The Shakespeare Circle


Book Description

This collection tells the life stories of the people whom we know Shakespeare encountered, shedding new light on Shakespeare's life and times.




The Guild and Guild Buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford


Book Description

The guild buildings of Shakespeare’s Stratford represent a rare instance of a largely unchanged set of buildings which draw together the threads of the town’s civic life. With its multi-disciplinary perspectives on this remarkable group of buildings, this volume provides a comprehensive account of the religious, educational, legal, social and theatrical history of Stratford, focusing on the sixteenth century and Tudor Reformation. The essays interweave with one another to provide a map of the complex relationships between the buildings and their history. Opening with an investigation of the Guildhall, which served as the headquarters of the Guild of the Holy Cross until the Tudor Reformation, the book explores the building’s function as a centre of local government and community law and as a place of entertainment and education. It is beyond serious doubt that Shakespeare was a school boy here, and the many visits to the Guildhall by professional touring players during the latter half of the sixteenth-century may have prompted his acting and playwriting career. The Guildhall continues to this day to house a school for the education of secondary-level boys. The book considers educational provision during the mid sixteenth century as well as examining the interaction between touring players and the everyday politics and social life of Stratford. At the heart of the volume is archaeological and documentary research which uses up-to-date analysis and new dendrochronological investigations to interpret the buildings and their medieval wall paintings as well as proposing a possible location of the school before it transferred to the Guildhall. Together with extensive archival research into the town’s Court of Record which throws light on the commercial and social activities of the period, this rich body of research brings us closer to life as it was lived in Shakespeare’s Stratford.







Shakespeare Before Shakespeare


Book Description

Before William Shakespeare wrote world-famous plays on the themes of power and political turmoil, the Shakespeare family of Stratford-upon-Avon and their neighbors and friends were plagued by false accusations and feuds with the government — conflicts that shaped Shakespeare's sceptical understanding of the realities of power. This ground-breaking study of the world of the young William Shakespeare in Stratford and Warwickshire discusses many recent archival discoveries to consider three linked families, the Shakespeares, the Dudleys, and the Ardens, and their battles over regional power and government corruption. Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick, used politics, the law, history, and lineage to establish their authority in Warwickshire and Stratford, challenging political and social structures and collective memory in the region. The resistance of Edward Arden — often claimed as kin to Mary Arden, Shakespeare's mother — and his friends and family culminated in his execution on false treason charges in 1583. By then the Shakespeare family also had direct experience with the London government's power: in 1569, Exchequer informers, backed by influential politicians at Court, accused John Shakespeare, William's father, of illegal wool- dealing and usury. Despite previous claims that John had resolved these charges by 1572, the book's new sources show the Exchequer's continuing demands forced his withdrawal from Stratford politics by 1577, and undermined his business career in the early 1580s, when young William first gained an understanding of his father's troubles. At the same time, Edward Arden's condemnation by the Elizabethan regime proved problematic for the Shakespeares' friends and neighbours, the Quineys, who were accused of maintaining financial connections to the traitorous Ardens — though Stratford people were convinced of their innocence. This complicated community directly impacted Shakespeare's own perspective on local and national politics and social structures, connecting his early experiences in Stratford and Warwickshire with many of the themes later found in his plays.




Imagining Shakespeare's Wife


Book Description

Examines representations of Anne Hathaway from the eighteenth century to contemporary portrayals in theatre, biographies and novels.




