This is slightly off-topic, but an interesting experiment in world-wide theater is coming up this week that is worthy of note in this space: Helen Mirren's acclaimed star turn in the British National Theatre's production of Racine's tragedy Phèdre(aka Phaedra) will be simulcast live to 80 different cinemas around the world on Thursday (June 25).
The modern-dress production uses an adaptation -- by one-time English Poet Laureate Ted Hughes -- of the (French) text and has been the talk of the London theatre world. No less significant, for younger fans, is the fact that Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia!) shares the bill with the acclaimed elder stateswoman of the British stage. Links after the jump.
National Theatre's Phèdre page
June 25 international simulcast: UK, US, elsewhere
Conversation with Helen Mirren on BBC Radio 4's arts & culture program "Start The Week"
Glowing review of Phèdre on "Theatre Talk" from KCRW (Santa Monica, Calif.)
Monday, June 22, 2009
Phaedra: Get Thee to a Cinema
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Mark Twain: The other Shakespeare centenary
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shake-speare's Sonnets -- one of two important Bard-related centennials to come up in 2009.
The other is the 100-year anniversary of the publication of Mark Twain's signature anti-Stratfordian book, Is Shakespeare Dead?, an authorship-related tome that still hasn't been matched in its wit and breezy readability.
Today's New York Times' Times Traveler archive blog reprints a mini-tempest that was stirred up when Twain printed his witty diatribe against "Stratfordolators," as he called the orthodox Shakespeareans. Clips after the jump.
The controversy arose over Twain's excerpting of 22 pages-worth of the classic anti-Stratfordian book The Shakespeare Problem Restated by George G. Greenwood.
Ironically, Twain reprinted a chapter from Greenwood's landmark book and stated as much -- but, crucially, he also neglected to cite Greenwood by name as the excerpt's author.
Below are excerpts from the June 9, 1909 NYT article "Can Mark Twain Be A Literary Pirate?"
[Twain's publisher Harper & Bros. stated,] "The manuscript, exactly as he gave it to us, with the title, 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' was put into book form as quickly as we could do it.
"No one thought of looking particularly to see if Mr. Twain had given credit to Mr. Greenwood. It was noticed that the book itself was credited, and that seemed sufficient. Later on, when the John Lane Company [Greenwood's publisher] called our attention to it, we learned that Mark Twain had failed to speak of Mr. Greenwood. We felt very sorry about it then, but it was too late to recall the edition. We don't put the blame on Mark Twain exactly. Of course if we had noticed the omission we would have called his attention to it. Quite likely it escaped his notice, as it did ours. He didn't mean to be unethical."
...
'"Is Shakespeare Dead?" is being sold here [in the U.S.] unrestricted, but in England the John Lane Company, protected by copyight laws which do not extend to their books in this country, are watching to prevent a copy of Mark Twain's volume from being marketed.
"We don't like to be discourteous about this," said Mr. [Rutger Bleecker] Jewett [manager of John Lane Co.], "but we feel we must protect the authors who put their confidence in us. Mark Twain should have been more careful."
...
An effort was made yesterday to see Mark Twain, but he was not at his home in Redding, Conn., and could not be reached."
[h/t to G.Q. and W.N.; Creative Commons image from Okinawa Soba]
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Titanic: The Prequel
Historian, author and blogger Robert Sean Brazil notes today that exactly four centuries ago, on June 2, 1609, English adventurers set sail for the New World on a mission that would end in a famous shipwreck.
Orthodox Shakespeare scholars argue that accounts of the July 1609 shipwreck are a crucial source for The Tempest. As has been discussed in this space before, those claims have since been refuted.
All the same, the story of the 1609 shipwreck is still an amazing nautical tale, and Brazil delivers the storytelling goods.
Excerpts from Brazil's account of the 1609 wreck after the jump
He writes:
The Sea Venture is said to have been England’s first built-to-order emigration vessel…a tradition that climaxed in the industrial age when thousands of Scots and Irish were forcibly uprooted and relocated to Nova Scotia and other destinations. The Sea Venture displaced 300 tons and had an innovative new design that placed her 24 defensive cannons on the main deck. However, with all this high technology employed, the Sea Venture’s fate was similar to the ill-fated Titanic. Both vessels did not survive their maiden voyages.
The Sea Venture set sail from Plymouth on June 2, 1609, bound for Jamestown, Virginia. Everything was going smoothly until the flotilla ran into a monstrous hurricane. By July 24, the winds had driven the vessels apart from each other and it was each ship for herself. Because the Sea Venture was brand new, the caulking and joining was still loose and the great vessel began coming apart and leaking. They threw the heavy guns overboard. On July 25, with water in the hold rising fast, Admiral Somers spotted land and purposely drove the ship ashore. He wrecked his vessel but discovered Bermuda.
