Shakespeare // Current

Con EVERYMAN, un Roth shakespeariano

Il consacrato scrittore statunitense di origine ebraica si scopre essere un ottimo... more

cinephile
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20 days ago
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Twitter book condenses classic literature into 140 characters. Oh joy.

Two US students have rewritten entire iconic books in just 140 characters and crammed... more

richjm
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21 days ago
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Computer program proves Shakespeare didn't work alone, researchers claim

"The 400-year-old mystery of whether William Shakespeare was the author of an unattributed play about Edward III may have been solved by a computer program designed to detect plagiarism.

Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, believes that a comparison of phrases used in The Reign of King Edward III with Shakespeare’s early works proves conclusively that the Bard wrote the play in collaboration with Thomas Kyd, one of the most popular playwrights of his day.

The professor used software called Pl@giarism, developed by the University of Maastricht to detect cheating students, to compare language used in Edward III — published anonymously in 1596, when Shakespeare was 32 — with other plays of the period.

He discovered that playwrights often use the same patterns of speech, meaning that they have a linguistic fingerprint. The program identifies phrases of three words or more in an author’s known work and searches for them in unattributed plays. In tests where authors are known to be different, there are up to 20 matches because some phrases are in common usage. When Edward III was tested against Shakespeare’s works published before 1596 there were 200 matches.

Sir Brian said: “There might be ten to 20 common phrases between two plays by different authors. The computer is picking out three-word sequences that could just be chunks of grammar. But when you get metaphors or unusual parts of speech, it is different.”

The Shakespeare matches came from four scenes, about 40 per cent of the play. The remaining scenes had about 200 matches with works by Kyd, best known for The Spanish Tragedy, a play known to have influenced Shakespeare, indicating that he wrote the other 60 per cent of the play.

The suggestion that Shakespeare had a hand in Edward III has been debated for about 150 years but has found favour only recently. It was ignored by mainstream publications until 1997, when it was included in The Riverside Shakespeare, and has subsequently been accepted by The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works.

Sir Brian said: “When you have 200 [matches] you can be pretty sure. Everyone can see that certain scenes are very Shakespearean, but no one could see why there were verses that are definitely not his. There is a real difference in quality between the two authors.”

The mystery has endured because some academics refuse to believe that Shakespeare collaborated with other playwrights at that stage of his career, he said. “They think, Shakespeare has been elevated to the position of the Bard, so why would he have collaborated with anyone else?”""The 400-year-old mystery of whether William Shakespeare was the author of an... more

St_Alia_10191
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Jude Law Opens in "Hamlet" on Broadway

Photographs from opening night for William Shakespear's "Hamlet" on Broadway at the... more

ebindelglass
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1 month ago
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Filmed Theatre, Dead in the Can?

"From the Royal Opera House to Glyndebourne and the National Theatre, putting out live... more

St_Alia_10191
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1 month ago
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Chester. Tutta la città per un teatro.

Il Rose Theatre, fu costruito originalmente nel 1587 da Philip Henslowe sulle rive del... more

cronacacity
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1 month ago
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Luminato Scraps Plans For Christopher Plummer Tempest

"The Stratford Shakespeare Festival has cancelled plans to stage a new production of... more

St_Alia_10191
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2 months ago
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"SHAKESPEARE FOR THE SHAKESPEARE CHALLENGED"

Months ago playwright Orna Rawls asked me if I would like to direct a play for the... more

spooly
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2 months ago
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Much Ado About...Shakespeare Reviews?

"This weekend, critics, academics, actors and directors are gathering in Stratford-on-Avon to discuss the business of reviewing Shakespeare. It should make for some lively sessions. Janet Suzman, Tim Supple, Stanley Wells, Peter Holland, Carol Rutter and Michael Coveney will be among those taking part. I've been asked to kick off with a talk representing the aisle-squatter's view.

I don't want to pre-empt my own lecture, but one thing seems clear to me: both Shakespeare production, and the whole reviewing business, is in a state of flux. On the production side, we talk of the virtues of ensemble and a coherent directorial vision. Yet the public clearly loves nothing more than seeing stars. Look at the way young people flocked to see David Tennant and Jude Law as Hamlet. And the prospect of Judi Dench returning to Shakespeare to play Titania-cum-Queen Elizabeth in Peter Hall's revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream next year is already causing people to salivate.

Of course, star-driven Shakespeare need not preclude strong direction. One of the most exciting productions of recent years was Rupert Goold's Macbeth, which had an edge-of the-seat, horror-movie quality and a deeply intelligent performance from Patrick Stewart as a Stalinist tyrant thane. Michael Grandage's Donmar Othello combined a monumental performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor with a cool, classical vision of the play. But I still think we're not quite sure what we want from Shakespeare today. One moment it's long-term ensembles; the next, it's big names. Similarly we talk about the need for textual purity; yet no one seems to notice when Greg Doran softens the climax to Hamlet by virtually eliminating Fortinbras. And a joky rewrite of Cymbeline, such as Kneehigh gave us at Stratford recently, has people in ecstasy rather than complaining about the butchery of the verse.

If Shakespeare production is in a state of confusion, so too are the critics. We scribblers sometimes like to see ourselves as part of a great tradition that extends from Hazlitt and Shaw to Agate and Tynan: however puny our efforts, we are subliminally conscious of our rich inheritance. Yet criticism today operates in a very different climate from the past. Space is tight, reviews are part of a consumerist culture and the blogosphere means everyone is now a critic. Change is inevitable. But the critic is today caught in a cleft stick. Confronted, say, by Tennant's Hamlet, is the critic meant to put it in its historical context or the context of Doctor Who? Possibly both. But it can be tricky trying to reconcile the idea of the critic as essayist and commentator on modern culture.

I don't want to agonise too much. Criticism is an unending challenge; one of the exhilarations of the job is tackling Shakespeare and trying to pin down both performances and changing production styles. Attitudes to Shakespeare also tell us a lot about ourselves: look, for instance, at the rediscovery of the History plays as a metaphor for modern power-politics. All this – and much more – will doubtless be aired at the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford this coming weekend. If you're in the vicinity, come along and add to the confusion – and the fun.""This weekend, critics, academics, actors and directors are gathering in... more

St_Alia_10191
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3 months ago
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Shakespeare In Vegas, By Way Of The Playboy Mansion

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold.”
--from "A Midsummer Night’s Dream"

Neither Shakespeare nor British director Peter Brook probably imagined the staging of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" like the setup at the Palms pool, which was redone on Saturday into a pirate’s ship with skulls, plunder and sexy pirate babes dressed in red. The bar at the center, where O.J. allegedly planned his crimes, was transformed from one angle into a castle and another into a sort of ship’s helm. We can’t say how Shakespeare saw his work, but we can glean a hint from the fact that there weren’t any pirates in his original play.

That problem was solved by adding a subtitle: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Pirate’s Guilty Pleasure.” About all that is left from the Bard’s play is a love of the physically sensual and a celebration of a naughty imagination.

So, the focus fell far more on the lover than the lunatic or poet. For example, a sexy woman at the entrance to the pool writhing with a live snake wrapped around her greeted entering guests as she stood in front of a giant faux crystal ball with lightning and images crackling inside it and a fog machine rendering a thick cloud of smoke around guests' feet up to their ankles. Nearby, another gorgeous woman sat raving with her head in a guillotine.

The "Midsummer Night’s Dream" party originated in Los Angeles at the Playboy Mansion, where it continues to be an invitation-only event. The Vegas franchise expanded three years ago with the opening of the Playboy Club at Palms. Here rather than invitations, there is the usual Vegas version of exclusivity: You either have to have cash or be a hot woman.

The tickets to enter the party started at $200. But to get a cabana or table -- a key ingredient to status, the pool-party equivalent of bottle service at a nightclub -- $2,000 was the low-end price. And securing the best real estate required ponying up $10,000 for your cabana. What makes one cabana better than another? Mostly that people know it is the most expensive.

The slightly dressed were chosen by virtue of a Darwinian selection process according to David Gutierrez, marketing manager, at N9NE Group (which owns and operates many of the nightlife and dining offerings at Palms, including Rain Nightclub, Moon Nightclub, Playboy Club, Ghostbar, Palms Pool & Bungalows, N9NE Steakhouse, Nove Italianoat): “We created a website, and you fill out a registration sheet and upload a photo. And we take the most beautiful women and offer them complimentary access.”

