, as doubtful, though specious; and part I have censured without reserve, but I am sure without bitterness of malice, and, I hope, without wantoness of insult.

Certainly Dr. Johnson was mild in his censure, but perhaps the high station of Bishop Warburton helped to moderate that which otherwise might have been somewhat stronger.

The poems were not included in the edition.

Warburton received £460 from the booksellers for his editorial labors, which was certainly good payment for what he did.

The same year that the original edition of Warburton appeared, 1747, another was published in Dublin, in eight volumes duodecimo. It is a mere reprint of the former.