Shakespeare Reference in The Unspeakable People

The Unspeakable People is a collection of short horror stories from the late 1700s into the 1900s. One story, Ray Bradbury's "The Shape Of Things," contains a reference to Hamlet. The story is about a couple whose baby was born into another dimension and so appears and sounds strange to them. Bradbury writes: "Won't it be nice when he learns to talk later? We'll give him Hamlet's soliloquy to memorise and he'll say it but it'll come out, 'Wheely-roth-urll whee whistle wheet!'" (p. 175). The Unspeakable People was edited by Peter Haining, and was published in 1969.

Shakespeare Reference in Loud And Clear

Brian Anderson's Loud And Clear: The Grateful Dead's Wall Of Sound And The Quest For Audio Perfection contains a reference to Macbeth. And actually, it's to a phrase from my favorite speech in all of Shakespeare. Anderson writes, "As Lesh later put it, Grateful Dead feels rushed, 'hyper' even, like 'sound and fury buried in a cavern'" (p. 60). So, yes, the reference comes in a quote from Phil Lesh. The phrase "sound and fury" comes from this fantastic speech from Macbeth: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day/To the last syllable of recorded time,/And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!/Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more. It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing."

Loud And Clear: The Grateful Dead's Wall Of Sound And The Quest For Audio Perfection was published in 2025. My copy is an uncorrected proof, so that page number could be incorrect.

Shakespeare Study: Revisiting A Few Plays

I've read nearly four hundred books related to Shakespeare, which of course is just a small fraction of the books that have been published. Here are the ones I've read in the last several weeks:

King Henry VIII, or All Is True by William Shakespeare - I think this was only the second time that I read this play. This time I read the Oxford World's Classics edition, edited by Jay L. Halio. The introduction gets into the historical sources, as well as the authorship question, regarding which parts John Fletcher might have written. Regarding the play's title, Halio writes, "The Folio editors evidently changed the title to make it consistent with those of the other English plays" (p. 17). That is, it was changed from its original title All Is True to The Life Of King Henry The Eighth. Regarding the play's themes, Halio writes: "Knowing oneself is another important theme and relates closely to the knowledge and use of power. For without knowing oneself, one is powerless" (p. 29). Halio also writes: "Though his presence is invoked by others talking about him, Henry does not appear in Act 4. As elsewhere in Shakespeare's plays - Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, for example - when the protagonist remains off-stage for a considerable time, his absence prefigures a change" (p. 35). At the end of the introduction, Halio writes, regarding the undeserved neglect this play receives: "Every age is political, of course; but at a time when media seem to control the presentation of information, if not also its flow, and the availability of information has become essential to both the governed and the governing, Shakespeare's drama has particular relevance. What Henry knows or does not know, the means he uses to discover or confirm the truth, and finally the action he takes based on that truth, have an immediacy comparable to that of our morning newspaper or the evening telecast" (p. 61). All notes for the text are included at the bottom of each page. This book was published in 1999. It was first published as an Oxford World's Classics paperback in 2000, and was reissued in 2008.

The First Part Of King Henry The Fourth by William Shakespeare - I love this play. To me, it's the funniest of Shakespeare's plays. It's crazy that I have yet to see a live performance of it. I've seen productions that have combined this with the second part, and even this with the other three parts of the tetralogy, the Henriad, but never this play on its own. Anyway, this time I read the volume from The Kittredge Shakespeares, but the newer edition with the introduction and revisions by Irving Ribner. This volume is based on the Q1 text of 1598. Ribner writes, in the introduction: "Nor is Falstaff merely Vice. He also stands for the richness and variety of life, for the simple joys of the lower classes, and the common foibles of humanity - all of which Hal must learn to forego if he would assume the awful burden of kingship. It has often been suggested that in regjecting Falstaff, Hal must reject a portion of his own humanity as well. Falstaff serves also as comic commentary on the austere world of kings and nobles" (p. xvi). Ribler also writes, "Opposed to Falstaff is Hotspur, whose courage is foolhardiness and whose honour consists ultimately in reputation rather than true worth" (p. xvii). There are notes on the text at the bottom of each page. Regarding the letter that Hotspur is reading at the beginning of Act II Scene iii, a note reads: "Shakespeare does not inform us who was Hotspur's correspondent. The last few lines of the speech suggest that he was Dunbar, the Scottish Earl of March, for Holinshed says that he urged the King to attack the rebels before their forces should 'too much increase'" (p. 33). The note on Falstaff's "honour" speech (written by Kittredge) reads, "Here Falstaff begins to speak in the tone and manner of a person catechizing a boy; and, in the answers, he imitates the boy who speaks mechanically, having learned them by heart" (p. 102). The original edition of this book was published in 1940. The second edition was published in 1966, and renewed in 1968.

