Wainwright on "Sonnet 10"

Rufus Wainwright talks about his response to Shakespeare in this brilliant interview by Tim Adams, "I was looking right into her face when my mother died" published February 21, 2010 in The Guardian:

When Wainwright was working with Shakespeare's sonnets, he says – he was asked to help create a theatrical cycle of them for the Berliner Ensemble – he found all sorts of echoes of these kinds of experiences in them. One of the sonnets he includes on his album is Sonnet 10, "For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any", and he didn't need to research the scholarly opinion on the "poet", the "dark lady" and the "beautiful boy" to understand that this was the first great coming-out poem in the English language. "I knew immediately, instinctively, that this was the point where the poet first admits his love for the boy. And it is sort of the beginning of the avalanche. I remembered that moment very well…"

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What's a popp'rin' pear?

James Wheaton reported yesterday in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that the Michigan Shakespeare Festival high school tour of Romeo and Juliet was criticized for inappropriate content -- " So me take issue with sexual innuendoes in Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s High School Tour performances of ‘Romeo & Juliet’" : Western [High School] parent Rosie Crowley said she was upset when she heard students laughing about sexual content in the play afterwards. Her son didn’t attend the performance Tuesday because of another commitment, she said. “I think the theater company should have left out any references that were rated R,” Crowley said. “I would say that I’ve read Shakespeare, and what I was told from the students, I’ve never read anything that bad.” She said she objected to scenes that involved pelvic thrusting and breast touching and to a line in which Mercutio makes suggestive comments to Romeo after looking up the skirt of a female. The problem with cutting out...

Winkler lights the match

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Dudley nails it to the door

Michael Dudley author of The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosphy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) Michael Dudley views his vocation of librarian at the University of Manitoba with dialectic rigor. "Librarianship has a duty to inform democracy," he said in Kathryn Sharpe's virtual bookclub on April 27, 2024. Dudley discussed his new book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last fall. Update 08/21/24 Dudley's book is also available as an ebook from Google Play . In SAQ and Philosophy Dudley uses the hammer of logic to nail his accusations against the barricaded door of the Shakespeare citadel. "The question of Shakespeare's authorship is a malformed debate practiced in an unethical fashion," Dudley said. When asked why his book is important, Dudley said: "What sets my book apart from others on the authorship quest...

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