Tag Archives: Shakespeare400

Shakespeare Celebrations Continue!

Last week we celebrated Shakespeare with a series of blog posts (which you can read here, here, here, here, and here.  We were also one of the reading locations for the Shakespeare Everywhere event! They had undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators participate!

In fact enjoy this video of the Brodheads reading in Duke Gardens!

Shakespeare celebrations continue across the world, with a lot of things happening tomorrow.   You can watch the live streaming event “The Wonder of Will: Sharing Shakespeare Stories” tomorrow from noon-1:30 ET.  More locally the Shakespeare Marathon begins tomorrow at the North Carolina Museum of History.

Let me also highlight a few articles and think pieces that are being written.  I  really enjoyed this article that has reflections from 25 authors about Shakespeare’s influence on them.  I thought this reflection on food in Shakespeare was really interesting.  Also, this article looks at why we are still obsessively talking about the bard after all this time.

Finally as you can imagine this year has been a banner year for new books about Shakespeare.  Here are a few in our collection (a couple of these aren’t out yet but are on order):

Shakespeare in our time : a Shakespeare Association of America collection edited by Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett

Worldly Shakespeare : the theatre of our good will by Richard Wilson

Shakespeare’s literary lives : the author as character in fiction and film by Paul Franssen

Selling Shakespeare : biography, bibliography, and the book trade by Adam G. Hooks

Teaching Shakespeare with purpose : a student-centred approach by Ayanna Thompson and Laura Turchi

Shakespeare, performance and the archive by Barbara Hodgdon

Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama Text and Performance by Pamela Bickley and Jenny Stevens

Shakespeare’s prop room: an inventory by John Leland and Alan Baragona

Shakespeare’s insults : a pragmatic dictionary by Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

 

Adapting Shakespeare

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Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted for many different periods, countries, and media.

Most obviously his plays have been produced on the stage in a variety of ways.  Some stage productions try to perform  the play as close to the original as possible, some decide to work with all female casts, and some set their productions in specific time periods, like the roaring 20’s or World War Two.  One way to see the different kinds of productions is to read stage histories.  In particular you might enjoy Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History.

Of course there have also been many film adaptions, many of which we own at Lilly Library.  Don’t forget too the classical music, operas, other plays, television, and musicals that have been based on Shakespeare’s plays!

I personally enjoy fiction adapted (or even just inspired by) from Shakespeare, including the new Hogarth Shakespeare series.  We already have Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale Retold, and I’m especially looking forward to Margaret Atwood’s take on The Tempest.

Here are a few more titles to look for:

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.  A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear cast upon a typical American community in the late twentieth century, A Thousand Acres takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride, and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity.

Prospero’s Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez.  A brilliantly conceived retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest set on a lush Caribbean island during the height of tensions between the native population and British colonists.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown.  The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there.

My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare by Jess Winfield.  This is a humourous and ultimately moving novel about sex, drugs, and Shakespeare. It tells the story of struggling UC Santa Cruz student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg who is trying to write his thesis about the bard.

The Madness of Love by Katharine Davies.  Takes inspiration from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and raises the curtain on the interconnecting lives and loves of an unforgettable cast of characters.

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor.  The story, which makes many allusions to the dramatic works of Shakespeare, focuses upon the tragic love affair of “star-crossed” lovers Ophelia “Cocoa” Day and George Andrews.

Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike.  Tells the story of Claudius and Gertrude, King and Queen of Denmark, before the action of Shakespeare’s Hamlet begins. Employing the nomenclature and certain details of the ancient Scandinavian legends that first describe the prince who feigns madness to achieve revenge upon his father’s slayer, Updike brings to life Gertrude’s girlhood as the daughter of King Rorik, her arranged marriage to the man who becomes King Hamlet, and her middle-aged affair with her husband’s younger brother.

Wise Children by Angela Carter.  In their heyday on the vaudeville stages of the early twentieth century, Dora Chance and her twin sister, Nora―unacknowledged daughters of Sir Melchior Hazard, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day―were known as the Lucky Chances, with private lives as colorful and erratic as their careers.

 

Researching Shakespeare

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Has our series of blog posts celebrating Shakespeare inspired you to learn more more about him?  You are in luck because there are a lot of primary and secondary sources related to Shakespeare that you can use in your research!