King Lear by William Shakespeare - If forced to choose, King Lear is my favorite play. I think I've read more editions of this one than of any other Shakespeare play. This time around I read the Plays In Performance edition, edited by J.S. Bratton. In the play's introduction, Bratton writes, "The conflict basic to drama, between order and disorder, is explored in it on levels from the intimately private and personal, through the domestic, the social and the political to the transcendental" (p. 3). Regarding the Fool, Bratton writes, "His jokes modulate and change with the audience's advancing relationship with Lear, from expressing indignation at Lear's deeds of cruelty and stupidity to the point where, when Lear gets the answer to his riddle - 'because they are not eight?' - the audience's relief and empathy rushes out to Lear as a fellow human being, understanding the same jokes" (p. 10). Notes on the text are located on the opposite page from the text itself, apart from a glossary, which is at the end of the play. What really sets this edition apart from others is that the notes focus on how particular scenes were acted in various productions throughout the years, what different productions cut, what was changed, and so on. The editor does not include notes on his own choices regarding the text. For example, he includes the line from the Quarto "If not, I'll ne'er trust poison," rather than the Folio's "If not, I'll ne'er trust medicine," without comment. So we just have to accept the text as given, for this volume is really about how the play was performed in different centuries. Regarding the first entrance of Edmund, Bratton notes: "In this introductory scene the figure of Edmond is clearly related to the Vice of the medieval stage, who was not only a boisterous source of mischief, but also a manager of events and mediator between audience and action, introducing himself and other figures" (p. 79). Regarding Lear's lines "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,/That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm..." in Act III Scene iv, Bratton writes: "When Queen Victoria went to see Macready's Lear in 1839, he deliberately pointed this speech at her, a fact of which she was uncomfortably aware. In doing so the actor was following a practice which, it has been suggested, was Shakespeare's intention, and a convention of the Elizabethan stage: the actor shifted the focus of his delivery from the scene to the spectators, where it was, as in this case, appropriate to generalise the comment he made" (p. 143). Regarding the moment where Edgar claims to have led Gloucester to a cliff, Bratton writes: "Derek Peat makes an interesting suggestion. Shakespeare, he says, is exploiting the expectation of his audience that scenery should be created by words of the actor, in order to set up tension through uncertainty: Edgar paints a scene, and Gloucester cannot confirm or deny it; the spectator must decide whether it exists" (p. 175). And regarding the stage direction "Enter Lear" in Act IV Scene vii, Bratton writes: "The folio direction ensures that this scene is visually an echo of the first, over which Lear presided from his throne; these powerful overtones are lost when he is discovered at the opening of the scene on a bed or couch, and conducts his reunion as if recovering from an more ordinary malaise. That arrangement underlines the pathos of the scene, and was normally preferred in the nineteenth century" (p. 189). This book was published in 1987.

