In Shakespeare’s comedies, sex is not only connected to marriage, but postdates it. Prospero in The Tempest insists to his prospective son-in-law that he not break the “virgin-knot” of his intended bride, Miranda, “before / All sanctimonious ceremonies may / With full and holy rite be ministered,” lest “barren hate, / Sour-eyed disdain, and discord . . . bestrew / The union of your bed with weeds so loathly / That you shall hate it both” (4.1.15-22).
The post Sexuality in Shakespeare’s plays and poems appeared first on OUPblog.
In anticipation of Shakespeare celebrations next year, we asked Oxford University Press and Oxford University staff members to choose their favourite Shakespeare adaptation. From classic to contemporary, the obscure to the infamous, we've collected a whole range of faithful and quirky translations from play text to film. Did your favourite film or television programme make the list?
The post What is your favourite Shakespeare adaptation? appeared first on OUPblog.
Stanley Wells’ latest book, Great Shakespeare Actors, offers a series of beautifully written, illuminating, and entertaining accounts of many of the most famous stage performers of Shakespeare from his time to ours. In a video interview, Wells revealed some of the ‘lesser’ remembered actors of the past he would have loved to have seen perform live on stage. The edited transcript below offers an insight into three of these great Shakespeare actors.
The post Who are the forgotten Shakespearean actors? appeared first on OUPblog.
Thanks for talking to Boomerang Books about your outstanding first novel Laurinda (Black Inc.), Alice Pung. Thanks for interviewing me! You are well known for your excellent non-fiction, Unpolished Gem, Her Father’s Daughter and as editor of Growing Up Asian in Australia. Why have you sidestepped into YA fiction? Growing up, I went to five different high schools, […]
William Shakespeare was born 450 years ago this month, in April 1564, and to celebrate Oxford Scholarly Editions Online is testing your knowledge on Shakespeare quotes. Do you know your sonnets from your speeches? Find out…
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Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) is a major publishing initiative from Oxford University Press, providing an interlinked collection of authoritative Oxford editions of major works from the humanities, including the complete Oxford Shakespeare series.
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Image credit: The Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Shakespeare’s 450th birthday quiz appeared first on OUPblog.
After a long, agonizing struggle, my postcards are finally printed and starting to make their way out into the world.
My style has changed so much over the last year or so. I knew something had to change for awhile. I had that uncomfortable, exciting, aggravating feeling running in the background of my consciousness. I tried to lean into it and let it happen, knowing that change and growth are part of the creative life, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier. I played, I experimented, I caught glimpses, but the goal was always just out of reach.
I researched, I studied, I went to conferences. At my local Illustrator's Day,
John Clapp, illustration teacher at SJSU, told me that it should always be uncomfortable when I'm creating something. That means I'm growing, that I'm making something worth making. It shouldn't be easy or rote.
That mantra has been playing in my head since last fall. I am so grateful for my friend,
Tracy Bishop, for listening, pushing, and agonizing right alongside of me through this journey. Thanks also to
Kelly Light for helping put the cherry on top of this illo.
My word for this year and last has been Intention. I used that word from the beginning of this illo, starting with the color palette. I loved Peter Brown's book Children Make Terrible Pets as a reference for the color.
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| @Peter Brown |
The painting in progress. I create everything in layers traditionally, then assemble, collage, and enhance in Photoshop.
I don't know why I'm updating this stupid blog, but I have nothing else to do since I was suspended from school. That's right, those freekin' phonies suspended me! Hopefully your year is starting out better than mine.
And things were really starting to turn around for me, too. Growley finally admitted he was a werewolf, SPAM came back without a nose (still laughing about that one), and I got
Now, I suppose I should take this opportunity to meet some characters who would be able to solve one of life's eternal mysteries - like where all the odd socks go, or why cars/computers/washing machines never make that funny noise when someone useful is listening.
But I'm not going to do that, except possibly in the case of my last choice. No, in a spirit of human kindness, I'm first going to meet three characters who need a bit of friendly advice. Then I'm going to have fun. So here they are, in all their glory.
Romeo Romeo is so impulsive. He does the first thing that comes into his head, every time - and just look at the results! What you must do, Romeo, I shall say kindly, is just to take a little time to think. Verify the facts. Put yourself in the other person's place. Talk to people. Just make sure people are really dead before you go making histrionic speeches and taking poison that you really shouldn't have had in the first place.
