Tag Archives: Stanley Wells

All the Sonnets of Shakespeare

It’s taken a while for me to get round to reading Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells’ book All the Sonnets of Shakespeare, published in September 2020 by Cambridge University Press. They are both some of the most familiar and some … Continue reading

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Giving Emilia Lanier her own voice

In 1973, historian A L Rowse declared in Shakespeare the Man that he had solved the greatest mystery in Shakespeare’s life, the identity of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets. She was, he said, Emilia Lanier (Aemilia Lanyer). Rowse’s starting … Continue reading

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Shakespeare’s Cleopatra

I recently attended a performance of Antony and Cleopatra at the RSC. Watching Josette Simon playing the Queen of Egypt, I couldn’t help thinking of others I’ve seen in the part, and wondering why it’s such a difficult one. Surely … Continue reading

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Arise, Sir Stanley!

Shakespeareans will be delighted to hear that Professor Stanley Wells has received a (long-overdue) knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. His books alone would take up several shelves, covering a wide variety of Shakespeare-related subjects: my own tally is … Continue reading

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Shakespeare in trouble with the law

On the whole, Shakespeare kept out of trouble. He got his girlfriend pregnant, and didn’t always pay his taxes, but compared with the violence of the lives of his contemporaries Marlowe, Kyd and Jonson, his was uneventful and that was … Continue reading

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Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare

It’s been a good many years since I looked at Anthony Burgess’s 1970 biography Shakespeare. While working in the library at the Shakespeare Centre I always favoured Samuel Schoenbaum’s Documentary Life, so safely based on verifiable facts. Burgess was a … Continue reading

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Shakespearean acting: achieving greatness

Four hundred years on, Shakespeare has lost none of his appeal for actors and directors, with Tom Hiddleston recently winning the Evening Standard Best Actor award for his charismatic portrayal of Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Only 33, … Continue reading

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Shakespeare, performance, emotion and memory

This week I have been attending the British Shakespeare Association’s conference at the University of Stirling. What follows is the text of my paper: The idea for my project Listening to the Audience began when, at an international Shakespeare conference … Continue reading

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Discussing the evidence for Shakespeare’s Theatre: Andrew Gurr, Stanley Wells and Reg Foakes

The Who Invented the “Shakespearean Theatre”? conference held recently at the University of Reading ended with a round table discussion between senior academics Andrew Gurr, Stanley Wells and Reg Foakes. Over the past fifty years these three have probably written … Continue reading

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The case for Anne Hathaway

Last week I attended a lecture in which the speaker said, with a laugh, that according to Stephen Greenblatt and others Shakespeare left Stratford in order to get away from his wife. I bristled. Why, when it wasn’t relevant to the … Continue reading

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