The Second Part Of King Henry IV by William Shakespeare - I figured since I revisited The First Part Of King Henry The Fourth, I should also revisit the second part. This time I read The New Cambridge Shakespeare edition, the updated edition, edited by Giorgio Melchiori. In the introduction, he touches upon how several of the characters are different in this play than they were in the first part. Melchiori writes: "The extraordinary invention of Doll is the reason for the transformation of the character of the Hostess. Her name, Mistress Quickly, an allusion to professional briskness in Part One, is no longer appropriate for the pathetically gullible old bawd whose delusions of respectability are reflected in her new language" (p. 20). And regarding language, Melchiori writes: "Falstaff's language is affected by the change of his sparring partners: no longer the prince but by turns the Lord Chief Justice, the Hostess, Pistol, Doll, Justice Shallow, and even Sir John Colevile. His humorous conceits in Part One, which frequently took the form of paradoxical exercises in formal logic, with ample use of rhetorical questioning, are replaced by the practice of evasion through broad jokes, jocular self-commiseration, games with true or fictitious memories, and lengthy soliloquies in which the criticisms addressed to Justice Shallow or Prince John are in fact half-hearted attempts at self-justification or at keeping up a flagging morale" (p. 23). Regarding theme, Melchiori writes: "The redemption of time promised by the prince is the actual subject of the whole play. Hence the constant attention in it to 'the revolution of the times', from the moment Northumberland announces, in the first scene, that 'the times are wild' to the final rejection of Falstaff, of which we have already noted the significance on the temporal level. What must be underlined, though, is the constant association of the view of time in the play with images of sickness and disease" (p. 30). This edition is based on the 1600 Quarto. Notes are at the bottom of each page. Regarding Falstaff's line "My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon," Melchiori notes: "A detail omitted in F. Play performances began in the early afternoon: is this a metatheatrical hint, that Falstaff is merely a stage creation, born as he appears there?" (p. 99). This book was first published in 1989, the updated edition in 2007. My copy is from the 4th printing, in 2012.

And:

Two Tudor Tragedies edited and with an introduction by William Tydeman - This book contains Gorboduc by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, and The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd. I read this book mainly because I had heard that Gorboduc was one of the sources Shakespeare used for King Lear, which is my favorite play. And, yes, there are similarities. Gorboduc is about a king who, while still living, divides his kingdom between his children (he has two boys, not three girls), and things go wrong. And, like King Lear, this one begins with a couple of characters having a private conversation before the king announces his decision. In Gorboduc, Arostus says, "First, when you shall unload your aged mind/Of heavy care and troubles manifold/And lay the same upon my lords your sons,/Whose growing years may bear the burden long" (p. 63). Those lines might remind us, as noted in this book, of Lear's "'tis our fast intent/To shake all cares and business from our age,/Conferring them on younger strengths, while we/Unburdened crawl toward death." And, as William Tydeman notes, Gorboduc's "But sith I see no cause to draw my mind/To fear the nature of my loving sons,/Or to misdeem that envy or disdain/Cant there work hate where Nature planteth love" (p. 72) might remind us of King Lear. Tydeman writes, "One might compare the complacency of King Lear in Act I Scene 1 in reposing his trust in the good faith of Goneril and Regan" (p. 275). But that's about it. Tydeman is able to find at least one similarity between King Lear and The Spanish Tragedy as well. Regarding Hieronomo's line "Tush, no, run after, catch me if you can" (p. 218), Tydeman notes, "cf. King Lear, IV. 6. 204-5: 'Nay, an you get it, you shall get it by running...' (both elderly men are 'running mad' at this point)" (p. 329). This book is a Penguin Classics edition, published in 1992.