In fact there is so much information out there that you will actually want to give some thought about how to narrow your research.  One way I would suggest doing this is to give some careful thought to the subject headings you use.  Here are some suggestions that I have:

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Biography

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Characters

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Comedies

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Criticism and interpretation

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Poetic works

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Political and social views

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Stage history

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Tragedies

There are also several very specific Shakespeare related sources to use, such as:

World Shakespeare Bibliography Online.  Provides annotated entries for all important books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare.

Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare. The complete text of eleven major editions of Shakespeare’s works from the First Folio to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty four separate contemporary printings of individual plays, selected apocrypha and related works and more than 100 adaptations, sequels, and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Shakespeare Quarterly. Founded in 1950 by the Shakespeare Association of America, Shakespeare Quarterly is a refereed journal committed to publishing articles in the vanguard of Shakespeare studies.

Shakespeare Studies. An international volume of essays, studies and reviews dealing with the cultural history of early modern England and the place of Shakespeare’s production in it.

Shakespeare Survey.  A series of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948 Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism.

BBC Shakespeare Plays.  Click on “Institution Access” tab to access this database. Between 1978 and 1985, the BBC televised the entire Shakespeare canon of 37 plays. View these acclaimed productions streamed online, as each boasts some of the richest talent in 20th century British theatre and television.

You may also want to look at the historical context that Shakespeare lived in.  I have two recommendations for this.  One is starting with some of the literature resources I have listed on my Medieval and Early Modern page on my Literature guide.  Another is to go to the more complete Medieval and Renaissance Studies guide.

Another avenue of research is to check out some of the materials in the Rubenstein Library.

Finally there are several really great websites that you might find useful:

There’s a rich amount of information to be found on the Folger Shakespeare Library’s website.  A good place to get a sense of what is available is to check out this recent blog post called “Explore Duke’s connection to the Folger Shakespeare Library.”

The MIT Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive is a collaborative project providing online access to performances of Shakespeare from many parts of the world as well as essays and metadata by scholars and educators in the field.

The Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE) is a non-profit scholarly website publishing in three main areas: Shakespeare’s plays and poems, Shakespeare’s life and times, and Shakespeare in performance.  Duke University Libraries is a Friend of the ISE.

The Shakespeare Quartos Archive.  A digital collection of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare’s plays. A cross-Atlantic collaboration has also produced an interactive interface for the detailed study of these geographically distant quartos, with full functionality for all thirty-two quarto copies of Hamlet held by participating institutions.

I don’t know how long this tool will be available, but JSTOR has this fun Understanding Shakespeare site where they are connecting digital texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library with articles on JSTOR.

Continue your exploration of Shakespeare by joining us on April 15th at the Shakespeare Everywhere reading!

 

Shaikh Zubayr

This guest post has been written by Sean Swanick, the Librarian For Middle East and Islamic Studies, as part of our series of Shakespeare related blog posts.

A man lost at sea, having drifted far away from his native Iraqi lands, comes a shore in England. In due time he will be nicknamed the Bard of Avon but upon landing on the Saxon coast, his passport reportedly read: Shaikh Zubayr. A knowledgeable man with great writing prowess from a small town called Zubayr in Iraq. He came to be known in the West as Shakespeare and was given the first name of William. William Shakespeare of Zubayr.

Or at least this is loosely how a story goes about The Bard’s origins. It was purportedly first suggested by the famous Lebanese intellectual, Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq and later popularised by the Iraqi intellectual Dr. Ṣafāʾ Khulūṣī. Khulūṣī in 1960 published an article entitled “The Study of Shakespeare” in al-Ma’rifa (1960) where he paid homage to the Bard while also expanding upon al-Shidyāq’s theory. This perplexing theory has generated much rebuttal and discussion. This theory rested upon “that most of Shakespeare’s language could be traced back to Classical Arabic…[t]o give one example : the Arabic adjective nabīl which means ‘noble’ and which occurs, naturally enough, throughout the plays and poems.” (“Shadow Language” in Ormsby, Eric L. 2011. Fine incisions: essays on poetry and place. Erin, Ont: Porcupine’s Quill.) The former Libyan dictator, Mu’ammar al-Qadhāfī is also reported to have supported the theory of Shaikh Zubayr.