She Hath Been Reading


Book Description

In the late nineteenth century hundreds of clubs formed across the United States devoted to the reading of Shakespeare. From Pasadena, California, to the seaside town of Camden, Maine; from the isolated farm town of Ottumwa, Iowa, to Mobile, Alabama, on the Gulf coast, Americans were reading Shakespeare in astonishing numbers and in surprising places. Composed mainly of women, these clubs offered the opportunity for members not only to read and study Shakespeare but also to participate in public and civic activities outside the home. In She Hath Been Reading, Katherine West Scheil uncovers this hidden layer of intellectual activity that flourished in American society well into the twentieth century. Shakespeare clubs were crucial for women’s intellectual development because they provided a consistent intellectual stimulus (more so than was the case with most general women’s clubs) and because women discovered a world of possibilities, both public and private, inspired by their reading of Shakespeare. Indeed, gathering to read and discuss Shakespeare often led women to actively improve their lot in life and make their society a better place. Many clubs took action on larger social issues such as women’s suffrage, philanthropy, and civil rights. At the same time, these efforts served to embed Shakespeare into American culture as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations, varying in age, race, location, and social standing. Based on extensive research in the archives of the Folger Shakespeare Library and in dozens of local archives and private collections across America, She Hath Been Reading shows the important role that literature can play in the lives of ordinary people. As testament to this fact, the book includes an appendix listing more than five hundred Shakespeare clubs across America.




Shakespeare


Book Description

From the entry of Shakespeare's birth in the Stratford church register to a Norwegian production of Macbeth in which the hero was represented by a tomato, this enthralling and splendidly illustrated book tells the story of Shakespeare's life, his writings, and his afterlife. Drawing on a lifetime's experience of studying, teaching, editing, and writing about Shakespeare, Stanley Wells combines scholarly authority with authorial flair in a book that will appeal equally to the specialist and the untutored enthusiast. Chapters on Shakespeare's life in Stratford and in London offer a fresh view of the development of the writer's career and personality. At the core of the book lies a magisterial study of the writings themselves--how Shakespeare set about writing a play, his relationships with the company of actors with whom he worked, his developing mastery of the literary and rhetorical skills that he learned at the Stratford grammar school, the essentially theatrical quality of the structure and language of his plays. Subsequent chapters trace the fluctuating fortunes of his reputation and influence. Here are accounts of adaptations, productions, and individual performances in England and, increasingly, overseas; of great occasions such as the Garrick Jubilee and the tercentenary celebrations of 1864; of the spread of Shakespeare's reputation in France and Germany, Russia and America, and, more recently, the Far East; of Shakespearian discoveries and forgeries; of critical reactions, favorable and otherwise, and of scholarly activity; of paintings, music, films and other works of art inspired by the plays; of the plays' use in education and the political arena, and of the pleasure and intellectual stimulus that they have given to an increasingly international public. Shakespeare, said Ben Jonson, was not of an age but for all time. This is a book about him for our time.




Family Life in Shakespeare's England


Book Description

Using the evidence of wills and inventories, Jeanne Jones has built up a detailed picture of everyday life in Stratford, with chapters on where and how people lived, what they did for a living, standards of literacy, marriage, families and friends




Shakespeare and the Ethics of War


Book Description

How does Shakespeare represent war? This volume reviews scholarship to date on the question and introduces new perspectives, looking at contemporary conflict through the lens of the past. Through his haunting depiction of historical bloodshed, including the Trojan War, the fall of the Roman Republic, and the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare illuminates more recent political violence, ranging from the British occupation of Ireland to the Spanish Civil War, the Balkans War, and the past several decades of U. S. military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can a war be just? What is the relation between the ruler and the ruled? What motivates ethnic violence? Shakespeare’s plays serve as the frame for careful explorations of perennial problems of human co-existence: the politics of honor, the ethics of diplomacy, the responsibility of non-combatants, and the tension between idealism and Realpolitik.




Shakespeare and the Arab World


Book Description

Offering a variety of perspectives on the history and role of Arab Shakespeare translation, production, adaptation and criticism, this volume explores both international and locally focused Arab/ic appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. In addition to Egyptian and Palestinian theatre, the contributors to this collection examine everything from an Omani performance in Qatar and an Upper Egyptian television series to the origin of the sonnets to an English-language novel about the Lebanese civil war. Addressing materials produced in several languages from literary Arabic (fuṣḥā) and Egyptian colloquial Arabic (‘ammiyya) to Swedish and French, these scholars and translators vary in discipline and origin, and together exhibit the diversity and vibrancy of this field.