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 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…

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…

Today only the watery foundations of the Elizabethan Rose theatre’s 14-sided timber structure are still standing on London’s Bankside (south of the Thames River), located about 100 meters from the new Globe theatre. The Rose Playhouse, built in 1587, housed the acting troupe known as the Admiral’s Men and their legendary Christopher Marlowe interpreter, Edward Alleyn. Recently the producers of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre decided to allow playgoers to experience the intimacy of a Shakespeare play within the Rose playhouse. So they created a four-play repertory that could be performed inside two temporary structures that bear a striking resemblance to the Rose’s thatched roof and timber structure. These two Rose theatre facsimiles are notable for being open to the sun and… Read More…