Shakespeare References in The Filmmaker's Book Of The Dead

The Filmmaker's Book Of The Dead: A Mortal's Guide To Making Horror Movies, written by Danny Draven, contains a few Shakespeare references. The first is a reference to Hamlet, with Draven writing, "William Shakespeare once said, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'" (p. 5). That line is delivered by Hamlet in the first act after he has spoken with the Ghost of his father. Draven then writes, "This type of thinking is what keeps the horror movie industry in business" (p. 5). Soon after that there is a reference to Macbeth. Actually, the reference is in the title of a movie that Draven recommends viewing: Something Wicked This Way Comes (p. 6). That movie title is a line spoken by one of the weird sisters. Actually, the next reference in the book also comes in a movie title, with Draven writing, "Kaufman's TROMEO AND JULIET, written with James Gunn, became a theatrical and critican hit" (p. 351). That movie is mentioned again: "or they may never forget TROMEO & JULIET (1996)" (p. 352). There is also a reference to Hamlet in the interview with Lloyd Kaufman, with Kaufman saying, "You should do what you believe in and what is in your heart: 'To thine own self be true.' The mistake most filmmakers encounter is not abiding by the 'To thine own self be true' maxim, which as you know was coined by the great William Shakespeare who wrote the best-selling book, 101 Money-Making Screenplay Ideas, otherwise known as Hamlet" (p. 352). The line "to thine own self be true" is spoken by Polonius to his son Laertes in Act I Scene iii. Tromeo And Juliet is mentioned again in that interview, with Kaufman saying: "In the case of TROMEO AND JULIET (1996), we mixed eroticism and Shakespeare, horror and slapstick satire" (p. 354).

The Filmmaker's Book Of The Dead was originally published in 2010. The copy I read was from the Second Edition, published in 2016.

Shakespeare References in The Winter Of Our Discontent

John Steinbeck's The Winter Of Our Discontent contains a few Shakespeare references. Obviously, the title itself comes from the opening speech of Richard The Third, and actually the very first line. "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York." The book contains a reference to Hamlet, with Steinbeck having his main character, Ethan, say, "Ah! There's the rub - Shakespeare" (p. 123). The phrase "there's the rub" comes from Hamlet's most famous soliloquy: "To sleep, perchance to dream. Ah, there's the rub/For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/Must give us pause." There is also a reference to Antony And Cleoptra, when Ethan says, "You must come to Rome! Egypt isn't big enough for you. The great world calls" (p. 150). Though, as far as I can recall, that's not a direct quote from the play. The opening lines of Richard The Third are delivered by Ethan at one point: "And I sang too: 'Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York.' I know it's not a song, but I sang it" (p. 158). The novel also contains a reference to Richard The Second, when Ethan says, "Must I tell you my sad story of the death of kings?" (p. 162). That refers to King Richard's line, "let us sit upon the ground/And tell sad stories of the death of kings." And the book has a reference to Julius Caesar. Ethan tells his son, "I'll not let loose the dogs of war tonight" (p. 265). That is a reference to Mark Antony's line, "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war." The final Shakespeare reference is to Richard The Third again, with Ethan quoting, "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York" (p. 265). Note that the first time, the word was given as "sun" and this time as "son." Ethan's daughter Ellen replies, "That's Shakespeare" (p. 265).

The Winter Of Our Discontent was published in 1961. My copy is a First Edition.

Shakespeare Study: More Miscellaneous Books

I expect my personal Shakespeare study will continue the rest of my life. These are the books I've read in the last several months.

Orson Welles, Shakespeare, And Popular Culture by Michael Anderegg - I decided to revisit Orson Welles' Shakespeare films, or at least the ones that I have from the Criterion Collection, after finding this book at a store in Massachusetts. The book gets into not only Welles' Shakespeare film adaptations, but his stage productions and even his audio recordings as well. I would love to find those Mercury Text Records and add them to my collection. Regarding the films, however, Anderagg writes: "And Welles, as the record clearly shows, did cut corners in his Shakespeare films, employing, for example, stand-ins for reverse shots simply because he could only afford to hold on to his actors for brief periods of time. My point is simply that Welles's Shakespeare films, as marginal products, are not surrounded by the same aura of class and respectability that surrounds most Shakespeare adaptations" (pages 64-65). There is also a chapter on Orson Welles specifically as a performer, not just in Shakespeare films, but also The Third Man and The Stranger, among others. The book contains several photos. It was published in 1999.

