#William Shakespeare’s works

[allthathistory]

The Shakespeare Authorship Question: Snobbery and Wishful Thinking

Shakespeare was a genius. His plots may have been stolen, his knowledge of the worlds about which he wrote flawed and incomplete, but his poetry and his genius as a weaver of narrative threads is unsurpassed, even four hundred years later.

How was it that a provincial glover’s son born in the early years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I could rise to such staggering ability and translate his ambition into treasure for all time? How indeed.

This is not a puzzle which has gone unnoticed, and questions swirl around this jobbing actor with a second-rate education. How did he manage, amidst his fellows, to produce such masterpieces again and again?

There are plenty who believe his plays were not actually his, and we have no record that Shakespeare ever himself took credit for their writing in his lifetime, nor does it appear he ever received compensation for their composition, merely for his acting. Fingers have been pointed at other individuals, with more or less plausibility.

The Cadaver Synod, when a Dead Pope Stood Trial

21 Grams, Artificial Intelligence, and the Path to Robot Suffrage

Christopher Marlowe is sometimes suggested as the true author of Shakespeare’s plays, and Marlowe was certainly possessed of a similar genius. The early Shakespeare plays borrow heavily from Marlowe’s plays of the 1580s, and there is much else in common between the two bodies of work.

Of course Marlowe himself was murdered in Deptford in 1593, and Shakespeare would continue to write for fifteen years after his death. For Marlowe to be the true author he would have to have left behind a staggering body of unpublished work for Shakespeare to churn out regularly, including references to current events which had not even happened in Marlowe’s lifetime. Not really likely.

Various other brilliant men of the time, such as Francis Bacon, are routinely proposed as the “real” Shakespeare, for little reason other than their cleverness in other spheres. But there is one other major contender who is perhaps not so easily dismissed.

Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is the leading candidate for those who refuse to credit Shakespeare himself with his body of work. He was a court poet, a sponsor of acting troupes, and even wrote plays under his own name.

Could he be the real genius behind Shakespeare?

Read more

[stingrayextraordinaire]

My students’ adventures in trying to spell “tragedy” for their Romeo and Juliet quiz.

[castielssuperhell]

i opened tumblr after finishing my 3 hour long english exam on macbeth, ready to forget about it and drown my sorrows and SHAKESPEARE IS FUCKING TRENDING???!? for the first time EVER??? I WILL NEVER KNOW PEACE, THIS MAN HAUNTS MY EVERY MOVE

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

Volume Two of The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere edited and published by Charles Knight (1797-1873) contains the remaining six comedies All’s Well That Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night; or What You Will, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, A Winter’s Tale, and Tempest. Knight includes introductory notices prior to the start of each play throughout the collection to determine “the state of the text.” The notices provide brief overviews of the play draped with an editorial point of view, deliver a critical analysis of the “supposed source of the plot," and address character costumes.  

The notices are as heavily illustrated as the plays, and unique to Volume Two is an advertisement defending the editorial choices of how and which illustrations are chosen for inclusion. Knight informs readers that there are no editions of Shakespeare “in which the aid of Art has been called in to give a distinctness to the conceptions of the reader by representing the realities upon which the imagination of the poet must have rested.” He further explains that his pictorial edition will focus on representing the scores of rich scenes and characters without unnecessary embellishments. With one hundred and sixty illustrations in Volume Two alone, it is safe to say his intentions were well met.  

The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere was originally issued out of London in fifty-six monthly parts before being bound in an eight-volume set in 1839. 

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[elzorton]

Richard II

[bystandrr]

Been jamming to my cultures music lately and feeling very painterly cause of it so I’m deciding I’m gonna “paint” a renaissance portrait of Crowley 😅

I also posted this here

[thecandlewasters]

it's, like, the best version of the maan song

feeling it now, mr krabs?

[lepetitdragonvert]

Tatiana and Oberon

Artist : Margaret Winifred Tarrant (1888-1959)

Illustration for an edition of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” (Though it does not appear in her edition of Charles and Mary Lamb’s “Tales from Shakespeare” (1918)

Source : Swanngalleries.com

[austin-friars]

'Ophelia' Wip

[queeringclassiclit]

Benedict

from Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

[hayleylovesjessica]

I'm screaming!

[lenateliier]

“I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

[usefulquotes7]

We're all a product of our surroundings. Now, you can choose to embrace those surroundings, or take a stand against them; that's where the difference between "good" and "bad" comes from. I. E. Williams

[arolotl-queen]

My shitty tv show idea is a show that has EVERY SINGLE shakespeare play happening in a high school setting. Picture the maddness.

I'm thinking things like Romeo is a popular boy and Juliet is a nerdy band kid who plays dnd on the weekends. they start dating but secretly because they would be kicked our of their friend groups if anyone knew.

Macbeth got told by three weird kids that if something happened to the guy everyone was going to vote for in the school captain election then everyone would vote for Macbeth.

I would say more but i haven't really thought about any of the other plays and also haven't read a single shakespeare play other than romeo and juliet and macbeth. im so sorry. feel free to add on tho

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere edited and published by Charles Knight (1797-1873) out of London in 1839 was originally issued in fifty-six monthly parts before being bound in an eight-volume set. Like earlier Shakespeare editors, Knight felt all previous editions of Shakespeare collections had been compiled by men who “had corrupted his text, and had never rightly appreciated his consummate art.” As an experienced publisher of encyclopedias and miscellanies, he set out to “humbly” correct their errors with an ambitiously illustrated collection.  

The wood engravings place Shakespeare’s characters and events within a historical context opposed to a theatrical one and are elucidated in subsidiary segments interspersed throughout the plays’ acts. Volume One of Knight’s collection includes Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Most illustrations within the collection are unsigned, but British wood engravers John Jackson (1801-1848) and William Harvey (1796-1866) along with British painter G.F. Sargent are featured prominently among the titlepage and larger illustrations.   

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[all-chickens-are-trans]

what if i rewrote much ado with beatrice and benedick both being transmasc. you couldn't stop me. no one could. i am right. they were girl best friends and there was definitely a spark and then one night, they were both like. hey i am actually a boy I think, and benedick was like, let's go run away to the army together and be boy bestfriends but beatrice stayed home and in the closet while benedick went and joined the army as a guy and made new boy bestfriends like don pedro and claudio, and beatrice was jealous and envied him and when benedick came back, it was strange between them but they covered it up with jokes and banter, and when the cis ppl of messina were all like "let's play a prank on them and tell them they're in love haha wouldn't that be funny" they didn't realize that they were doing these two a huge favour and now they're t4t and gay and because beatrice is still not out to anyone but benedick, they can both go ":) look at us, a normal heterosexual couple, totally acceptable to the society we live in :)" they are gay t4t transmascs i know it in my heart i knowww

(this post was sponsored by me beta reading @rovermcfly 's brilliant benedick x beatrice t4t essay that will hopefully drop soon because god i need everyone to read it and weep with me)