SHAKESPEARE UNRAVELED

Measure for Measure holds clues to Shakespeare’s awareness of how church marriage laws affected Jacobean audiences . . Cassidy Cash, host of the podcast, That Shakespeare Life, recently interviewed Cynthia Greenwood about her close study of Measure for Measure, and her research into the way in which Shakespeare’s audiences of 1604 found themselves in the crosshairs of the church courts if they entered into an informal marriage, a practice that had been considered legal for centuries under English common law. In this episode Cynthia explores a revision to canon law in 1604 and how the plot of Measure for Measure suggests Shakespeare’s own awareness of how the law affected ordinary Jacobean citizens. As quoted on ‘That Shakespeare Life’ (Episode 276) at CassidyCash.com: If you… Read More…

In his latest book, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future, the esteemed Shakespearean James Shapiro (author of The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606) shifts his focus to America’s fascination with Shakespeare over the past two centuries. This new work of history comes six years after the author edited a notable compendium of short pieces by renowned American poets, presidents, novelists, statesmen, humorists, artists, and critics, titled Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now. Acknowledging the impossibility of tackling a complete history of Shakespeare in America, Shapiro aims to “drill down more deeply into eight defining moments in America’s history.” By isolating specific historical episodes dating back to… Read More…

In Born with Teeth, a 2022 world premiere on view at the Alley Theatre in Houston, playwright Liz Duffy Adams introduces us to the wildly attractive notion that William Shakespeare, the world’s greatest playwright, actually collaborated with his famous Elizabethan rival, Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, on the Henry VI history cycle from 1591-1593. In her new play Adams chose to revisit this moment after absorbing a radical claim set forth by editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare in 2016. Using computer-based stylometric analysis of word frequency in Shakespeare’s plays to determine who (besides Thomas Nashe) may have contributed to the Henry VI history cycle, the editors concluded that specific sections of two of the plays were composed by Marlowe himself. Surprisingly,… Read More…

TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan: June 14, 2019—Foreword Reviews, a book review journal focusing on independently published books, announced the winners of its INDIES Book of the Year Awards today. The awards recognize the best books published in 2018 from small, indie, and university presses, as well by self-published authors. You can view all of the winners here: https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/winners/2018/ “Being surrounded by the year’s best books from independent writers and publishers is a humbling and invigorating experience that we take seriously at every step of the judging process,” says Managing Editor Michelle Anne Schingler. “As the INDIES progress, our editors, and our librarian and bookseller judges, have the honor and the privilege of discovering and rediscovering independent titles that give us hope… Read More…

Anyone familiar with Charles and Mary Lamb’s 1807 classic, Tales From Shakespeare, will appreciate the motive behind Peter and William Blagys’s new 11- by 17-inch illustrated edition, The Rarer Action: Shakespeare’s The Tempest Retold. As those who tend to be skittish about reading Shakespeare’s plays will discover, this wry, charming retelling of the bard’s most popular romance is much more zany and whimsical than Mary Lamb’s earnest prose adaptation of The Tempest (also adorned by vivid color plates).  Both works, however, share an important and practical aim—to recount the adventures of an exiled duke and his young daughter in an entertaining and accessible manner. The Rarer Action is a collaboration between two brothers—writer Peter W. Blagys and illustrator William A. Blagys—and it is a novel retelling of The Tempest with… Read More…

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, Oxford professor and scholar Emma Smith has revised and re-issued her 2016 study published by Oxford University Press, Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book. Unlike historians who have examined how Hemings and Condell (two of Shakespeare’s fellow King’s Men actors) came to produce a collection of Shakespeare’s plays alongside publishers Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, Smith delves into the reading and collecting habits of those who have bought and sold the First Folio since it debuted in 1623. Smith’s study “begins in the retail bookshop” where early buyers such as Edward Dering may have acquired his first copy. She exhaustively explores how the First Folio… Read More…

In today’s post, I’m re-publishing a review released in 2008 on BlogCritics, which explores Diana Howie’s elegant play, Susanna and Will. Will the real William Shakespeare ever come forward? Not much chance of that, if only in our imaginations. The mystery of Shakespeare’s life and career persists. How do we reconcile our image of the absentee husband and father from Stratford-upon-Avon with the prodigious output of the London-based poet and player? Susanna and Will is an elegant work by playwright Diana Howie, produced in past years by Houston’s Country Playhouse Black Box Productions (now the Queensbury Theatre), as well as Houston’s Main Street Theater. The play imagines the reunion of Susanna Shakespeare and her father, offering satisfying answers to questions that… Read More…