Posts Tagged ‘Shakespeare’
“A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute”*…
Archaeologists working in southeastern China have identified the tomb of Tang Xianzu, a renowned late 16th-century playwright who is often dubbed the country’s Shakespeare.
Known for his defiance of nobles in the Ming dynasty, Tang specialized in exploring the triumph of humanity over hierarchy and authority through works like The Peony Pavilion, which depicted a poor scholar’s love for a noblewoman. In the 55-scene drama, Tang portrays the struggles of a relationship imbued with supernatural power—a young woman is brought back to life by the handsome scholar she had fallen in love with in a dream. The woman’s father, a nobleman, accuses the scholar of being a grave robber (link in Chinese) and has him imprisoned. Fortunately, in a theme that must still resonate today, the scholar is pardoned after securing excellent results in an imperial examination.
Tang died at the age of 66 in 1616, the same year that saw the death of English playwright William Shakespeare…
More at “Archaeologists have found the tomb of China’s Shakespeare.”
* Terence Rattigan
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As we note that Shakespeare might be known as the Tang of England, we might spare a thought for Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev; he died on this date in 1883. A novelist, short story writer, and playwright, he helped define Russian Realism with his first book, A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852); his 1862 novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.
“If there really is such a thing as turning in one’s grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise”*…
Your correspondent is off on a whistle tour of the Midwest. While altogether auspicious, it packs what may be too many stops into too few days… Thus, regular service will likely be interrupted until late this month… See you all again as Independence Day approaches. Meantime, something to keep you amusedly occupied…
A newly redesigned website from Emory University, Shakespeare & the Players, displays a collection of nearly a thousand photo postcards of actors depicting Shakespearean characters on stage, in the late -19th and early-20th centuries. The site is browsable by actor, character, and play.
In the 19th century, scholar Lawrence W. Levine writes, many Americans, even if illiterate, knew and loved Shakespeare’s plays; they were the source material for endless parodies, skits, and songs on the American stage… in the first half of the 19th century, theater “played the role that movies played in the first half of the twentieth … a kaleidoscopic, democratic institution presenting a widely varying bill of fare to all classes and socioeconomic groups.”…
from The Taming of the Shrew
Richard Carline, writing in 1971, says:
Those who only know the postcards of today can scarcely be expected to appreciate what they meant to people sixty or more years ago. Many of us seldom think of buying a picture postcard, except as a matter of convenience; but during the quarter of a century that preceded the Great War in 1914, it would have been hard to find anyone who did not buy postcards from genuine pleasure…
More at “Browse Nearly 1,000 Photo Postcards of Late-19th-Century Stage Productions of Shakespeare,” and at the curator’s preface.
* George Orwell
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As we bark the Bard, we might recall that it was on this ate in 1910 that Florenz Ziegfeld, in a blow against racial prejudice, opened the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910, with actor Bert Williams as co-star, marking the first time white and black entertainers appeared on stage together in a major Broadway production. Williams was one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He was by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920. In 1918, the New York Dramatic Mirror called him “one of the great comedians of the world.” Fellow vaudevillian W.C. Fields, who appeared in productions with Williams, described him as “the funniest man I ever saw – and the saddest man I ever knew.”
“Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me”*…
The British Library has recently digitized part of a multi-authored play, “The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore,” written between about 1596 and 1604. Three pages of this draft of the play are apparently written by William Shakespeare, and they represent the only available sample of his handwriting in a play script.
