On the Date, Sources and Design of Shakespeare's The Tempest


Book Description

This book challenges a longstanding and deeply ingrained belief in Shakespearean studies that The Tempest--long supposed to be Shakespeare's last play--was not written until 1611. In the course of investigating this proposition, which has not received the critical inquiry it deserves, a number of subsidiary and closely related interpretative puzzles come sharply into focus. These include the play's sources of New World imagery; its festival symbolism and structure; its relationship to William Strachey's True Reportory account of the 1609 Bermuda wreck of the Sea Venture (not published until 1625)--and the tangled history of how and why scholars have for so long misunderstood these matters. Publication of some preliminary elements of the authors' arguments in leading Shakespearean journals (starting in 2007) ignited a controversy that became part of the critical history. This book presents the case in full for the first time.




On the Date, Sources and Design of Shakespeare's The Tempest


Book Description

This book challenges a longstanding and deeply ingrained belief in Shakespearean studies that The Tempest--long supposed to be Shakespeare's last play--was not written until 1611. In the course of investigating this proposition, which has not received the critical inquiry it deserves, a number of subsidiary and closely related interpretative puzzles come sharply into focus. These include the play's sources of New World imagery; its festival symbolism and structure; its relationship to William Strachey's True Reportory account of the 1609 Bermuda wreck of the Sea Venture (not published until 1625)--and the tangled history of how and why scholars have for so long misunderstood these matters. Publication of some preliminary elements of the authors' arguments in leading Shakespearean journals (starting in 2007) ignited a controversy that became part of the critical history. This book presents the case in full for the first time.




Shakespeare and the Mediterranean 2: The Tempest


Book Description

Is Shakespeare’s The Tempest a Mediterranean play? This volume explores the relationship between The Tempest and the Mediterranean Sea and analyses it from different perspectives. Some essays focus on close readings of the text in order to explore the importance of the Mediterranean Sea for the genesis of the play and the narration of the past and present events in which the Shakespearean characters participate. Other chapters investigate the relationship between the Shakespearean play, its resources from the Mediterranean Graeco-Latin past and its afterlives in twentieth-century poems looking at the Mediterranean dimension of the play. Moreover, influences on and of The Tempest are investigated, looking at how Italian Renaissance music may have influenced some choices concerning Ariel’s song(s) and how The Tempest has shaped the production of twentieth-century Italian directors. Finally, other chapters try to reaffirm the centrality of the Mediterranean Sea in The Tempest, bringing to the fore new textual evidence in support of the Mediterraneity of the play, by adopting and/or criticising recent approaches.




Who Wrote That?


Book Description

Who Wrote That? examines nine authorship controversies, providing an introduction to particular disputes and teaching students how to assess historical documents, archival materials, and apocryphal stories, as well as internet sources and news. Donald Ostrowski does not argue in favor of one side over another but focuses on the principles of attribution used to make each case. While furthering the field of authorship studies, Who Wrote That? provides an essential resource for instructors at all levels in various subjects. It is ultimately about historical detective work. Using Moses, Analects, the Secret Gospel of Mark, Abelard and Heloise, the Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din, Shakespeare, Prince Andrei Kurbskii, James MacPherson, and Mikhail Sholokov, Ostrowski builds concrete examples that instructors can use to help students uncover the legitimacy of authorship and to spark the desire to turn over the hidden layers of history so necessary to the craft.




Moniment


Book Description

Most people are completely unaware that the Shakespeare authorship question is the greatest cultural mystery in Western Civilization. Few realize that Will Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon was an uneducated grain speculator and real estate investor who could not read or write, yet he was chosen as the front man for a fraudulent conspiracy perpetrated by Queen Elizabeth's chief counselor, Robert Cecil, for reasons of monarchial succession, greed and power. The astonishing power of Conventional Wisdom has kept the ruse going, perpetrated by Professors of English who cannot break the tenacious shackles of their guild mythology and thus refuse to believe the reams of authoritative evidence discovered in the past century in favor of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as Shakespeare. Volume 10 of this anthology series--Moniment-- contains eighteen brilliant, compelling articles by highly qualified authorship experts who convincingly reinforce the case for Edward de Vere and annihilate the completely impossible candidacy of the illiterate Stratford Man. Judge Philip Howerton, Jr. BA, JD: "It doesn't take an 'academically based' person to realize that the quarter page of known facts of William Shakspere's life can be mastered by a twelve year old and that all the rest of the stuff that has been written--in the attempt to connect his 'life' and the works--by [Professors] Brown, Chambers, Chute, Rowse, Schoenbaum, et al, ad nauseam, is, and always has been, as Vladimir Nabokov once put it, in another context, 'thirty-two percent nonsense and fifty of neutral padding.' "[Scottish Author]Josephine Tey called it 'tonypandy' [a nonsensical, untrue story grown to legend and accepted by the public in the face of all evidence to the contrary]." Michael H. Hart, Ph.D. in Astrophysics, Princeton. Author of The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History: "I made a serious error in the first edition when, without carefully checking the facts, I simply 'followed the crowd' and accepted the Stratford man as the author of the [Shakespeare] plays. Since then I have carefully examined the arguments on both sides of the question and have concluded that the weight of the evidence is heavily against the Stratford man and in favor of de Vere."




forum for inter-american research Vol 5


Book Description

Volume 5 of 6 of the complete premium print version of journal forum for inter-american research (fiar), which is the official electronic journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS). fiar was established by the American Studies Program at Bielefeld University in 2008. We foster a dialogic and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the Americas. fiar is a peer-reviewed online journal. Articles in this journal undergo a double-blind review process and are published in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.




The Tempest: A Critical Reader


Book Description

The Tempest contains sublime poetry and catchy songs, magic and low comedy, while it tackles important contemporary concerns: education, power politics, the effects of colonization, and technology. In this guide, Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan open up new ways into one of Shakespeare's most popular, malleable and controversial plays.




Shakespeare and Costume in Practice


Book Description

What is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor’s work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre – and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage.




The Reader's Companion to The Death of Shakespeare


Book Description

The historical record for William Shakespeare being bare, The Death of Shakespeare imagines how the 17th Earl of Oxford wrote the plays, with occasional help from Shakespeare. The Reader's Companion to The Death of Shakespeare contains notes made while writing the novel that was distilled into The Reader’s Companion to help separate fact from fiction.




Antedating Shakespeare's Poems and Plays


Book Description

The academic community treats the chronology of Shakespeare’s works as settled. He supposedly served an apprenticeship collaborating on plays in the 1580s, wrote two great poems in the early 90s, three plays a year from the mid-90s, some problem plays around the turn of the century, then his greatest tragedies, and finally some “romances” late in his career. This investigation highlights the flaws in the consensus view: over-reliance on precarious stylometrics, dubious identification of topical relevance, and unfounded conviction that composition preceded publication, performance, or first mention by only a short interval. Concentrating on his poems and six of his plays, the study ascribes parallels in others’ literary works to their authors’ imitation or parodying of Shakespeare, not vice versa. The importance of patronage circles rather than London theatre companies to writers, players, and printers is spelled out. The conclusion is that Shakespeare’s works must be radically antedated.