Shakespeare's First Folio, 1623
Jun 18, 2013 5:24:28 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2013 5:24:28 GMT -5
Good morning to you all! I trust that all is well with everyone reading 'The Third' today. Last week, an acquaintance of mine called Robert organised a fascinating trip to the Guildhall Archives in the heart of the City of London.
London Cultureseekers Group - The Guildhall Archives
One of the many highlights of the visit was a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, published in 1623. At two o'clock this afternoon, there is a free lecture about it at Guildhall Library, if anyone is interested in going. The Shakespeare First Folio is one of the most famous books in the world. This lecture by Dr Emma Smith will introduce the book, its editors and publishers, and its first buyers and readers, describing its genesis in the Jacobean theatre and its ongoing life across the world. Guildhall Library’s First Folio will be on display, once again.
Guildhall Library - Lecture - Shakespeare's First Folio, 1623
The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument about whether someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective term for adherents of the various alternative-authorship theories—say that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason did not want or could not accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe belief and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims.
Wikipedia - Shakespeare authorship question
Although one or two of William Shakespeare's plays may have been collaborations, there is little evidence to suggest that the vast majority of his work was not written by Shakespeare himself. I suppose that his very genius makes people wonder whether a grammar school boy from Stratford-upon-Avon could have penned such plays, but a mass of evidence from his own time shows that a man called William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. Much of it comes from public sources, such as many title pages of plays and poems published in his lifetime, and references in works by other writers such as Francis Meres, who in 1598 named Shakespeare as the author of twelve plays, and John Weever, who wrote a poem addressed to Shakespeare.
Other references come from manuscript sources, such as references in accounts of court performances, many entries in the Stationers' Register (a volume in which publishers and printers were required to register the works they intended to publish), a note about Hamlet by the writer Gabriel Harvey, and William Drummond's notes of his private conversations with Ben Jonson.
Explicit evidence that the Shakespeare who wrote the plays was the man of Stratford-upon-Avon is provided by his monument in Holy Trinity Church, which compares the man of Stratford with great figures of antiquity, by Ben Jonson's verses in the First Folio, which call him the 'sweet swan of Avon', and, also in the Folio, by verses by Leonard Digges which refer to his 'Stratford monument'. There is also much oblique evidence, such as the fact that visitors to Stratford during the seventeenth century sought to learn more about its most famous former inhabitant.
RSC - Authorship debate
Last summer, London's Cultureseekers, a Group of which Robert happens to be the Organizer, stormed the British Museum in force to see a brilliant exhibition about the life and times of William Shakespeare.
London Cultureseekers Group - 'Shakespeare - Staging the World' Exhibition @ the British Museum
Writing in 'The Telegraph', Richard Dorment was dazzled by the British Museum exhibition in 2012 that used both artefacts and film to immerse you in the playwright’s life and times.
Telegraph - Shakespeare: Staging the World, review
Richard concluded his review by confessing that it was impossible for him to do more than skim the surface of this remarkable exhibition. If you missed the show, here is Shakespeare, staging the world, online:
British Museum - Shakespeare: staging the world
The catalogue by Bate and Thornton is well worth reading for its own sake, and once you start you won’t be able to stop. Here it is, in part, online:
British Museum Shop - Shakespeare: staging the world
One of the principal items on display, “Exhibit A” to illustrate the contemporary dramatist Ben Jonson’s line that Shakespeare was “not of an age, but for all time”, was a book known as “the Robben Island Bible”.
BBC Radio 4 - Shakespeare's Restless World - Shakespeare Goes Global
Writing in the FT, John Carlin explains how Robben Island was the Alcatraz on the South Atlantic where Nelson Mandela and other South African political prisoners spent many years of their lives; the “Bible” was a collection of the complete works of William Shakespeare smuggled into the jail in the 1970s by a prisoner called Sonny Venkatrathnam. They called it the Bible because Venkatrathnam cheated the prison censorship system by telling his warders that it was a Hindu religious work. But there was another reason, too. As the book circulated, Shakespeare’s poems and plays acquired the condition of secular scripture, interpreted by one and all much as believers might the Koran, the Christian Bible or, for that matter, Karl Marx.
FT - To kill, or not to kill?
