Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2010

Bard-ageddon

This amusing peek at Phil de Semlyen's 05/21/10 Empire States article "Bard Target: a visit to Roland Emmerich's Anonymous" quotes Mark Rylance saying Oxford had "a mind like a creamy pumpkin the size of the universe".

Folger Consort to appear with David Daniels in D.C.

What could be better -- Shakespeare and music -- consider this offering from the Folger in Washington, D.C. Countertenor David Daniels has sung Handel's  Messiah  in Ann Arbor and is a former U of M student. FYI, a "consort" is an instrumental group. TYBALT: Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo,--  MERCUTIO: Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels ? an  thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but  discords: here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall  make you dance. 'Zounds, consort!  R&J III, 1 Folger Consort: Tempest Shipwrecks, spells, and the sea form an enchanting mix in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Derek Jacobi, Richard Clifford and countertenor David Daniels join Folger Consort for staged readings from Shakespeare's play interspersed with musical selections by Matthew Locke, Handel, and others. David Daniels has been praised by The Chicago Tribune as "today's gold standard among countertenors". Thurs, Jun 1

10 years of SOS The Oxfordian journal articles now online

SOS First Vice-president Richard Joyrich reports that dozens of complete articles from ten volumes of the Shakespeare Oxford Society's annual journal, The Oxfordian , are now available online at the Shakespeare Oxford Society website. At least six articles from each journal edited by Stephanie Hopkins Hughes are downloadable in PDF format from the site. It's impossible to choose highlights from such a wealth of topics, but here is a sampling: Hotwiring the Bard into Cyberspace  by Ron Hess, Vol. 1, 1998 Dating Shakespeare’s  Hamlet   by Eddi Jolly, Vol. 2, 1999 Shakespeare’s Medical Knowledge: How did He Acquire It?  by Frank M. Davis MD, Vol. 3, 2000 Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Law: A Journey through the History of the Argument  by Mark Andre Alexander, Vol. 4, 2001 A Reattribution of Munday’s “The Paine of Pleasure”  by Sarah Smith, PhD, Vol. 5, 2002 Two Gentlement of Verona : Italian Literary Traditions and the Authorship debate  by  Kevin Gilvary, Vol. 8, 2005 . . .

Hunter's invitation to May 19 Oberon meeting

Your Michigan Shakespeare Festival Presentation Committee has been meeting to put together two great presentations this year at the invitation of Robert Duha, managing director of the festival.  We think we have done that.  Be sure to be at our regular meeting Wednesday evening to help us review and sharpen the message which we will be delivering to the audiences of Romeo and Juliet, 6:30 Saturday evening July 24 and Comedy of Errors, 6:30 Saturday evening July 31.   Also, Richard Joyrich will be presenting his long awaited summary of this year's Concordia Conference in Portland, OR, which was held in April.  Be there for Richard's take on groundbreaking scholarship presented at the conference and on other fun stuff.   Plus we need to finalize plans for Stratford and Interlochen, as those events are fast approaching.   Looking forward to seeing you at the Farmington Library as always for an enjoyable two hours of our favorite topic, the true Shakespeare.   Yours with all devot

Winnepeg Free Press reviewer Michael Dudley says orthodox Shakespearean scholarship is "anemic"

The Winnepeg Free Press published Michael Dudley's review of James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?,  "Out, damned skeptics, author fills in blanks with Stratfordian doctrine" , on May 15, 2010. Dudley -- a senior research associate at the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnepeg -- is a long-time Shakespeare authorship skeptic who finds Shapiro's arguments for the traditional Stratfordian candidate to be "time-worn, weak and . . . fallacious". Dudley demolishes the key issue of Stratfordian attribution with one ultra-clear sentence: . . .  Shapiro, nevertheless, devotes the final chapter to setting out his case for Stratfordian orthodoxy, which, like most conventional biographies of "the Bard," consists primarily of conflating all contemporary references to a writer named Shakespeare with the man from Stratford, and filling in the blanks with conjecture. And a scathing analysis: It is difficult to imagine a