Monologues From The Classics: Shakespeare, Marlowe And Others edited by Roger Karshner - This is a book that I bought when I was a theater student in college and needed monologues for auditions. That's the book's purpose. But it was fun revisiting it. It contains speeches from The Merry Wives Of Windsor, The Taming Of The Shrew, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, Romeo And Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar and Richard The Third, as well as several other non-Shakespearean works from the period and from the 1700s. The book was published in 1986.

The Vavasour Macbeth by Bart Casey - This is a novel about a couple of people who discover papers in a tomb under a church, papers that are related to Shakespeare. The book, which has some basis in history, is divided into five sections (like the five acts of a play), and the sections begin with brief bits that take place in the late 1500s and early 1600s, dealing with Anne Vavasour and Sir Henry Lee, and then move to the main body of the story, taking place in 1992. It is quite a while before the story gets around to Macbeth, but early on there is a reference to the Third Folio (p. 22), and then this about Hamlet: "That was because later Tudor and Stuart writers loved playing around with language; constructing new meters, verse styles, and rhyming schemes; and enriching them with rhetorical devices, puns, and double entendres to amuse their readers, as when Hamlet tells Ophelia 'get thee to a nunnery,' which could be directing her to either a convent or a brothel" (p. 73). The Earl of Oxford also figures in this story, but don't worry, this author is not one of those idiots who think that man was behind the plays (the kook Delia Bacon is also mentioned later). The first mention of Macbeth comes more than a third of the way through the story, when Stephen takes students on a field trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, where there is "an interactive workshop on Macbeth run by the country's premier acting troupe, the Royal Shakespeare Company" (p. 143). Among the papers found beneath the church is a letter signed by "John Heminge, who was one of the actors in the same troupe as Shakespeare" (p. 179), the letter mentioning "the cut that woke the Dane," which the characters first believe is related to Hamlet, but come to understand refers to an edit of Macbeth. One of the characters has an interesting theory regarding collaboration: "But I think the plays were highly collaborative, and varied. I mean for every soliloquy there are thirty lines like 'Who goes there?' or 'Advance and be recognized' just before. Shakespeare would have focused on the high points - the soliloquies and so forth - not every word. And the plot and pacing. Then lots of people could have tinkered with the script, cutting it down or padding it up for any single version or performance" (p. 250). The scroll found among the papers is a copy of Macbeth, but with added speeches by Lady Macbeth about losing her child. As we read we can't help but think about someone finding such an artifact. How wonderful that would be! At the beginning of the fifth section of the book, Bart Casey writes that in 1622: "Anne was asked to send her shortened version of the script for the 1606 performance of Macbeth to John Heminge, who was collecting materials for a memorial edition of Shakespeare's plays, known today as the First Folio. Anne's manuscript was the only copy of that play that Heminge could find" (p. 286). This book was published in 2019.

Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote The Renaissance by Ramie Targoff - This book is about female writers who lived at the time of Shakespeare. The book's first chapter is about Queen Elizabeth herself. There are also chapters about Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Cary. The book doesn't just dedicate one chapter to each writer and then move on to the next, but rather puts their stories into historical and political contexts, returning to each writer throughout the book. And of course Shakespeare is referred to, as in this passage: "Spenser wasn't alone in conjuring up a fairy world for Elizabeth: Shakespeare created his own version in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but his Fairy Queen, Titania, would never have won Elizabeth's praise. Neither a virgin nor chaste, the bewitched Titania ends up falling in love with a 'rude mechanical' named Bottom while he bears the head of an ass" (p. 42). Interestingly, this book mentions Anne Vavasour: "In 1581, for example, when one of the queen's maids of honor, Anne Vavasour, gave birth to a son in the maids' own chambers at court, her uncle Sir Thomas Knyvett challenged the child's father, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to a duel" (p. 61). In a chapter on Mary Sidney, Targoff writes: "What did it take for a woman in Renaissance England to enter the overwhelmingly male world of literature? Even more than her education and the wealth and title brought by her marriage, it depended for Mary on having a gifted brother whose death made space for her. For it was through Philip's legacy that Mary paved her own way, beginning her own literary career by editing and publishing his works" (p. 71). In a chapter on Anne Clifford, Targoff writes: "Anne wrote this memoir sometime after 1609 - the exact date of composition is unknown - and it represents her earliest venture in what became a lifetime habit of self-writing. The idea of keeping track of her life in this way was highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a young woman at the time" (p. 121). Targoff notes, about Thomas Sackville, "A true Renaissance man, he was also the co-author of Gorboduc, a tragedy about divided succession that was one of Shakespeare's sources for King Lear" (p. 136). In a chapter on Elizabeth Cary, Targoff writes: "The parallels between Othello and The Tragedy of Mariam are striking: both Desdemona and Mariam are victims of vicious rumors; both have husbands who choose to murder rather than trust their wives. But if Elizabeth was thinking about Othello - and as we've seen, she would have had a chance to see it performed at court in 1604 - she decided to give it a feminist twist" (p. 165). And about A.L. Rowse's determination that Aemilia Lanyer is the dark lady of Shakespear's sonnets, Targoff writes: "The combination of Aemilia's sexual promiscuity, her ties to the court and especially to Shakespeare's sometime patron Lord Hunsdon, her Italian and possibly Jewish background (both unreliably suggesting dark coloring), and her musical family (one of Shakespeare's sonnets describes his mistress playing music for him) all seemed to Rowse to match up perfectly with Shakespeare's mysterious lover" (p. 217). And then: "As it turned out, there was absolutely no basis for Rowse's identification of Aemilia as Shakespeare's mistress. The only solid piece of evidence linking the two of them was their common acquaintance with Lord Hunsdon. In 1594, Shakespeare joined Hunsdon's new theater company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and the company began staging some of his early plays. But whether Aemilia attended any of these performances or was ever introduced to the playwright remains unknown" (p. 218). This book was published in 2024. My copy is from the second printing.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent by Judi Dench with Brendan O'Hea - This book was created through a series of conversations Brendan O'Hea had with Judi Dench about the various parts she's played in Shakespeare's works. It is largely organized by play, and by the roles within each play. Regarding her role as Lady Macbeth, and about the letter Lady Macbeth reads, Judi says, "I suspect she's read it many times, studied it, memorised certain passages" (p. 6). Regarding A Midsummer Night's Dream, she says: "The play is full of sex, which would make it tricky to edit for a Quaker school. Titania and Oberon are so randy. They're all at it like knives. You never see that in productions, do you? All the fairies should be humping each other throughout" (p. 28). When discussing her role as Viola in Twelfth Night, Judi says: "It's extraordinary how many resurrections happen in Shakespeare's plays - especially of children. He wrote only two plays which featured twins - this and The Comedy of Errors - and in both plays the twins are involved in shipwrecks. In Comedy the twins are boys. But in Twelfth Night they're a boy and a girl. Shakespeare had, of course, his own twins - Judith and Hamnet - and Hamnet died when he was eleven years old. I wonder if all these resurrections of children are Shakespeare's way of trying to bring his own child back to life" (pages 66-67). Regarding Gertrude at first refusing to see Ophelia, Judi says: "Another reason for not wanting to see Ophelia is guilt. Had Gertrude not cried out for help in the closet scene maybe Hamlet wouldn't have been alerted to Polonius' presence and killed him. And Ophelia wouldn't have lost her father" (p. 119). And regarding Gertrude's description of Ophelia's death, Judi says: "Also, suicide was against the law in Shakespeare's time. Maybe the description of Ophelia climbing the tree and the branch breaking is a way of reassuring Laertes (and the audience) that it wasn't suicide, it was an accident. Because if it was suicide, Ophelia wouldn't have had a Christian burial. Gertrude is trying to break the news to Laertes in a kinder way, to help him with his grief: Ophelia didn't suffer, her death wasn't wilful or violent, she was unaware of her own madness" (p. 121). And regarding Juliet's state when she has sent the Nurse to Romeo, Judi Dench says: "Her mind is racing, thoughts going at lightning speed. But then our thoughts do that, you know. That's why, as an actor playing this part, you have to think on the line - not before or after. It's essential. You're speaking as you're thinking. You don't think, pause, then speak" (p. 360). This book was published in 2023. My copy is a First U.S. Edition, from 2024.