Then I'm sure you'll find that life will go much more smoothly. There'll certainly be a lot less drama.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles Oh, Tess, Tess. You have so much going for you. You're very beautiful, er... you really are very, very beautiful... well, that's enough to be going on with. Now, the initial problem with Alec. Well, fair enough, probably not a lot you could have done about that. But Angel - really, did you have to let that sanctimonious twerp walk all over you? And, you see, if you stand up to him, then you won't be so desperate that you'll have to let Alec back in again. There must be some nice reliable shepherd or forester knocking about in the wilds of Wessex. Or maybe you could start up a small business. Whatever - just stay away from men whose names begin with 'A'.
Dorothea Brooke Actually, what I'd really like to do is talk to Tess and Dorothea (from Middlemarch) at the same time. I'm sure they'd be very good for each other. Of course, Dorothea is scarily clever, but where men are concerned, she's just as silly as Tess. I mean, marrying Casaubon - listen to me, Dorothea (may I call you Dot?), just DON'T DO IT! For goodness' sake, isn't it obvious? You have far more in common with Lydgate. Together, you can do lots of lovely good, and then he won't ruin poor old Rosamond's life either. Leave her to Will - they'll be good for each other.
Fangorn I don't want to give Fangorn relationship advice - I'm afraid there's not much I can do for him, except hope he finds his Entwife one day. No - I just want to see what he looks like. I loved the Lord of the Rings films, but I didn't quite feel convinced by the Ents, and I think they're lovely, so I'd like to see what they really look like. And if Aragorn or Legolas happens to be passing, so much the better.
Grannie Weatherwax I think Grannie Weatherwax may actually be dead, but I don't think this should be much of a problem in the Discworld. If it is, any other character will do. Lord Vetinari, perhaps? Might as well go to the top. Because I have to admit, interesting as any of the characters would be, what I'm really after is a free pass to the Discworld. So much to see, so much to do! When I come back, I'll write an article: 24 hours in Ankh-Morpokh or some such. I'm sure that would be far more interesting than yet another celeb interview.
So there we have it - and now I'm off to spend three days in the wilds of Oxfordshire with a bunch of Scattered Authors (who, obviously, won't be scattered at that point). Lovely!
…wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” is the famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but I’m using it for today’s post to direct your attention to two things — 1) the new PT issue that went live on June 2 that is all about children and play, and 2) about Shakespeare plays and poetry. The word “play” has various meanings and one of them refers to drama. Children naturally act out stories with each other or their toys, and create little ‘plays,’ as it were. And so taking them to see plays is a natural extension, I think, of that basic child-like impulse to create them.
Last year, I wrote a post about the Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, put on by the Unicorn Theatre in London. We also went to see Romeo and Juliet at the Globe theatre. I was convinced by my experiences there that children (and parents) need not be intimidated by Shakespeare’s plays. Of course, for most people, it is the poetic language of Shakespeare (the plays are mostly written in blank verse which is unrhymed iambic pentameter) that can be off-putting; however, if one gets to see the play acted, the language does not appear nearly so opaque and in fact contributes to the pleasure of watching the drama. In Winnipeg where I live, we have a local theatre company, Shakespeare in the Ruins, that puts on a Shakespeare play every summer in outdoor venues. This year they staged the Merry Wives of Windsor. We took both our children to the play and they enjoyed watching it.
Have you ever taken your children to a Shakespeare play? What was it and did they enjoy it? Does your city have a local company that stages plays for children? Do tell us here at PaperTigers.
This week’s Poetry Friday host is Kelly Polark.
by Cassie, Publicity Assistant
Simon Morrison is Professor of Music at Princeton University. He is the author of The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years and the editor of Prokofiev and His World. He restored the original, uncensored version of Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group, which enjoys its world premier in 2008. In this article, Morrison looks at the mysteries surrounding the 1938 premier of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, sharing what he’s learned from the woman who played Juliet, Zora Šemberová.
This May the Mark Morris Dance Group will be performing Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare at Lincoln Center. This is the original, 1935 version of Sergey Prokofiev’s illustrious ballet, which I restored for the company last year, and which features, remarkably, a happy ending. (The tragic ending was tacked on to the score after protest from Soviet Shakespeare purists; had Prokofiev not complied with their demands, Romeo and Juliet might not have been performed during his lifetime.) I unearthed this version of the score while conducting research in Moscow for The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years, and I devoted about twenty pages of the book to the peculiar history of the ballet. That history continues to be written, as I learned last spring, when Alan Brissenden, Reader in English at the University of Adelaide, informed me that the Czech ballerina who danced the part of Juliet in the 1938 premiere of the ballet was thriving at age 94. Her name is Zora Šemberová, and she has just published her memoirs, which are titled, appropriately enough, Na št’astné planetě, or On a Happy Planet.