At Duke, visiting Professor Abdul Sattar Jawad of Duke Islamic Studies Centre wrote a delightful article in The Chronicle in 2011 about the popularity of Shakespeare in Iraq. He noted, “[i]n Iraq, Shakespeare’s works are regarded as the second Bible and the center of Western canon. He became a mandatory course in schools and universities alike. “To be or not to be,” “as you like it,” and “that is the question,” were frequently cited, even by the illiterate. They are heaven’s gift, backed by thorough knowledge of the highest professionalism put into poetry and the dramatic art” (Abdul Sattar Jawad, “Shakespeare in Baghdad,” The Chronicle, 2 December 2011).

A couple of additional resources for those with interested in Shakespeare in Arabic. MIT has a list of videos, all translated and performed in Arabic, freely available here: http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/arab-world/#. A bit of further information on Shakespeare in Arabic may be found on this blog http://arabshakespeare.blogspot.com/, and the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/arabshakespeare/timeline.

عيد ميلاد شيخ الزبير—ʾeid mīlād Shaykh Zubayr, or Happy Birthday, Bill!

 

Explore Duke’s connection to the Folger Shakespeare Library

This guest post has been written by Heidi Madden, PH.D., the Librarian For Western Europe, as part of our series of Shakespeare related blog posts.

Did you know that Duke University is a member of the Folger Institute Consortium at the Folger Shakespeare Library?

The Folger Institute was founded in 1970, and is sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library , home to the largest Shakespeare Collection in the world, and a consortium of 40 universities in the U.S. and abroad. Duke University is part of this network which advances humanities research and learning through seminars, conferences, and colloquia.

Duke faculty and graduate students have benefited from this membership, and generations of Duke undergraduates in the Medieval Studies Focus cluster have had the good fortune of private tours and demonstrations. The materials held extend beyond Shakespeare to include materials in history and politics, theology, law and the arts. For example, the 2015 Focus Program trip to the Folger, accompanied by Duke Faculty and by librarian Heidi Madden, allowed students to explore early modern botanical books.

The best place to read more about the rich history of the Folger and its treasures is the Folgerpedia, which presents all things Folger. The Folger Institute offers fellowships, undergraduate research opportunities, and scholarly programming. Browse the Digital Collections to sample the holdings.

 

Relevant Links

Digital Collections  

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Shakespeare Portraits 

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Folgerpedia 

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Celebrating Shakespeare

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This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and people around the world are celebrating his life.  You can check out some of the festivities happening in the UK on the Shakespeare400 website.  Also, there are special performances and events at the Shakespeare Globe (I have to figure out a way to get there).  Back here in the United States the Folger Library is getting in on the action with their The Wonder of Will program.  Another thing not to be missed is the Shakespeare Documented online exhibit!

On Twitter scroll through #Shakespeare400 to see what people are talking about!

Locally check out some of the events taking place around Raleigh. It’s not too late to attend the Carolina Ballet’s performance of Macbeth.  The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA is putting on a festival on April 23rd!

Here at the library we are celebrating in several ways.   All this week we will be posting blog posts related to Shakespeare, using the hashtags #shakespeareeverywhere and #shakespeare400.  Rubenstein will be featuring several Shakespeare related documents, including this document showing some of Whitman’s thoughts about Shakespeare.  And of course this Friday the first hour (10-11)  of Shakespeare Everywhere will be taking place in The Edge Workshop Room.  They will then be moving over to the Hanes Iris Garden Amphitheater in Duke Gardens from 11:30-12:30, and then the LSRC Hall of Science Atrium from 1-2.

Shakespeare Everywhere

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Since this year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare‘s death, you’re going to see Shakespeare popping up everywhere.  In fact next week on April 15th the English department is doing a marathon reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets on three stages, including the Edge Workshop Room in the Bostock Library!

The deadline to sign up to read a sonnet (or two or three) via THIS LINK is Friday, April 8. Simply indicate what timeslot(s) you are available and you will be schedule to read (anywhere from 1-3 sonnets) during that slot.  Feel free to contact Michelle Dove at michelle.dove@duke.edu if you have more questions.

You are also welcome to just come and enjoy the readings!  If you are interested in checking out the sonnets beforehand, we have several copies in the library.  Also, you can watch actors such as Sir Patrick Stewart and David Tennant read some of the sonnets here.