Gutierrez says this party is the most time-consuming part of his job each year. However, he sees more here than a successful franchise based on the Playboy brand; he also sees a new model for excessive and expensive partying in Vegas, one that he hopes replaces the faltering celebrity hosts with spectacle. “Unlike other parties in Vegas, this has nothing to do with celebrities. This party started as a fantasy thing at the mansion. And we let it evolve in Vegas with that fantasy element. It is about production values and the transformation of the pool.”

As if to prove the point, the publicity photo (above) released after the party included cast members, partygoers and former celebrity Pauly Shore, and it should be obvious where people’s eyes go.""The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more... more

St_Alia_10191
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3 months ago
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Reid Baer: To Be or Not To Be

To Be or Not to Be Awake! By Reid Baer To be aware of my inner will or not -... more

NewWarriorMan
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3 months ago
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A Performing Arts Renaissance in Boston

"It has seemed like old times in the Theater District recently. The Shubert Theatre is... more

St_Alia_10191
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3 months ago
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It's Shakespeare, but all death-metally

Is that a guitar I see before me? Radiohead were recently inspired by the words of... more

emmahill
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3 months ago
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Metal Shakespeare: "To Bleed or Not to Bleed"

To rock or not to rock? The Metal Shakespeare Company is metal!

abbym0308
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3 months ago
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Theatre Without The Words

Andrew Haydon writes, "Is it possible to watch a play in a language that you don't... more

St_Alia_10191
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4 months ago
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50 Best Websites for Modern-Day Shakespeare Scholars

Who hasn’t heard those famous lines from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet? For all the... more

eva2
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4 months ago
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Bringing Elizabethan Shakespeare to Modern America

"After a four-year absence from the United States, Shakespeare’s Globe is returning in the fall to stage “Love’s Labour’s Lost” at seven universities and a college-town theater over three months, with the hope of providing an authentically Elizabethan theatrical experience to American audiences.

The Globe brought “Twelfth Night” in 2003 and “Measure for Measure” in 2005, which enjoyed a sold-out run at St. Ann’s Warehouse. (“Twelfth Night” did not come to New York.) “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” an early Shakespeare comedy about strong-willed young nobles matching wits and falling in love despite themselves, will conclude its run in December at Pace University, in Lower Manhattan.

Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the Globe, said he had waited to do another tour of the United States until he had found his feet at the theater, which he took over from the actor Mark Rylance in 2005.

“I wanted to establish a sense of confidence and authority and a sense of style,” Mr. Dromgoole said in his office at the Globe here. “I wanted to lay a good foundation before we went to America again, and now we’re hoping to make it a regular thing.”

Since the Globe cannot reconfigure American university theaters to resemble its space here, Mr. Dromgoole said he planned to make small adjustments. The lights will remain on in the theater, to try to mimic the outdoor feel of the Globe, and characters will talk directly to audience members (or look at them as they talk to other characters) in the spirit of “the democratic shared space and the talk-back quality that was a part of Shakespeare’s original Globe productions,” he said.

“We want to make sure that just because we’ll be in more traditional theater spaces, we don’t fall back into conventional theater practices,” he added. “It’s very easy to turn down the lights and have a recording of crickets chirping to create atmosphere. We don’t want that.”

Michelle Terry, who played the Princess of France in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in the original Globe production in 2007 and will again on tour, said, “At the Globe, if a character asks a question onstage, there’s a chance that someone in the audience will answer back.”

She added: “There’s also a moment in the play when the Princess of France is sitting out among the audience, away from the stage. At one performance I could feel someone pulling the strings on my corset. I turned and the person said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but your corset has become undone and I was doing it up.’ And I just said, ‘O.K., cheers, carry on.’ ”

Mr. Dromgoole said he believed “Love’s Labour’s Lost” would be an especially good fit for university audiences because it explores the sexual politics between a group of young men — Ferdinand, the king of Navarre, and his nobles — and the women with whom they spar and fall in love, a group led by the Princess of France.

“It’s the only Shakespeare play with a real girl gang who take control of the proceedings,” he said. “It has a youthful, zesty, sexy energy to it. But it can also be the single most irritating play in the canon, with these kids being witty with each other. You sometimes want to roll up your program and go onto the stage and beat them with it. So we’re excited to see how American audiences react.”""After a four-year absence from the United States, Shakespeare’s Globe is returning... more