Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Janet Suzman 'Mad as a Snake' Over Rylance and Shakespeare 'Myths'
Guardian | Dalya Alberge

Posted on 09/04/2012 12:39:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway

Janet Suzman 'mad as a snake' over Rylance and Shakespeare 'myths'


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Books/Literature; History
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs; shakespeare
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-23 next last
Shakespeare may have set 14 plays in Italy, but do any of them contain actual relevant details about life in Italy, he couldn't have read about. The amazing thing is, in 14 plays, Shakespeare doesn't seem to give us very much specific to Italy.

In the Winter's Tale, his Sicilia and Bohemia, have no geographical reality. (Bohemia has a desert and a Sea Coast) As usual, Shakespeare just takes that from source material, and he doesn't really care about geographical or historical accuracy.

1 posted on 09/04/2012 12:39:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

My favorite is the clock chiming in Julius Caeser.


2 posted on 09/04/2012 12:45:55 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

It’s amazing that people with this much exposure, don’t remember historical verisimilitude was not what he was going for.


3 posted on 09/04/2012 12:50:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

More disgusting herpephobia.


4 posted on 09/04/2012 12:53:47 PM PDT by pabianice (washington, dc ..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin
My favorite is the clock chiming in Julius Caeser.

What difference does that make? If the author of Shakespeare plays had been in Renaissance Italy, he would have heard clocks chiming. A sea coast in Bohemia is an "anamundism", clocks chiming in early imperial Rome is an anachronism.

5 posted on 09/04/2012 12:54:56 PM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (The Democratic Party strongly supports full civil rights for necro-Americans!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway
Good for her, sticking it to these fools.

"The big thing in his favour is this extraordinary visit to Italy," said Rylance last year. "You would expect a playwright who set 14 of 37 plays in Italy to have been there, and the knowledge is exact."

In Measure for Measure - which takes place in German-speaking Vienna - Shakespeare writes a play whose principal characters have Italianate names.

In A Winter's Tale characters are shipwrecked off the coast of Bohemia - which is a landlocked region of the modern-day Czech Republic.

In Two Gentlemen of Verona characters sail from landlocked Verona to landlocked Milan.

Rylance may perform these plays, but he either hasn't read them or he failed geography.

6 posted on 09/04/2012 12:57:48 PM PDT by wideawake
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway
That's not the issue being debated. The issue is conspiracy theorists claiming that the geographical accuracy proves that the plays were written by someone other than Shakespeare, when in point of fact the geography is not accurate at all, and is often shockingly bad.
7 posted on 09/04/2012 1:00:01 PM PDT by wideawake
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Lonesome in Massachussets

Very interesting!

“anamundism”

Related to anamnesis?


8 posted on 09/04/2012 1:00:56 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

It’s amusing that the “intellectuals” always come up with a crazy theories to explain away people without their “education” or “breeding” out performing them.


9 posted on 09/04/2012 1:05:18 PM PDT by Durus (You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Ayn Rand)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Much Ado about Nothing


10 posted on 09/04/2012 1:09:03 PM PDT by Tijeras_Slim
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway
Doubts about Shakespeare's authorship have been voiced for more than 150 years

Sir Henry Neville was the "Winston Churchill" of Shakespeare's day.He wrote in a notebook references to the deposition of Richard II and notes toward directions for the coronation scene in Henry VIII - a play produced eleven years after the date of these preliminary notes. Also, there was the Northumberland Manuscript, with Nevilles's name at its head, Neville's family motto and poem beneath it, and Shakespeare's signature being practised at the foot of that document.

11 posted on 09/04/2012 1:11:02 PM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%9Canamundism%E2%80%9D&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=&safe=active


12 posted on 09/04/2012 1:17:39 PM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (The Democratic Party strongly supports full civil rights for necro-Americans!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: mjp
Neville was in France, then imprisoned in the Tower of London, during 4 or 5 years of Shakespeare's peak productivity. Besides which, is there any evidence Neville had a literary bent, or any special insight into the human conditions?

On what basis do you compare him to Winston Churchill?

13 posted on 09/04/2012 1:20:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Tijeras_Slim

ding ding ding

Winner!


14 posted on 09/04/2012 1:38:00 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway; mjp
On what basis do you compare him to Winston Churchill?

Good question. Let's compare:

Churchill: First Lord of the Admiralty. Neville: Deputy Sherriff of Berkshire.

Churchill: Prime Minister. Neville: Ambassador to France.

Churchill: prevented Mosley and other plotters from overthrowing the government. Neville: plotted with Lord Devereaux to stage a coup.

Churchill: lost in his attempt retain the Prime Ministership. Neville: lost in his attempt to become Home Secretary.

Hmmm . . . not much basis at all, apparently.

15 posted on 09/04/2012 1:38:45 PM PDT by wideawake
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Tijeras_Slim

well played.


16 posted on 09/04/2012 1:39:12 PM PDT by dmz
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

 GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thanks nickcarraway. Good thing The Bard wasn't trying to make documentaries, eh? Even his historical plays merely use some old pegs to hang new paper.

Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.


17 posted on 09/04/2012 3:28:50 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

Ben Jonson eulogized William Shakespeare as “the wonder of our stage” and called him “sweet swan of Avon”. The non-Stratfordians are without exception suffering from cranial-rectal inversion.

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/eulogies.html

To sum up: four years after Shakespeare’s death, he was included in a printed tribute to England’s greatest deceased poets; sometime in the first seven years after his death, a monument was erected to him in Stratford, and another poem, widely circulated in manuscript, suggested that he should have been buried in Westminster Abbey; seven years after his death, a massive edition of his plays was published along with four eulogies, the longest and most affectionate of them written by England’s poet laureate; around the same time (and possibly earlier) another manuscript eulogy was circulating; and over the next twenty years a dozen new eulogies appeared in print, including three in the second edition of his plays and three in an edition of his poems.


18 posted on 09/04/2012 3:34:20 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

It’s true that the magnitude of Shakespeare’s genius was not fully recognized during and shortly after his life, but there were leading indicators. The fact that his reputation is greater 400 years after his death, than 40 years after his death shows is that genius shows in the test of time, not the fads of the day.


19 posted on 09/04/2012 3:49:50 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

He was recognized as the greatest of his generation back then, but he both died young and the era of the Elizabethan / Jacobian live stage didn’t last all that long. During Victorian times Shakespeare was revived, but the scripts were doctored to remove some of the bawdiness, add then-current euphemisms, and to add stupidities like, Romeo and Juliet survived.

The 37 known surviving full plays are not all equally accessible today, for sure, but appreciation for Shakespeare really has picked up in the 20th century, and movie treatments began early in the silent era (I think the first one was a one-reel production of “King John”). In the 1970s the BBC produced all 37 plays, and a year or so ago I read somewhere (maybe here on FR, if so, probably in a topic you posted) that the BBC was preparing to do so again.

I see a live stage production of one Shakespearean play once a year, and am sometimes surprised at how things are done. A few years back I went to see “Romeo and Juliet” — easily one of the best known plays in history — and wasn’t expecting to be knocked on my ass. The only problem with the play is that inquest at the end, it reminds me of the Bob Cummings role in “Dial M for Murder”. :’)


20 posted on 09/04/2012 7:12:48 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-23 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson