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The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s more obscure and baffling plays. The title alone needs justification: the plot spans sixteen years and settles mostly in springtime. But more peculiar: if Shakespeare is so “universal,” what possible relevance to anyone is the story of a disowned girl whose brother dies young and whose insanely jealous father is responsible for the trial and death of her mother?
READ MORE >Shakespeare’s “graver labour,” the follow-up long poem to mega-hit Venus and Adonis, is a strange piece indeed. Right after her horrific rape, Lucrece, Roman paragon of womanly virtue, takes a tour of the art on her own walls for about a tenth of the entire poem. What is Shakespeare saying about the relevance of “reading” art and applying it to one’s own circumstances and experiences?
READ MORE >No tuition. No homework. No quizzes. No gym class! School begins Thursday, Nov 6. We would love to see you there! Register here.
READ MORE >Join us in the School of Night for a free three-part online Shakespeare Studies class with WSU Professor Michael Delahoyde. Our first class is The Shakespeare Hoax. Register here! The Shakespeare Hoax November 6 9 p.m. Eastern / 6 p.m. Pacific Why does each avenue into the historical and biographical study of the Stratford…
READ MORE >Join Washington State University Professor of English Michael Delahoyde and The Shakespeare Underground on three evenings in November for School of Night, an interactive class. These live video webcasts will feature real-time discussion via chat and a Q&A session in which participants with webcams can appear onscreen and converse with the group. The Shakespeare Hoax…
READ MORE >In an article published in today’s Guardian, Saul Frampton sets out a case that John Florio, Italian linguist and poet at the English court, may have anonymously played a role in producing the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Modern scholars agree that actors John Heminges and Henry Condell, traditionally considered the Folio’s assemblers, were unlikely…
READ MORE >England’s Henry VI – weak king but successful ghost? Meet him (and others) on our new Pinterest board, Real People from Shakespeare’s History Plays. King Henry VI (1421-1471). By age 1, Henry was King of England and France. A weak ruler who suffered incapacitating bouts of insanity, Henry was deposed twice. His power may…
READ MORE >What’s Wrong With This Picture? head bulge Oversized, bulging cranium. Squint and you can really see this. Hair poufs Asymmetrical hair poufs. At eye level on this side of the head, but down at earlobe level on the other. Mouth Mouth is out of alignment with nose. Lips are centered under left nostril. two left…
READ MORE >Curious about the popularity of ideas over time? (Or terms, or spelling variations?) Here’s a fun tracking tool to play with: The Google Ngram Viewer. It charts the yearly count of n-grams, which are defined as phrases, words, or letter combinations. The resulting graph is based on usage in the 5+million books digitized by Google…
READ MORE >Independent scholarship gets another boost with the release of T-Pen. This web-based software enables crowdsourced transcription of digitized texts, while supporting a more accurate recording process. T-Pen’s transcription interface appears on the same screen as the manuscript page, and helps readability and tracking with fancy tricks like striping each line of the text. Transcriptions can…
READ MORE >Internet Archive/Open Library hosts several volumes of the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, and James I, 1547-1625. Features a beautifully designed user interface and excellent search capability.
READ MORE >Professors Russell Jackson and Stanley Wells look at Kenneth Branagh’s filmed Shakespeare adaptations in a webinar hosted by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Friday, October 26 4pm BST; 11am EST; 8am PDT Register here.
READ MORE >Age-darkened and stained manuscript pages yield up their secrets to a historical imaging technique that uses different wavelengths of light to increase visual contrast. Spectral imaging can even reveal writing that has been “erased” – where a layer of vellum has been scraped off to provide a new writing surface. Greg Bearman and Ken Boydston…
READ MORE >The U.K. National Archives hosts a fantastic resource for deciphering English handwriting from the 16th through the 19th centuries. This practical palaeography tutorial covers spelling, abbreviations, money, and important details about dates, such as Old Style vs. New Style: until 1572 (when the first day of the year fell on January 1), the year switched…
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