Skip to main content

Who's reading Roe?

By
Well, somebody's been talking about Richard Roe's Shakespeare Guide to Italy (Harper Perennial, Nov. 8, 2011) because last night (Dec. 12, 2011) on Charlie Rose, Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Michael Boyd inadvertently revealed that Roe's book was on his mind.

Boyd appeared as a guest in Rose's "Why Shakespeare?" series where he happily held forth on the nature of all things Shakespearean. During a discussion of how he chose which Shakespeare plays to direct, Rose asked Boyd if he had to be older to tackle directing King Lear and Boyd responded in the negative.

"Young people can imagine," Boyd said. "Just as an Englishman could imagine Italy in the English Renaissance."

That was it -- no other discussion of imagination or Englishmen or Italy or the Renaissance, not to mention Italian references in Shakespeare or any bedamned books about any such thing.

I cannot imagine that Boyd had read Roe's book; if he had, he might not have been so cavalier in banishing those Italian canals to the realm of pure imagination. But, it sure seemed as if he might have been talking about it.

Should you, dear reader, not be as sanguine as Boyd, you may read two new reviews of Roe's Shakespeare Guide to Italy by
William Neiderkorn in the Dec. 2011 issue of The Brooklyn Rail
John Christian Plummer in the Dec. 10 post of Mark Anderson's Shakespeare by Another Name blog
UPDATE 12/15/11: Francesca V. Mignosa in a Dec. 15, 2011 post on her eponymous blog
UPDATE 1/15/12: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/158596-THE-BOOK-SHELF-Broadway-Musical-MVPs-Funny-Girl-Sex-Drugs-Rock-n-Roll-Musicals-Wicked-and-More/pg2

And if you are so moved, order hard copy of Shakespeare Guide to Italy which is available in Kindle format from Amazon, and can also be ordered to be read on your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry or Android by downloading Amazon's free Kindle software.

Resources:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12032
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/books/beyond-the-previously-known-bard
http://shakespearebyanothername.blogspot.com/2011/12/guest-post-how-did-man-who-didnt-go-to.html
http://www.rsc.org.uk/about-us/our-work/michael-boyd-artistic-director.aspx
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2011/10/roes-shakespeare-guide-to-italy-out.htm
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Waugaman named Oxfordian of the Year 2021

By
by Linda Theil Waugaman taking his first selfie in his home office in Potomac Maryland The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship named Richard Waugaman, MD, Oxfordian of the Year 2021 at their annual conference on October 9, 2021. Waugaman is a clinical professor of psychiatry on the faculty of Georgetown University, a training and supervising analyst emeritus with the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, and is in private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Potomac, Maryland. For over a decade Waugaman has published extensively on the topic of Shakespeare authorship including work in journals outside the normal reach of the subject such as Psychoanalytic Quarterly , the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies , and  Contemporary Psychoanalysis . He has presented on the topic before such diverse venues as the International Psychoanalytic Congress, the New Directions Conference, the Shakespeare Association of America, the American Shakespeare Center, and the Cosmos Club in ...
Read more

What's a popp'rin' pear?

By
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dudley nails it to the door

By
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...
Read more