We now know the Bard didn't use this gripping material for his scripts. But it's never too late. Somebody should.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Overbury Overdrive: Live and in concert
For Boston-area residents, tonight and tomorrow in Watertown, Mass. will be home to an event called Shakespeare from the Oxfordian Perspective, with Hank Whittemore's one-man show "Shakespeare's Treason" this evening and public talks at the Watertown Public Library tomorrow -- including discussions about Shakspere's last will and testament, Ben Jonson & The Tempest and the succession crisis of the 1590s.
I'll also be giving a public talk ("Overjoyed, Over Him, Overbury: The New 'Cobbe Portrait of Shakespeare' and what it means for the authorship question") tomorrow at 11:15 a.m.
Links here to the program and directions.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
"Billy Vanilli?"
Just a great little Shakespeare authorship-related blog headline posted today.
William Shakespeare: Business man and Actor. Milli Vanilli??
Who is this man? Did he write all those plays and sonnets or was he a cover for someone or some group?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Monstrous Adversary's Adversary
"Shakespeare" By Another Name first appeared in print, in 2005, soon after Liverpool University Press published an academic biography of Edward de Vere by Prof. Alan Nelson of the University of California, Berkeley. And I've been asked countless times what I think of this book.
Monstrous Adversary is, in short, an infuriating book. And the following set of capsule reviews provides a good sense why.
If Monstrous were just a hatchet job, then it'd be easily dismissed, full stop. But some great, groundbreaking, rock-solid scholarship awaits in there scattered amidst wild-eyed polemic (so viciously against de Vere you almost feel dirty reading the thing), scattered amidst some real howlers of sloppy scholarship too.
There's no simple answer -- at least if you're a curious person looking for as many leads as possible into de Vere's life. I couldn't honestly tell an interested scholar that I don't in some sense recommend the book. But caveat emptor, to be sure.
That said, the book appeared on my desk in time to be able to fit much of Nelson's new scholarship into the narrative of SBAN.
After the jump, I excerpt my favorite review from this latest bunch: From someone who's only interested in biographies about nobility of the period and has no personal ax to grind one way or another on the de Vere = "Shakespeare" question.
The reviewer notes...
I have for some years been interested in the nobility of 16th and 17th century England, and have read a number of pretty good biographies, so looked forward to MONSTROUS ADVERSARY with great anticipation. Unfortunately it was clear early on in the book that Nelson was anything but a disinterested biographer. The tone of the book breathes hostility toward its subject, and after having read it, as well as having looked over Nelson's web site, it's obvious why. This was not a biography per se, it was a polemic, in the guise of a biography, against the idea that de Vere was Shakespeare. Whether that idea is harebrained or not - and Nelson believes it is - is beside the point. Nelson misses no opportunity to defame de Vere, treating as valid every scrap of negative evidence, however dubious - for example, that given by his Catholic ex-friends after he had delivered them to the authorities. Nelson's interpretations are the mirror image of [Bernard M.] Ward's, as he describes the earlier writer's 1928 biography [of de Vere]; where [Ward] infers nothing but the best of his subject, Nelson infers nothing but the worst. I note that Nelson is not a historian, and quite frankly, it shows. That he relies on the likes of William F. Buckley - one of the lousiest writers of fiction I've come across - as an arbiter of de Vere's poetry implies that he must be pretty desperate to prove his case, whatever its merits. He dismisses Ward's book as "hagiography"; as I remember it, having read it years ago, it was pretty good. Nelson's, in any case, is a "hatchet job".
As to matters of style, I can do no better than quote the end of the very first sentence of the Introduction, which made my heart sink from the get-go: "[de Vere's life] ... just overlapped the reign of Elizabeth I at both ends". Ugh. And Nelson is ... oh, yes, Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Ye gods.
Having paid good money for what I assumed was going to be a biography, I ended up with a screed that was obviously produced to demolish the de Vere = Shakespeare movement. If that's what Nelson wanted to write, potential readers should have been made aware of this. As it stands, this anything but impartial view of de Vere disqualifies MONSTROUS ADVERSARY as legitimate biography, for all its invaluable documentation.
Friday, May 08, 2009
Overbury Overdrive - the Radio Parallax edition
The April 30 episode of the radio program Radio Parallax featured an interview with yours truly talking both about the "new Shakespeare portrait" kerfuffle and, more generally, about the authorship question. For your listening enjoinment:
