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.