Shakespeare Alive! by Joseph Papp and Elizabeth Kirland - This book first sets the scene, placing us in the shoes of a typical Elizabethan, describing the troubles, the poverty, and so on. And then it describes the Elizabethan world, drawing connections to certain of Shakespeare's characters and speeches. The authors write: "Not only was a ghostly visitation unpleasant, but it also cast the visited into a state of spiritual confusion: the Church insisted that ghosts were really just devils in disguise. If a ghost told a young man to kill his uncle, how could he be sure that it wasn't Satan tempting him to sin? This is an essential part of Hamlet's dilemma: is the ghost of his father really who he says he is?" (p. 40). Regarding information about foreign lands, the authors write: "The farther some travelers got from home, the taller their tales of other lands seemed to get. Rather than giving sympathetic and objective portraits of other countries and peoples, most of these travel accounts simply reinforced damaging - and marketable - stereotypes, perpetrating far-fetched and best-selling myths. And so it wasn't surprising that the English lacked a realistic understanding of other cultures" (p. 50). Later chapters are about theater. The authors write: "Shakespeare was constantly exploring and referring to the world of the theater - audience, scene, role-playing, the Globe itself - and exploring the gap between appearance and reality. This didn't do much to calm the palpitations in the breasts of worried moralists" (p. 118). And then: "Often, as with the classics, Shakespeare twisted biblical or religious references to suit his humorous purposes. Hamlet's reference to 'these pickers and stealers' comes from the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, 'To keep my hands from picking and stealing'" (p. 157). This book was published in 1988.

Shakespeare by Peter Quennell - I decided to re-read this biography that I had purchased when I was in college. It begins in the preface by addressing those anti-Stratfordian morons: "Plays were often revised and rewritten, usually at short notice; and Shakespeare's fellow players, if he had been a commonplace hack, would soon have perceived that between the original text and the additions he made on the spot there was a startling discrepancy" (p. xiv). This book, in addition to providing biographical data on Shakespeare, contains quite a lot of information about Queen Elizabeth, Essex, Southampton and other important people of Shakespeare's world, as well as descriptions of life in general at that time. Regarding the sonnets, Quennell writes: "But a reader, who wishes to examine the poems' personal and autobiographical structure, should bear in mind that they also embody many purely derivative and traditional elements. Numerous themes can be traced back to Latin, Italian and French verse - as when Shakespeare, like Ovid, Petrarch and Ronsard, boasts of the immortality that his poems will confer and challenges the devouring power of Time - and not only to the works of the past, but to other productions of the Elizabethan age" (p. 137). Regarding Romeo, Quennell writes, "So long as he loves Rosaline, he is recognizably human, Mercutio's love-lorn but amusing friend; but, once he has encountered Juliet, both he and his thirteen-year-old mistress become a pair of disembodied voices, engaged in an unending beautiful debate that lifts them far above 'the realm of discord'" (p. 163). In the chapter on the histories, Quennell writes: "Action is often an escape from thought; and Shakespeare's men of action are most vividly portrayed when they happen to be least active, and he is describing, not a boldly consistent record, but the secret inconsistency of their ideas and feelings. Thus Hotspur attracts him, less as a valiant rebel, who leads a revolt against Henry IV and dies upon the field of Shrewsbury, than as a restive, irritable, impatient spirit, whose professed aversion from the intellect goes with an obstinately searching mind, who lives like a loud-mouthed soldier, yet dies a poet and a philosophic sage" (pages 217-218). Regarding Troilus And Cressida, Quennell writes: "here almost every character is a rebel and, loudly and persistently, speaks out of turn. We meet neither heroes nor villains, merely gradations of villainy, stupidity, folly. Shakespeare's own allegiance seems to remain unfocused; when he sympathizes, his interest is reserved for the weak, unworthy Troilus, victim of a violent obsession that lends his personality a distorted strength" (p. 282). And about Othello, Quennell writes, "The end is in sight when he at last achieves self-knowledge: lack of self-knowledge has been his damning weakness" (p. 301). This book was published in 1963.

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Also, during this time I read:

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe - The edition I read was the Signet Classics, edited and with an introduction by Sylvan Barnet. There are several essays included, some of which mention Shakespeare and his works, particularly in relation to what precisely constitutes a tragedy. This book was first published in 1969. The edition I read was the revised edition from 2010.

Christopher Marlowe: A Biography by A.L. Rowse - This, as its title tells us, is a biography of Christopher Marlowe, but Shakespeare is mentioned quite a bit in its pages. In the preface, Rowse writes, "Among these perhaps that of greatest importance was the firm establishment of Marlowe as Shakespeare's rival, for a brief time, for Southampton's patronage - as the bulk of literary opinion has always held to be the case" (p. vii). Regarding the differences in their education, Rowse writes: "It is not to be deplored that Shakespeare did not go to the university. It could hardly have improved him,and its intellectualisation of experience might have done him some damage" (p. 24). About Marlowe, Rowse writes: "No writer was ever more autobiographical than he was - it was a serious limitation upon him, especially for a dramatist. He was an obsessed egoist, and he was young when he died. His creations are very much projections of himself - Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, the Jew of Malta; he put himself into the Edward II-Gaveston relationship, and not improbably into Dido" (p. 32). Rowse talks quite a bit about Marlowe's influence on Shakespeare. "As an actor Shakespeare had hundreds of lines - his own and others' - milling around in his mind; but The Jew of Malta made an unforgettable impact upon him. Not long after it, he owed a great deal of the inspiration for Aaron in Titus Andronicus to Barabas. A few years on, The Merchant of Venice was directly suggested by The Jew of Malta. And when, at the height of his powers, he created the type of dissembling villainy in Iago, that marvellously sensitive subconscious which worked for him came up with Barabas's words transformed" (p. 96). And that influence is from Marlowe's life as well as his work, with Rowse writing: "Professor Richard Hosley has made the brilliant suggestion that the fray in Romeo and Juliet among Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo may reflect that of Marlowe, Bradley and Watson; and that Mercutio may have something of Marlowe in him, impulsive, quick on the draw, passionate in friendship" (p. 110). A.L. Rowse also gets into Shakespeare's sonnets and their relation to Marlowe. This book was published in 1964.

Shakespeare References in Mythology

Edith Hamilton's Mythology contains a couple of Shakespeare references.  The very first page, the foreword, mentions King Lear: "Twelve hundred years separate the first writers through whom the myths have come down to us from the last, and there are stories as unlike each other as 'Cinderella' and 'King Lear.' To bring them all together in one volume is really somewhat comparable to doing the same for the stories of English literature from Chaucer to the ballads, through Shakespeare and Marlowe and Swift and Defoe and Dryden and Pope and so on, ending with, say, Tennyson and Browning, or even, to make the comparison truer, Kipling and Galsworthy." Just a bit farther down the page, Edith Hamilton writes: "Faced with this problem, I determined at the outset to dismiss any idea of unifying the tales. That would have meant either writing 'King Lear,' so to speak, down to the level of 'Cinderella' - the vice versa procedure being obviously not possible - or else telling in my own way stories which were in no sense mine and had been told by great writers in ways they thought suited their subjects." Later, Hamilton writes, "The first tragic plays, which are among the best there are, never equaled except by Shakespeare, were produced in the theater of Dionysus" (p. 61).

Mythology was originally published in 1942.