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Lecture Notes The Shakespeare Industry
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Lecture Notes The Shakespeare Industry
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Week 2 07/09/2020BIOGRAPHIES AND BIOGRAPHERS
Layers of meaning
- Author
- Editor
- Director
- Actors
- Critics
- Direct interpretation of the audience
- Audience
Biographies are important for the Shakespeare Industry.
—> hardly a year goes by without a new Shakespeare biography appearing.
Michael Dobson —> Shakespeare was a genius and a supernatural experience.
If Shakespeare had stays in Stratford he might not have become as famous as he is; going to
London really helped him become more well known and successful.
Dowden —> the life (the autobiography) is more important than the poem itself (that is secondary).
Dowden’s scheme
- In the workshop (apprentice work)
- In the world (history plays)
- Out of the depths (tragedies and dark comedies)
- On the heights (romances)
A biography is a kind of history writing, history writing is a lot like writing a novel.
History is an art form, any historical work can be analysed do be e narrative of ction (that does
not mean that the events in such stories are ctional, they should not be).
- “Historical works are made up of events that exist outside the consciousness of the writer.
The events reported in a novel can be invented in a way that they cannot be (or are not
supposed to be) in a history” - Hayden White
Elements in all Anti-Stratfordian theories
- Shakespeare is provincial
- Never went to school, illiterate
- Unable to write plays retiring leaning, languages, and knowledge of life at court
- Real author is courtier or aristocrat
- Could not publish plays under own name
- Too scandalous
- Conspiracy: used Shakespeare’s name in exchange for money.
Why Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare
- Paper trail
- Testimonies of contemporaries that WS was an author
- Dating
- Stratford and Shakespeare’s private life re ected in plays
- The problem with conspiracies
Paper Trail
- A man from Stratford
- Shakespeare’s baptism.
- Father was a prosperous lovemaker, became a mayor in Stratford.
- Shakespeare applied for a code of arms.
- Stratford Grammar school? —> no records for this era, we can assume that the mayor’s
eldest son went to that school
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fl fi fi
, - Seven lost years …-…
- Starting his acting career in London?
- Taking care of the horses outside the theatre?
- Being a schoolmaster…?
- There are records of him being a player in various other theatre companies.
- Was the man in London the same as the man in stratford?
- Author was born in stratford.
- The First folio, 1623 —> collected works of Shakespeare brought out by contemporaries
- Shakespeare died in 1616.
- Shakespeare as a witness in a court case in London.
- The Shakespeare from Stratford let lodges in London —> why would he do that? Unless he’s
a playwright!
Testimonies of contemporaries
- Shakespeare was mentioned on records of court performances / revels o ce.
- Contemporary witnesses who knew him, not who necessarily liked him.
- Robert Greene, 1592, he was dying, he was jealous of Shakespeare.
- Francis Meres, 1598, mentioned Shakespeare and his plays.
- Preface of the rst folio, it’s very clear who about wrote it.
- Ben Jonson wrote about Shakespeare, told anecdotes about how Shakespeare wrote.
Dating the Canon
- Some dates
- Death of Oxford: 1604
- Wreck of the sea venture: 1609
- Pamphlets: late 1610
- The tempest rst performed at court: late 1611
- Death of Shakespeare: 1616
- Some parallels
- Storm drives apart a eet of ships, one of which contains the aristocratic leader.
- After the shipwreck, conspiracies among the ordinary sailors.
- St. Elmo's re
- Shakespeare uses the words “glut” and ‘bosky” which only appear in the Tempest BUT
ALSO in those pamphlets.
- Most of Shakespeare’s plays are written about literary sources, but not the tempest!
Stratford an Shakespeare’s Private Life
- Possible autobiographical elements in the works.
- Name of Anne Hathaway is hidden in Sonnet 145, “hate away” & “and”
- He’s very familiar with the area around Stratford.
- Shakespeare is ever
Shakespeare as a character
- Fictions about Shakespeare’s life
- Authors who used Shakespeare in their works
- James Joyce
- George b shaw
- Virginia Woolf
- Anthony burgess
- Jorge luis borges
- Oscar wilde
- Edward bond
- Arthur van Schenkel
- Tom Stoppard
- Shakespeare is interesting to write about, his life more than his plays. There are holes, and
parts where things are uncertain. Shakespeare’s plays are always appropriated through the
gaps in the plays, the directors of the play give their own interpretation of the play by lling in
the gaps.
- Terence Hawkins —> Shakespeare’s works are inevitably appropriated through gaps
(silences) in them.
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