Shakespeare Slightly Less of a Jerk Than Previously Believed (Maybe)
Plus: "10 Things I Hate About You: The Musical" and "Antony and Cleopatra: The Opera"
This newsletter has footnotes.1 If you click on the email headline or visit shakespearenews.com the footnotes will appear when you hover over them. I use open access and gift links whenever possible but you may encounter paywalls. If you do, make like Romeo and o’erperch them or check the archive.
Shakespeare and Young Master Butts
Congratulations on making it through Shakespeare’s birthday!2 There is always a flurry of press releases around April 23 and the big news this year is:
Shakespeare did not leave/abandon his wife in Stratford and was not a remote/absent husband (letter fragment/scrap paper suggests)
The narrative has long been that Shakespeare left his old(er) wife and children behind in Stratford to go to London and become the “greatest Genius that ever was known in Dramatick Poetry.” This argument is often developed into some version of: “Not only DID Shakespeare leave Anne Hathaway3 behind, he HAD to leave her behind.” Domestic drudgery with a cold/ugly/illiterate seductress4 would have cramped his style and prevented him from Being Awesome and Sleeping with Gwyneth Paltrow.
Professor Matthew Steggle’s paper “The Shakspaires of Trinity Lane: A Possible Shakespeare Life-Record” argues that Anne and Will (may have) lived together in London and that she was “present and engaged in his financial and social networks.”
The evidence is a letter addressed to “Good Mrs Shakspaire” that asks her to “paye your husbands debte.” Apparently Shakespeare was withholding money held in trust for a young man named John Butts whose father had died. (So…less of a jerk to his wife, more of a jerk to fatherless children? It’s not looking great, Will.)
In order to get the cash, [someone] (maybe) wrote a letter to Shakespeare’s wife and asked her to pay her husband’s debt. The tone is vaguely threatening: “Answer it att the dreadfull day of Judgment yt you see this muny paide” and there are fascinating details. Among them: the letter in question was discovered in the binding of a book5 in 1978, the location in “trinitie lane” where the Shakespeares may have lived is now a Westin hotel, and the “organized, businesslike and rather sarcastic” reply possibly written by Anne herself.
Let’s be clear: No (Maggie O’Farrell) this does not prove “of course that they did love each other.” But it is super interesting! Add in a dash of second best bed, a sprinkle of sonnet 145, a measure of “Greenblatt is convinced that Shakespeare despised his wife,” and a honking splash of “Germaine Greer thinks Greenblatt is full of &#%$” (paraphrase mine6) and we have a recipe for an interesting discussion.
Quick Links
The Assistant Director’s Nightmare: stepping in for a concussed Lavinia in the middle of Titus.7
Lavina Jadhwani and Dawn Monique Williams discuss adaptation. Also t-shirt cannons, Bollywood, and 10 Things I Hate About You. Speaking of which…
Carly Rae Jepsen and Lena Dunham are working a 10 Things I Hate About You musical.8
The Met Opera is preparing a new Antony and Cleopatra. Let’s hope it goes better than last time:
Audible cries of desperation occasionally came from the backstage crew. (“Look out for the sphinx!”) At one point the soprano Leontyne Price, as Cleopatra, found herself trapped inside a pyramid.
Kenneth Branagh is a decent dramaturg?
I wrote a treatment for Red Velvet, my first play, about the actor Ira Aldridge. I knew Kenneth Branagh a little bit, and I asked him to read it. He gave me the most amazing notes.
“In a way, Cassio is the crux of this plan and the play” -Actor playing Cassio.9
Shakespeare Theatre Company at the British Embassy
Inside, as the guests ate eggs Benedict, [British Ambassador] Mandelson delivered a set of oblique remarks, with careful emphasis…“I have a lot to learn from Shakespeare, including from ‘Henry IV, Part 1’: ‘The better part of valor is discretion.’ ” The room roared with laughter…He introduced the artistic director of the theatre. Shakespeare’s themes, the director said, ranged through “deception, betrayal, artifice, kingship, human tyranny.” He closed on a quote from “King Lear”: “The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
Michael Urie will (briefly) play Richard II, one of his dream Shakespeare roles. (Richard III and Benedict are still to come.)
Claudius’ obnoxious drinking habits are historical?
A distinctive celebration is mentioned in the play: a toast followed by the bang of a kettle drum, a trumpet, and a cannon – and it comes from a tradition followed in the castle at that time.
Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers quoted a Shakespeare play at his son during the succession fight over his company. I’ll give you one guess which one.
Shakespeare scholar Dr. Sophie Duncan is one of the new associates at the National.
Recommendations
Like this one.
No, not that one, but of course people have thoughts.
Speaking of recently-analyzed writings found in books: an Arthurian sequel featuring Merlin as “a balding child who issues edicts to King Arthur wearing no underwear.”
What she actually says is folks like him “have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women.”
At least an interesting break from mop math?
"In one sentence, you're thinking 'what is the meaning of tragedy in relation to human nature?' – and then very quickly you get into 'how many mops can the crew hold?'"
A reminder that Disney almost made a script called School Slut instead of 10 Things I Hate About You. (I will address the unholy millennial mixture of the creative team at a later date.)
“HARRIS: He came in knowing all the words? / BURNAP: He came in knowing all the words. / HARRIS: Did Kenny ask you guys to know all the words? / BURNAP: No…”
Also: “HARRIS: I saw Jake’s budget for his room. I was like, ‘What did Cassio get?’”
Dr. Werstine co-edited the Folger edition of Romeo and Juliet and supported rehearsals for the audio version that I was script assistant on. We had multiple discussions about the proper pronunciation of “Benedicte.”