Kositsky reports on Niederkorn's Shapiro review

Oberon Canadian correspondent and Shakespeare authorship expert Lynne Kositsky sends us this update on f ormer  New York Times  editor William S. Niederkorn's   review of James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?,  "Absolute Will"  in the April 2010 edition of  The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics and Culture . Kositsky says: The truth is getting out! William Niederkorn's review of Shapiro's book has received another, and bigger, boost. It has been posted by Critical Mass, the Blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors, as an NBCC Featured Review: William S. Niederkorn on Contested Will by James Shapiro. This news has been picked up and relayed by a number of other book news observers. Here are the ones I've noticed so far: http://content.usatoday.com/ topics/article/People/ Politicians,+Government+ Officials,+Strategists/U.S.+ Representatives/John+Hall/ 0ekE6Lk1tDcdA/1 http://book-reviews.ma

Kirwin reviews Leahy's Shakespeare and his Authors

University of Warwick doctoral researcher Peter Kirwan posted a commentary about a new book edited by William Leahy ,  Shakespeare and his Authors: Critical Perspectives on the Authorship Question ,  on his Shakespeare Apocrapha blog dated April 1, 2010 . Before offering his insights on Leahy’s collection of essays, Kirwan made this statement of his viewpoint regarding two key issues in the Shakespeare authorship scrum: 1) That academic institutions - and English Literature departments in particular - are deliberately and systematically dedicated to the silencing (as opposed to answering) of anti-Stratfordians, or in fact anyone who expresses doubt. This is something I'm very happy to concede. The book collates some shockingly extreme and offensive language applied to anti-Stratfordians that compares them to Holocaust deniers or Creationists. The violence of the academy towards anti-Stratfordians, to my mind, is ill-judged, unprofessional and very troublesome. There is nothing  

Who is this baby?

by Linda Theil Georgetown University psychiatry professor Richard M. Waugaman, MD, says eighteenth century deification of Shakespeare is partially responsible for twenty-first century resistance to authorship inquiry. In his article coauthored with Roger Stritmatter, “Who was ‘William Shakespeare’?”, in the current issue of the Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review ( Vol. 32, nr. 2 – 2009, pp 105-115) Waugaman says: Anyone who questions the traditional belief about Shakespeare’s authorship often encounters an unusual degree of opposition, which sometimes has the intensity of a religious war. This is not accidental. It is as though people’s faith is being questioned. We believe that there are, in fact, covert religious undertones to these reactions. Before 1769, there was relatively little interest in biographical facts about Shakespeare. But in that year, the great Shakespeare actor David Garrick organized a “Jubilee” in Stratford. This event put Stratford on the map as a tourist attra

MSF expands high school monologue contest

Michigan Shakespeare Festival High School  Monologue Contest JACKSON , Mich. , May 4, 2010 – The Michigan Shakespeare Festival announced today it is expanding its annual High School Shakespeare Monologue Contest. With the support of Dawn Foods Foundation, Michigan Automotive Compressor, Inc., and Whole Foods Market, the festival will provide  rigorous performance and competition opportunities along with cash prizes. Regional competitions will be held May 15 in Ann Arbor, sponsored by Whole Foods Market and Jackson, sponsored by Dawn Foods Foundation. The top four contestants from each site advancing to the state finals, sponsored by Michigan Automotive Compressor, Inc., on July 31, 2010. “I am extremely pleased that this year we are able to expand the scope of the monologue contest,” managing director, Robert Duha said. “As with our recent High School tour of  Romeo & Juliet  and our summer children’s production, we hope to create lifelong lovers of theatre through our educat

MI Shakespeare Festival presents R&J and COE

News from Robert Duha, Managing Director of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival:    Jackson, Mich. (April 9, 2010) – The Michigan Shakespeare Festival enters its 16 th season in mid-July with an abundance of frivolity, fun and fancy that promises to keep audiences glued to their seats from the opening line to the final curtain. The 2010 season runs for four weeks beginning July 15 through August 8. In her first year as artistic director, Janice Blixt takes a bold, fresh approach to two of Shakespeare’s most well-known and frequently performed plays, Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors . An accomplished Shakespearean actor, director and teacher of classical theatre, Blixt noted, “The best productions of Shakespeare are the ones that demand their audiences live the journey with them.” With that in mind, theatergoers can expect a memorable ride at this summer’s festival. The 2010 season opens at 7:30 p.m. on July 15 in the Michael Baughman Theatre on the campus of Jackson Communit