The premiere occurred in the Provincial Theater in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on December 30, 1938. It was choreographed by Ivo Váña-Psota, who took the part of Romeo. Prokofiev wanted to attend the performance, but by the end of 1938 he was no longer allowed to travel outside of the Soviet Union. The Commissariat of Foreign Affairs declined to issue him a passport, with various reasons being invented to explain the official change in his status from vїyezdnoy (allowed to travel) to nevїyezdnoy (disallowed).
It remains unclear what, exactly, was performed at the theater in Brno. Most chroniclers of the ballet assume that the premiere was partial, involving highlights of the score taken primarily from the first and second orchestral suites, but the reviews are vague and the source materials presumably destroyed during the war. The date of the premiere leaves it uncertain as to whether or not the ballet included the happy or tragic ending, and whether or not the other dramaturgical oddities of the original scenario remained.
The oddities in the original ballet include episodes in which the drama between the Montague and Capulet factions is interrupted by processions of merry-makers intended to block the audience’s view of the action. (Imagine a square in Renaissance Verona masked by footage of a Soviet May Day parade.) Later, to alleviate the gloom of the scene in which Juliet drinks the “death” potion prepared for her by Friar Laurence, Prokofiev composed three exotic dances. These dances represent the nuptial gifts that Paris, convinced that he will succeed in marrying Juliet, has brought to her bedchamber. The entertainment fails to rouse Juliet from her toxin-induced slumber.
There follows the happy ending. Juliet lies in her bedchamber. Romeo enters, but he is unable, like Paris before him, to rouse Juliet; Romeo concludes that she has died and, grief-stricken, resolves to commit suicide. The arrival of Friar Laurence prevents him from pulling out his dagger, and the two of them engage in a brief struggle during a break in the music. Juliet begins to awaken; Romeo carries her away as the townspeople gather in celebration of the miracle. There follow two final dances, which, in the Mark Morris Dance Group production, take place in the stars.
None of this made it past the Soviet censors. The first Soviet production of the ballet in 1940 stripped the score of lightness and freshness and, to Prokofiev’s unhappiness, monumentalized the storyline. In her memoirs, Šemberová is vague about the staging in Brno, but she confirms that the ballet was shortened and that the choreography, out of respect for the modernist leanness of the 1935 score, avoided group dances and clichéd gestures. Šemberová did not dance on pointe, which afforded her greater dramatic flexibility. Two remarkable photographs sent to me by Alan offer a distant glimpse of her effort:
Along with these images, Alan also supplied a copy of the Brno program, which raises as many questions as it answers about the premiere and the six performances that followed it (Romeo and Juliet closed on May 5, 1939, a victim of the Nazi German occupation of Czechoslovakia). For one thing, the premiere featured a choral prologue and epilogue, even though Prokofiev composed no choral music. The singers evidently recited stanzas from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet play, framing and perhaps interrupting the dancing with meditations on love and fate. Here is Vera Tancibudek’s translation of the final lines of the scenario:
Desolate Romeo, convinced that Juliet is indeed dead, finishes his suffering by drinking poison. Juliet awakes, sees her beloved, and leaves the world that had begrudged them their love. Did their love have to die in order that the hatred between the Montagues and Capulets would also expire?
So the tragic ending is there, but abstracted, turned into a mournful question directed at Friar Laurence, who had mistakenly assumed that the marriage of Romeo and Juliet would transform the hostilities between the Montagues and Capulets into something approaching celestial harmony.
Beyond the chorus, the program also includes mention of the exotic dances. These dances were excised from the first Soviet production of the ballet, and from all productions since (excluding that by Mark Morris). The bizarre appearance in Act III of Middle Eastern maidens bearing emeralds, Moors with carpets, and pirates (!) with contraband goods could only have interrupted the dramatic flow. The music, however, is fabulous:
The exotic dances have nothing to do with the happy or tragic ending of the ballet. They sound like a visitation from another work. They are also, however, a throwback to nineteenth-century ballet, which tended to feature oriental divertissements. In Prokofiev’s iconoclastic conception, what was old was new again.
Simon Morrison
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Congratulations, Laura. The postcard looks beautiful. I'm so glad you pushed through to find a style new, but still you.
The postcard looks great! Thanks for giving some insight into the development of your style and inspiration. I love your colors and great texture.
Wow, Laura, what a wonderful mailer..the illustrations show your strengths perfectly! Thanks for sharing your process and inspiration too and I'm wishing you all the best with these beauties.