Another playwright, Anthony Munday, wrote the bulk of the play, about the life of Henry VIII’s chancellor Sir Thomas More. Shakespeare was apparently called in to add a single scene to the middle of the script: a speech the historical More gave on May Day 1517, calming rioters who were looting and destroying property in an attempt to expel foreigners from London…
“Though proving that More’s words were indeed written by Shakespeare is not straightforward, in their keen sympathy for the plight of the alienated and dispossessed they seem to prefigure the insights of great dramas of race such as The Merchant of Venice and Othello,” the British Library’s Andrew Dickson writes. “Whoever wrote them had a fine ear for the way rhetoric can sway a crowd … but also a sharp eye for the troubled relationship between ethnic minorities and majorities.” …
The complete text of the speech, with more of the backstory, at “A Plea on Behalf of Immigrants, Written (Most Likely) in Shakespeare’s Hand, Now Digitized.” Watch it delivered beautifully by Sir Ian McKellen in this short video:
* Carlos Fuentes
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As we marvel that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, we might send absolutist birthday greetings to Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; he was born on this date in 1588. A father of political philosophy and political science, Hobbes developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be “representative” and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid– all this, though Hobbes was, on rational grounds, a champion of absolutism for the sovereign. His 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most later Western political philosophy.
“I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it… Anything is possible on a train”*…
Remember when Google Street View only allowed you to explore streets? Since its launch in 2007, the service has been expanded to include things like coral reefs, hiking trails and the Amazon River. In its latest “off-road” adventure, however, Google Maps has thought smaller – it’s used miniaturized Street View cameras to visually map a model railroad.
The li’l railway in question is actually the world’s largest such exhibit, and it’s much more than just trains and tracks. Located in the city of Hamburg, Miniatur Wunderland spans 1,300 square meters (13,993 sq ft), recreating a number of European and American attractions at a scale of 1:87. It’s full of moving bits and pieces, along with 230,000 miniature inhabitants.
Previously, however, visitors had to view most of it from above, as if they were in an airplane. With the new Street View option, they’re now able to explore its various roads and parks as if they were right down in there…
Ans so one can: wander through the Lilliputian landscape (and check out the video tour) at “Google Maps gives the Street View treatment to world’s largest model railroad.”
* Paul Theroux
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As we get small, we might light a birthday candle for Sir Francis Bacon– English Renaissance philosopher, lawyer, linguist, composer, mathematician, geometer, musician, poet, painter, astronomer, classicist, philosopher, historian, theologian, architect, father of modern science (The Baconian– aka The Scientific– Method), and patron of modern democracy, whom some allege was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I of England… but who was in any event born on this date in 1561.
Bacon (whose Essays were, in a fashion, the first “management book” in English) was, in Alexander Pope’s words, “the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced.” He probably did not actually write the plays attributed to Shakespeare (as a thin, but long, line of enthusiasts, including Mark Twain and Friedrich Nietzsche, believed). But Bacon did observe, in a discussion of sedition that’s as timely today as ever, that “the remedy is worse than the disease.”
“Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’… Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land”*…
The rough beauty of the American West seems as far as you can get from the polished corridors of power in Washington DC. Until you look at the title to the land. The federal government owns large tracts of the western states: from a low of 29.9% in Montana, already more than the national average, up to a whopping 84.5% in Nevada…
More on government land, the uses to which it is put, and the issues it raises at “How the West Is Owned.”
* John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
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As we wonder what Horace Greeley was on about, we might recall that it was on this date in 1601 that agents of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, paid Shakespeare’s theater troupe, The Lord Chamberlin’s Men, to perform Richard II. The group had been reluctant to dust off the by-then old piece of repertoire, but were convinced by a 40 shilling “gratuity.” Essex’s purpose in the endeavor was to stir the public against Queen Elizabeth (who identified– and was identified with– the childless, and thus heir-less Richard II, who is deposed in the play).
Essex had squandered and blundered his way into financial trouble and out of the Queen’s graces; desperate, he had plotted a rebellion that he launched two days after the play’s performance– only to find that he had garnered no support at all from the people. He was quickly captured by Elizabeth’s Lord High Admiral (the Earl of Nottingham) and his men, tried, convicted, and on February 25th, less than two weeks after his patronage of the stage, beheaded at the Tower of London.
The rebellious Earl of Essex
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