Category: Shakespeare

Shakespeare, Updated

.Reading time 7 minutes.

There has been a lot of reaction, good and bad, to the news that the Hogarth Press, an imprint of Random House, plans to commission bestselling authors to write novels based on and updating Shakespeare’s plays. The project has a noble purpose – to honor the upcoming 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death in 1616 […]

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King of Players, Player of Kings

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Today is the birthday (in 1566) of James VI & I of Scotland and England. Although Shakespeare and Jonson are classified as Elizabethan poets, it was under the reign of James, and under his personal patronage, that they both did their greatest work. James called himself  “The Cradle King,” quite accurately, because he took over […]

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Jonson, Shakespeare, and Fathers

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Ben Jonson was particularly interested in fatherhood, but most of his experiences were sad ones, not really appropriate for this day on which we celebrate our fathers. His most famous poem, surely, is his elegy for his eldest son, Benjamin, who died at the age of seven, while Ben was away visiting a wealthy patron […]

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Happy Birthday, dear Ben

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Benjamin Jonson was born on this date in 1572 in Westminster, England. We are so fortunate to have had a new biography and a new edition of his complete works appear in the last year; perhaps at last he will have a place in the popular imagination equal, if not to Shakespeare’s, at least to his […]

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I know where I want to go next year

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

If only for the chance to see Early Modern Drama played by candlelight, this is a consummation devoutly to be wish’d: Ten Reasons to Get Excited About the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

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Back in Print

.Reading time 1 minute.

“O merchant fortune! Do not run away.” After a brief hiatus that unfortunately included both the 2012 holidays and Shakespeare’s birthday 2013, William Shakespeare: His Life and Times is back in print in the US! Here’s a sample: 25 February, 1613 My Child, I am coming home, and to stay this time. Thou marvell’st at […]

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