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Tag Archives: Jonathan Bate
Sir Derek Jacobi on PBS Program Shakespeare Uncovered: “I Believe Edward de Vere Wrote The Works of Shakespeare, Not The Man From Stratford”
In case you missed the hour-long PBS program on Richard II — part of the six-episode series “Shakespeare Uncovered” — it’s well worth watching. Click on the link below to watch.
Most of the episode, hosted by Sir Derek Jacobi, offers viewers an insightful discussion about Shakespeare’s play Richard II and the life of the actual historical figure.
But then around the midway point, just before the 30-minute mark, Sir Derek takes something of a detour into the Shakespeare Authorship mystery and declares he’s an Oxfordian! He even pays an on-camera visit to Castle Hedingham.
Derek is well aware that he’s stepping into a minefield. “Castle Hedingham near London,” Jacobi explains, “is the ancestral home of the de Vere family. In the course of his reign, Richard proved a very contentious King. He set many cats among many pigeons. And my presence here at Castle Hedingham may, like Richard, set the fur flying.”
Indeed!
Sir Derek then goes on to state, clearly and boldly: “I believe Edward de Vere and not William Shakespeare [of Stratford] wrote Richard II and, in fact, all the plays attributed to the man from Stratford.”
Here’s the link. This makes for very interesting viewing.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2331202211.
Most of the episode, hosted by Sir Derek Jacobi, offers viewers an insightful discussion about Shakespeare’s play Richard II and the life of the actual historical figure.
But then around the midway point, just before the 30-minute mark, Sir Derek takes something of a detour into the Shakespeare Authorship mystery and declares he’s an Oxfordian! He even pays an on-camera visit to Castle Hedingham.
Derek is well aware that he’s stepping into a minefield. “Castle Hedingham near London,” Jacobi explains, “is the ancestral home of the de Vere family. In the course of his reign, Richard proved a very contentious King. He set many cats among many pigeons. And my presence here at Castle Hedingham may, like Richard, set the fur flying.”
Indeed!
Sir Derek then goes on to state, clearly and boldly: “I believe Edward de Vere and not William Shakespeare [of Stratford] wrote Richard II and, in fact, all the plays attributed to the man from Stratford.”
Here’s the link. This makes for very interesting viewing.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2331202211.
By Matthew Cossolotto | Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged 17th Earl of Oxford, authorship question, Castle Hedingham, de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, Mark Rylance, PBS,Richard II, Shakespeare, shakespeare authorship question, Shakespeare Uncovered, Sir Derek Jacobi, William Shakespeare | Comments (0)
Last Will and Testament — New Shakespeare Authorship Documentary Previews at Shakespeare’s Globe in London November 27, 2011
Shakespearean Authorship Trust Conference 2011
http://www.shakespeareanauthorshiptrust.org.uk/pages/conf.htm
The Shakespearean Authorship Trust, in collaboration with Brunel University, hosts an advance screening of a major new authorship documentary, Last Will. & Testament at Shakespeare’s Globe on Sunday 27 November.
At a time when the Shakespeare world is being rocked by the imminent appearance of Roland Emmerich’s feature film, Anonymous, as well as the publication of several books based on new research, including Richard Roe’s The Shakespeare Guide to Italy and Katherine Chiljan’s Shakespeare Suppressed, there comes the first major documentary on the authorship question for 22 years. The timing could not be better, and we are very fortunate to have the film’s director Lisa Wilson with us to introduce the work and answer questions on it. (Lisa was also a consultant onAnonymous, and is a trustee of the SAT.) She will be joined by no fewer than seven luminaries who took part in the documentary: Diana Price, author of Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, Professor Roger Stritmatter of Coppin State University in Baltimore, actors Sir Derek Jacobi* and Vanessa Redgrave*, the Chairman of the SAT, Mark Rylance, Dr. William Leahy, Head of the School of Arts at Brunel University, and Charles Beauclerk, author of Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom.
Last Will. & Testament is a 90-minute film that explores the evolution of the authorship question since Shakespeare’s time, with particular reference to William Shakspere of Stratford and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, though other candidates are discussed. Among those defending the orthodox position are Stanley Wells and Jonathan Bate, both of whom were invited to speak at the conference. The documentary is beautifully shot and has exclusive access to footage of Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, which is due for general release on 28 October 2011. The film will be shown in three parts in order to give conference attendees proper time to digest and discuss the material as the day unfolds. It promises to be a fascinating and provocative experience, with plenty of opportunity for the audience to engage with guest speakers.
*subject to availability
Date: Sunday 27 November 2011
Time: 11:00 – 18:15 (Tea and coffee available from 10:30)
Venue: Shakespeare’s Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, London, SE1 9DT
Tickets: £35 (including tea and coffee)
Booking: Shakespeare’s Globe Box Office: Tel: 020 7401 9919
Booking opens: 17 October 2011
Click here for the programme schedule in pdf format.
http://www.shakespeareanauthorshiptrust.org.uk/pages/conf.htm
The Shakespearean Authorship Trust, in collaboration with Brunel University, hosts an advance screening of a major new authorship documentary, Last Will. & Testament at Shakespeare’s Globe on Sunday 27 November.
At a time when the Shakespeare world is being rocked by the imminent appearance of Roland Emmerich’s feature film, Anonymous, as well as the publication of several books based on new research, including Richard Roe’s The Shakespeare Guide to Italy and Katherine Chiljan’s Shakespeare Suppressed, there comes the first major documentary on the authorship question for 22 years. The timing could not be better, and we are very fortunate to have the film’s director Lisa Wilson with us to introduce the work and answer questions on it. (Lisa was also a consultant onAnonymous, and is a trustee of the SAT.) She will be joined by no fewer than seven luminaries who took part in the documentary: Diana Price, author of Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, Professor Roger Stritmatter of Coppin State University in Baltimore, actors Sir Derek Jacobi* and Vanessa Redgrave*, the Chairman of the SAT, Mark Rylance, Dr. William Leahy, Head of the School of Arts at Brunel University, and Charles Beauclerk, author of Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom.
Last Will. & Testament is a 90-minute film that explores the evolution of the authorship question since Shakespeare’s time, with particular reference to William Shakspere of Stratford and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, though other candidates are discussed. Among those defending the orthodox position are Stanley Wells and Jonathan Bate, both of whom were invited to speak at the conference. The documentary is beautifully shot and has exclusive access to footage of Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, which is due for general release on 28 October 2011. The film will be shown in three parts in order to give conference attendees proper time to digest and discuss the material as the day unfolds. It promises to be a fascinating and provocative experience, with plenty of opportunity for the audience to engage with guest speakers.
*subject to availability
Date: Sunday 27 November 2011
Time: 11:00 – 18:15 (Tea and coffee available from 10:30)
Venue: Shakespeare’s Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, London, SE1 9DT
Tickets: £35 (including tea and coffee)
Booking: Shakespeare’s Globe Box Office: Tel: 020 7401 9919
Booking opens: 17 October 2011
Click here for the programme schedule in pdf format.
By Matthew Cossolotto | Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anonymous, authorship question, Brunel University, Globe Theatre, Laura Wilson, Lisa Wilson, Shakespeare's Globe,Shakespearn Authorship Trust, Stanley Wells | Comments (0)
Whalen on Greenblatt’s review of Bate in Dec. 17 New York Review of Books
Review of a review: For Harvard’s Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare biographies must be boldly imaginary.
Richard F. Whalen
Since Shakespeare biographies must necessarily be mostly imaginary, they should be written without anxiety, inhibitions or fear, argues Harvard’s Stephen Greenblatt, a leading Shakespeare scholar and author of his own imaginary biography of the Stratford man as Shakespeare.
In a long review of Jonathan Bate’s Soul of the Age (2008), Greenblatt contends that Bate’s biography, although also mostly imaginary, falls short of his standard of uninhibited, anxiety-free, fearless confidence. “Do it with local color,” Greenblatt commands. “Work in all you know. Make them [your readers] accomplices.”