London Cultureseekers Group - The Guildhall Archives
One of the many highlights of the visit was a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, published in 1623. At two o'clock this afternoon, there is a free lecture about it at Guildhall Library, if anyone is interested in going. The Shakespeare First Folio is one of the most famous books in the world. This lecture by Dr Emma Smith will introduce the book, its editors and publishers, and its first buyers and readers, describing its genesis in the Jacobean theatre and its ongoing life across the world. Guildhall Library’s First Folio will be on display, once again.
Guildhall Library - Lecture - Shakespeare's First Folio, 1623
The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument about whether someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective term for adherents of the various alternative-authorship theories—say that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason did not want or could not accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe belief and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims.
Wikipedia - Shakespeare authorship question
Although one or two of William Shakespeare's plays may have been collaborations, there is little evidence to suggest that the vast majority of his work was not written by Shakespeare himself. I suppose that his very genius makes people wonder whether a grammar school boy from Stratford-upon-Avon could have penned such plays, but a mass of evidence from his own time shows that a man called William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. Much of it comes from public sources, such as many title pages of plays and poems published in his lifetime, and references in works by other writers such as Francis Meres, who in 1598 named Shakespeare as the author of twelve plays, and John Weever, who wrote a poem addressed to Shakespeare.
Other references come from manuscript sources, such as references in accounts of court performances, many entries in the Stationers' Register (a volume in which publishers and printers were required to register the works they intended to publish), a note about Hamlet by the writer Gabriel Harvey, and William Drummond's notes of his private conversations with Ben Jonson.
Explicit evidence that the Shakespeare who wrote the plays was the man of Stratford-upon-Avon is provided by his monument in Holy Trinity Church, which compares the man of Stratford with great figures of antiquity, by Ben Jonson's verses in the First Folio, which call him the 'sweet swan of Avon', and, also in the Folio, by verses by Leonard Digges which refer to his 'Stratford monument'. There is also much oblique evidence, such as the fact that visitors to Stratford during the seventeenth century sought to learn more about its most famous former inhabitant.
RSC - Authorship debate
Last summer, London's Cultureseekers, a Group of which Robert happens to be the Organizer, stormed the British Museum in force to see a brilliant exhibition about the life and times of William Shakespeare.
London Cultureseekers Group - 'Shakespeare - Staging the World' Exhibition @ the British Museum
Writing in 'The Telegraph', Richard Dorment was dazzled by the British Museum exhibition in 2012 that used both artefacts and film to immerse you in the playwright’s life and times.
Telegraph - Shakespeare: Staging the World, review
Richard concluded his review by confessing that it was impossible for him to do more than skim the surface of this remarkable exhibition. If you missed the show, here is Shakespeare, staging the world, online:
British Museum - Shakespeare: staging the world
The catalogue by Bate and Thornton is well worth reading for its own sake, and once you start you won’t be able to stop. Here it is, in part, online:
British Museum Shop - Shakespeare: staging the world
One of the principal items on display, “Exhibit A” to illustrate the contemporary dramatist Ben Jonson’s line that Shakespeare was “not of an age, but for all time”, was a book known as “the Robben Island Bible”.
BBC Radio 4 - Shakespeare's Restless World - Shakespeare Goes Global
Writing in the FT, John Carlin explains how Robben Island was the Alcatraz on the South Atlantic where Nelson Mandela and other South African political prisoners spent many years of their lives; the “Bible” was a collection of the complete works of William Shakespeare smuggled into the jail in the 1970s by a prisoner called Sonny Venkatrathnam. They called it the Bible because Venkatrathnam cheated the prison censorship system by telling his warders that it was a Hindu religious work. But there was another reason, too. As the book circulated, Shakespeare’s poems and plays acquired the condition of secular scripture, interpreted by one and all much as believers might the Koran, the Christian Bible or, for that matter, Karl Marx.
" ... As Dora Thornton, the curator of the British Museum exhibition put it, “They used him as a way of developing their own moral sense.” With Shakespeare having anticipated and explored the competing questions of leadership and self-doubt, idealism and expediency, ambition and loyalty that bedevil politicians everywhere and always, but all the more urgently at times of national conflict, Mandela and his comrades drew from his works to shape political debate and lay the philosophical foundations for political action."
FT - To kill, or not to kill?