Danoush's Blog

Should we care who wrote William Shakespeare’s plays?

article from guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/23/care-wrote-william-shakespeare-plays

this article is pretty interesting.

Text from Wikipedia.

Love’s Labour’s Won

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love%27s_Labour%27s_Won

Love’s Labour’s Won is the name of a play written by William Shakespeare before 1598. The play appears to have been published by 1603, but no copies are known to have survived. One theory holds that it is a lost work, possibly a sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost. Another theory is that the title is an alternative name for a known Shakespeare play.

A Moveable Feast, Memoirs by Hemingway.

this book regarding hemingway’s young years in paris was very interesting. this is the best one to know hemingway’s early life.

A Moveable Feast (from Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Moveable_Feast

A Moveable Feast is a set of memoirs by American author Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) about his years in Paris as part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s. The book describes Hemingway’s apprenticeship as a young writer in Europe (especially in Paris) during the 1920s with his first wife, Hadley. Some of the later prominent people who are featured in his memoirs include Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Hilaire Belloc, Pascin, John Dos Passos, Wyndham Lewis, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. The book was edited from his manuscripts and notes by Ernest’s fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, a respected journalist. It was published in 1964, three years after Hemingway’s death. An edition revised by his grandson Seán Hemingway (a descendant of Hemingway’s second wife Pauline Pfeiffer and not a professional writer) was published in 2009. Both editions have been criticized.

The memoir has Hemingway’s personal accounts, observations, and stories of his experience in 1920s Paris. He provides specific addresses of cafes, bars, hotels, and apartments, some of which can be found in modern-day Paris. The title was suggested by Hemingway’s friend A.E. Hotchner, author of the biography, Papa Hemingway. He remembered they had a conversation about the city during Hotchner’s first visits there: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

text from wikipedia. my memo. knowing historical background is interesting.

Historical background of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s poem

In 1593, an outbreak of the plague in London caused the city authorities to close all the public playhouses. Shakespeare had by this time written perhaps the first 5 or 6 of his plays, and was building a reputation. He set about what he would publish as “the first heire of my invention” — that is, the first legitimate offspring from his “muse”. He dedicated the work to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

In 1594, Shakespeare dedicated Lucrece to Southampton as the “graver labour” promised in his dedication to Venus and Adonis. Southampton was in financial difficulties, but it is still possible that this patron was extravagant enough to reward these irresistible overtures with a substantial amount of money. Shakespeare from somewhere acquired enough capital to become a one-twelfth sharer in his theatre company’s profits from performance. It was thereafter apparently more lucrative for him to write plays than long poems.

last week, I had a chance to see the Movie “Shakespeare in Love”, a kind of romantic comedy directed by British director. although it is fictional story, some characters are based on real people around Shakespeare. it was pretty interesting.

my memo from wikipedia. the first novel by hemingway.

The Torrents of Spring

The Torrents of Spring is a novella written by Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961), published in 1926. Hemingway’s first novel, it was written as a parody of Sherwood Anderson. Subtitled “A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race”, Hemingway used the work as a spoof of the world of writers.

The Torrents of Spring was Hemingway’s first novel, though The Sun Also Rises was his first successful novel. Hemingway wrote The Torrents of Spring as means to cause his publisher, Horace Liveright of Boni & Liveright, to refuse publication. Hemingway then switched publishers to Scribner’s—who published his work from that time on.

my note. text from wikipedia.

Shakespeare’s sonnets

Shakespeare’s sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare that deal with such themes as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. The quarto ends with “A Lover’s Complaint”, a narrative poem of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal.

The first 17 sonnets, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are ostensibly written to a young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalise his beauty by passing it to the next generation. Other sonnets express the speaker’s love for a young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker’s mistress; and pun on the poet’s name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to the “little Love-god” Cupid.

The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers’ Register on 20 May 1609:

Tho. Thorpe. Entred for his copie under the handes of master Wilson and master Lownes Wardenes a booke called Shakespeares sonnettes vjd.

Whether Thorpe used an authorized manuscript from Shakespeare or an unauthorized copy is unknown. George Eld printed the quarto, and the run was divided between the booksellers William Aspley and John Wright.

2 years ago, I visited globe theatre in Dallas. I didn’t know Shakespeare’s Globe theatere exists many different places. below from wikipedia.

Shakespeare’s Globe

Shakespeare’s Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse in the London Borough of Southwark on the south bank of the River Thames which was destroyed by fire in 1613. The modern reconstruction was founded by the actor and director Sam Wanamaker and built approximately 230 metres (750 ft) from the site of the original theatre. The theatre was opened to the public in 1997 with a production of Henry V.