“Given the paucity of evidence,” Greenblatt says, “that enterprise demands speculation, imaginative daring and narrative cunning.” In effect, if there are not enough biographical facts, dare to trick the reader by cleverly making them up. If Greenblatt prevails, future Shakespeare biographies will have to be shelved in the section for fiction.
Greenblatt’s stinging and provocative critique of Bate’s biography for being insufficiently imaginary appears in the December 17, 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books (56:20) as “Shakespeare in No-Man’s-Land.” Greenblatt’s own imaginary biography, Will in the World (1997), follows his prescriptions for a Shakespeare biography. It opens boldly and unapologetically with the words in capital letters, “LET US IMAGINE”.
In Greenblatt’s opinion, Bate’s imaginary Shakespeare biography is too timid: “The spectacle of anxiety in Bate’s book goes well beyond the ordinary signals of caution.”
Greenblatt notes correctly that the usual qualifiers such as “could have” and “may well have” are the “stock-in-trade of Shakespeare biographies.” He adds that biographers are subject to “professional policing” by scholars intent on catching mistakes and “shaming those guilty of carelessness, rashness, or ignorance.” This threat, Greenblatt says, “can produce a painful aura of fear and inhibition, especially among those whose very gifts make them most sensitive to criticism.” That is to say, Jonathan Bate.
In this belated review of Bate’s 2008 book, Greenblatt complains about Bate’s “skittishness” and his “uneasiness about his own project.” He says Bate’s “nervous” shifting of tenses from dramatic present to historical past “suggests a writer uncomfortable with what he is doing.” Bate tries to use “action prose” of sentence fragments “but his heart is clearly not in them.”
“Where does this leave the beleaguered biographer?” asks Greenblatt. He answers: “In a no-man’s-land of swirling hypotheticals and self-canceling speculations; stillborn claims that expire at the moment they draw their first breath.”
Greenblatt gives what he calls a brief sampling from Bate’s book:
In his own Shakespeare biography, Greenblatt laid claim to frankly imaginary biography that for all its speculations is uninhibited and anxiety-free. “It is important,” he wrote in the preface to that book, “to use our own imagination” since “nothing provides a clear link” between Shakespeare”s works and the life of William of Stratford. (See my review of his book in the winter 2005 issue of Shakespeare Matters.)
Greenblatt repeats that theme in his review of Bate’s book:
Greenblatt says:
As a committed Stratfordian (so far), Greenblatt never questions whether “the paucity of evidence” might suggest that Will Shakspere of Stratford was not the great poet-dramatist and that someone else must have been. He never raises the issue of William Shakespeare’s identity, an issue of which he is fully aware. In this 3,300-word review of Bate’s book, he argues from his position of authority at Harvard that biographies of the Stratford man as the great poet-dramatist can only be imaginary. Oxfordians can certainly agree with that.
The Greenblatt review may be purchased for $3 or by subscription at:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=23499
Richard F. Whalen
Since Shakespeare biographies must necessarily be mostly imaginary, they should be written without anxiety, inhibitions or fear, argues Harvard’s Stephen Greenblatt, a leading Shakespeare scholar and author of his own imaginary biography of the Stratford man as Shakespeare.
In a long review of Jonathan Bate’s Soul of the Age (2008), Greenblatt contends that Bate’s biography, although also mostly imaginary, falls short of his standard of uninhibited, anxiety-free, fearless confidence. “Do it with local color,” Greenblatt commands. “Work in all you know. Make them [your readers] accomplices.”
“Given the paucity of evidence,” Greenblatt says, “that enterprise demands speculation, imaginative daring and narrative cunning.” In effect, if there are not enough biographical facts, dare to trick the reader by cleverly making them up. If Greenblatt prevails, future Shakespeare biographies will have to be shelved in the section for fiction.
Greenblatt’s stinging and provocative critique of Bate’s biography for being insufficiently imaginary appears in the December 17, 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books (56:20) as “Shakespeare in No-Man’s-Land.” Greenblatt’s own imaginary biography, Will in the World (1997), follows his prescriptions for a Shakespeare biography. It opens boldly and unapologetically with the words in capital letters, “LET US IMAGINE”.
