Shakespeare and the Resistance
Shakespeare and the Resistance

Author: Clare Asquith

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2018-08-21

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1568588119

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Shakespeare's largely misunderstood narrative poems contain within them an explosive commentary on the political storms convulsing his country The 1590s were bleak years for England. The queen was old, the succession unclear, and the treasury empty after decades of war. Amid the rising tension, William Shakespeare published a pair of poems dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece a year later. Although wildly popular during Shakespeare's lifetime, to modern readers both works are almost impenetrable. But in her enthralling new book, the Shakespearean scholar Clare Asquith reveals their hidden contents: two politically charged allegories of Tudor tyranny that justified-and even urged-direct action against an unpopular regime. The poems were Shakespeare's bestselling works in his lifetime, evidence that they spoke clearly to England's wounded populace and disaffected nobility, and especially to their champion, the Earl of Essex. Shakespeare and the Resistance unearths Shakespeare's own analysis of a political and religious crisis which would shortly erupt in armed rebellion on the streets of London. Using the latest historical research, it resurrects the story of a bold bid for freedom of conscience and an end to corruption that was erased from history by the men who suppressed it. This compelling reading situates Shakespeare at the heart of the resistance movement.

Hamlet's Age and the Earl of Southampton
Hamlet's Age and the Earl of Southampton

Author: Lars Kaaber

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-06-20

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1443896136

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Hamlet’s Age and the Earl of Southampton investigates the exact age of the eponymous prince in Shakespeare’s play, a topic which has been subject to frequent debates over the past 239 years. Whether Hamlet is sixteen, eighteen or, as the Gravedigger states in Act V, thirty years old may seem irrelevant to performances of the play (since actors tackling the part are very rarely in their teens), but it still tends to influence our general view of the Danish prince. Romantic criticism in the early 19th century insisted on a heroic and supremely intelligent teenage prince, and, to a large extent, this view of Hamlet still prevails. Whether Shakespeare meant his protagonist to be the irreproachable prince of Romantic fancy, however, remains a question. Numerous scholars have found references to the Earl of Essex in Hamlet, but Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton, once indisputably Shakespeare’s patron, is a far more likely candidate. If Shakespeare had Southampton in mind when writing his Danish tragedy, this would account for the Gravedigger’s estimate of Hamlet’s age in Act V and explain several things that have puzzled us over the last four centuries.

Anonymous SHAKE-SPEARE
Anonymous SHAKE-SPEARE

Author: Kurt Kreiler

Publisher: Junius Verlag

Published: 2011-09-30

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 3862180212

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A new Roland Emmerich film - Anonymous - was released in October 2011. The seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), says Emmerich, wrote the Shakespearian works. How could such a postulation come about and where does this doubt as to William Shaksper's authorship come from? (No offence is intended by calling the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon "Shaksper"; he certainly wouldn't have taken any, that's how he wrote it on his marriage license.) - After the academic world has been guessing and floundering for 150 years, the literary detective Kurt Kreiler surprises us with a book that addresses this subject after years of sound and thorough academic research. This is definitely the leading book on this subject. Chapters 1 and 2 explain why Will Shaksper from Stratford-upon-Avon was not an author. In chapter 3, ten works of the author William Shakespeare will be analysed with a view to determine what criteria the author must have had in order to write the works in question. Which foreign lands had the author visited? What historical references have been made? When were the pieces written? Chapter 4 examines the social perspectives of the "Author of the plays". Chapter 5 examines what Shakespeare's literary contemporaries knew about him, with whom did they associate him, what qualities did they attribute to him? An analysis of the Harvey-Nashe-Quarrel show us that they both agree that the author "Master William" was the creator of the figure Falstaff and that this author was Eduard de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Chapter 6 deals with the first part of the biography of Eduard de Vere. Chapters 7 and 8 show that the the profile of the Author that was developed in chapters 3-5 correlates logically and universally with the biography of the Earl of Oxford. Chapter 9 is a continuation of the biography of the writer and spear shaker "William Shake-speare" up to his death in 1604. Chapter 10 shows why, how and for whom the dramatist Ben Jonson went about the task of procuring the nom de plume Shake-speare. By using the coincidental similarity between the names Shake-speare and Shaksper, Jonson posthumously set up a marionette to claim authorship of the Shakespearian works. Kurt Kreiler (b. 23 June 1950) is a German author and dramaturg. He read philology and philosophy at university, his studies culminating in a doctoral thesis on the short lived Bavarian Republic of People's Councils (1918/19). In 1983 he began his work as a writer for television and radio. In 2009 Insel Verlag published Kreiler's: "The Man who invented Shakespeare"; a book that caused a considerable stir in Germany."

Shadowplay
Shadowplay

Author: Clare Asquith

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1541774302

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In 16th century England many loyal subjects to the crown were asked to make a terrible choice: to follow their monarch or their God. The era was one of unprecedented authoritarianism: England, it seemed, had become a police state, fearful of threats from abroad and plotters at home. This age of terror was also the era of the greatest creative genius the world has ever known: William Shakespeare. How, then, could such a remarkable man born into such violently volatile times apparently make no comment about the state of England in his work? He did. But it was hidden. Revealing Shakespeare's sophisticated version of a forgotten code developed by 16th-century dissidents, Clare Asquith shows how he was both a genius for all time and utterly a creature of his own era: a writer who was supported by dissident Catholic aristocrats, who agonized about the fate of England's spiritual and political life and who used the stage to attack and expose a regime which he believed had seized illegal control of the country he loved. Shakespeare's plays offer an acute insight into the politics and personalities of his era. And Clare Asquith's decoding of them offers answers to several mysteries surrounding Shakespeare's own life, including most notably why he stopped writing while still at the height of his powers. An utterly compelling combination of literary detection and political revelation, Shadowplay is the definitive expose of how Shakespeare lived through and understood the agonies of his time, and what he had to say about them.

Shakespeare's Son and His Sonnets
Shakespeare's Son and His Sonnets

Author: Hank Whittemore

Publisher: Martin and Lawrence Press

Published: 2010-10-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780982073216

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A new view of Shakespeare's sonnets that brings them alive as a chronicle of political intrigue, passion, and betrayal.