In Greenblatt’s opinion, Bate’s imaginary Shakespeare biography is too timid: “The spectacle of anxiety in Bate’s book goes well beyond the ordinary signals of caution.”
Greenblatt notes correctly that the usual qualifiers such as “could have” and “may well have” are the “stock-in-trade of Shakespeare biographies.” He adds that biographers are subject to “professional policing” by scholars intent on catching mistakes and “shaming those guilty of carelessness, rashness, or ignorance.” This threat, Greenblatt says, “can produce a painful aura of fear and inhibition, especially among those whose very gifts make them most sensitive to criticism.” That is to say, Jonathan Bate.
In this belated review of Bate’s 2008 book, Greenblatt complains about Bate’s “skittishness” and his “uneasiness about his own project.” He says Bate’s “nervous” shifting of tenses from dramatic present to historical past “suggests a writer uncomfortable with what he is doing.” Bate tries to use “action prose” of sentence fragments “but his heart is clearly not in them.”
“Where does this leave the beleaguered biographer?” asks Greenblatt. He answers: “In a no-man’s-land of swirling hypotheticals and self-canceling speculations; stillborn claims that expire at the moment they draw their first breath.”
Greenblatt gives what he calls a brief sampling from Bate’s book:
It is not outrageous to imagine…It is not very clear, however, how Bate’s alleged anxiety, inhibition and fear as demonstrated above differs that much from Greenblatt’s own style of imagining and hedging. Here is a brief sampling of the way Greenblatt wrote his Will in the World(2004), with emphasis added:
Could it have been at the same age…?
Could he be the voice not only of Guy but also of William…?
Could he have been Shakespeare’s apprentice in the acting company?
It seems more than fortuitous that…
It is unlikely to be a coincidence that…
Guesswork of course, but I have a hunch that…
I have an instinctive sense that…
It is hard not to notice…
We cannot rule out the possibility that…
Could it then be that…?
One of the two could easily have been…
He may well have been there…
The players may well have been…
This could have been the occasion…
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that…
…requires us to countenance the possibility that…
In the summer of 1585, William of Stratford “may have been working in the glover”s shop, perhaps, or making a bit of money as a teacher’s or a lawyer’s assistant. In his spare time he must have continued to write poetry, practice the lute, hone his skills as a fencer – that is, work on his ability to impersonate the lifestyle of a gentleman. His northern sojourn,assuming he had one, was behind him. If in Lancashire he had begun a career as a professional player, he must, for the moment at least, have put it aside. And if he had a brush with the dark world of Catholic conspiracy, sainthood, and martyrdom–the world that took Campion to the scaffold – he must still more decisively have turned away from it with a shudder.As it happens, Greenblatt and Bate, both leading establishment Shakespeare scholars, are head-to-head competitors in academic publishing. Greenblatt is a chaired professor of humanities at Harvard University. Bate is a professor at the University of Warwick. Each is general editor of a complete, annotated works of Shakespeare: Greenblatt’s from Norton in 1997 and Bate’s more recently from Random House, in 2007. Shortly after its publication, the queen awarded Bate the honorary title of Commander of the British Empire (CBE).
In his own Shakespeare biography, Greenblatt laid claim to frankly imaginary biography that for all its speculations is uninhibited and anxiety-free. “It is important,” he wrote in the preface to that book, “to use our own imagination” since “nothing provides a clear link” between Shakespeare”s works and the life of William of Stratford. (See my review of his book in the winter 2005 issue of Shakespeare Matters.)
Greenblatt repeats that theme in his review of Bate’s book:
. . . despite feverish attempts to comb the archives and find further documentary records of Shakespeare’s life, very little has turned up in the last century. . . . The paucity of new discoveries has not inhibited the constant writing of new biographies. (I am guilty of one of them.) The lure is almost irresistible, and with good reason.The irresistible lure of course is the enduring cultural importance and the aesthetic power and intensity of the Shakespeare plays and poems. Everyone wants to know more about the poet-dramatist.
Greenblatt says:
Never mind that he left so few traces of himself. Never mind that that none of his personal letters or notes or drafts survive; that no books with his marginal annotations have turned up; that no police spy was ordered to ferret out his secrets; that no contemporary person thought to jot down his table talk or solicit his views on life or art. Never mind that Shakespeare–son of a middle-class provincial glover–flew below the radar of ordinary Elizabethan and Jacobean social curiosity. The longing to encounter him and know him endures.“Given the paucity of the evidence,” Greenblatt asserts that writing a Shakespeare biography “demands (emphasis added) speculation, imaginative daring and narrative cunning, but these are all qualities that arouse the scholar’s suspicion and anxiety. Bate’s attempts to enter the life-world of his subject are underwhelming.”
As a committed Stratfordian (so far), Greenblatt never questions whether “the paucity of evidence” might suggest that Will Shakspere of Stratford was not the great poet-dramatist and that someone else must have been. He never raises the issue of William Shakespeare’s identity, an issue of which he is fully aware. In this 3,300-word review of Bate’s book, he argues from his position of authority at Harvard that biographies of the Stratford man as the great poet-dramatist can only be imaginary. Oxfordians can certainly agree with that.
The Greenblatt review may be purchased for $3 or by subscription at:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=23499
By lltheil | Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged New York Review of Books, Richard Whalen,Shakespeare in No-Man's-Land, Soul of the Age, Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World |Comments (1)
SOS membership
Join SOS or renew membership online here:http://www.goestores.com/catalog.aspx?Merchant=shakespeareoxfordsociety&DeptID=27020Annual Conference: Toronto – October 17-20, 2013
Please join us for the Shakespeare Oxford Society's SF/SOS Annual Conference -- October 17-20, 2013 in Toronto, Canada. For more information, visit: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/?p=138 or our main website: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com.Shakespeare-Oxford Society website
The Shakespeare Oxford Society, founded in 1957, is a nonprofit, educational organization dedicated to exploring the Shakespeare authorship question and researching the evidence that Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1550 – 1604) is the true author of the poems and plays of “William Shakespeare.” VisitShakespeare-Oxford.com
This Shakespeare Oxford Society News Online site at http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com brings news of the Shakespeare Oxford Society and the world of Shakespeare authorship inquiry to our readers.Blogroll
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- Another Fascinating Blog Self-Described As “A Post Stratfordian Shake-speare Blog” And A “Rambler” Spinoff
- Quake-speare Shorterly: Fascinating Authorship-Related Blog By “Rambler” Focusing On What Contemporary Writers Wrote About Oxford, Bacon, Shakespeare, Sidney And Many Others
- PBS Distribution To Release LAST WILL. & TESTAMENT on DVD on October 15, 2013
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- Required Reading! Diana Price, Author of Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, Reviews Shakespeare Beyond Doubt Edited by Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson
- Still Plenty Of Room For Doubt — “Macduff’s” Insightful Review On Amazon.com Of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy
- New Book — Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing An Industry In Denial — Kicks Off Shakespeare Authorship Debate In British Media
- The Shakespeare Oxford Society and the Shakespeare Fellowship Present The Toronto Shakespeare Authorship Conference October 17-20, 2013
- Keir Cutler’s E-Book — The Shakespeare Authorship Question: A Crackpot’s View — Takes On Shakespeare Academic Establishment
- Sir Derek Jacobi on PBS Program Shakespeare Uncovered: “I Believe Edward de Vere Wrote The Works of Shakespeare, Not The Man From Stratford”
- Oxfordian Shakespeare Series: Richard Whalen’s Second Edition of “Macbeth” Published
- Interested In The Shakespeare Authorship Question? Watch The Trailer! Last Will. and Testament
- Spring 1988 American University Law Review: Shakespeare Authorship Moot Court Briefs and Essays
- Pasadena Shakespeare Authorship Conference, October 18-21 — More Info About Speakers and Activities. Be Sure To Register and Book Your Hotel Room
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