I got through a history! with a bit of help from wikipedia, i finished up Antony and Cleopatra today. The basic plot is that Antony is a Roman leader who has been in Egypt. He's in love with Cleopatra, Egypt's queen. Duty calls him back to Rome, where Octavius, the future first emperor of Rome, needs his help in war against Pompey. To try to seal the alliance, Antony marries Octavius' sister Octavia. Cleopatra doesn't like that very much. Antony and Octavius make a truce with Pompey. Then Antony comes back to Rome because Octavius breaks the truce and Antony doesn't want to be involved anymore. Then Octavius makes war on Egypt.

The history plays are more difficult for me. I found this one to be easier than the various English King plays but i did need a bit of help with the battles. The wikipedia summary of the plot made the sea battle debacles make sense. I knew the Roman history from college and my own general interest reading.

I'm not sure how i feel about this play. Who am i supposed to be rooting for? Cleopatra varies between girlish and petty to strong and noble. Antony seems really wishy washy. He loves Cleopatra when things are good but hates her when things are bad. Octavius is power hungry and not very relatable. I give this one a 4/7. I wouldn't mind seeing it live.

Review: The Sonnets - Warwick Collins

*** - I love Shakespeare, and the sonnets are some of my favorites - heartfelt and beautiful, caught up in emotional turmoil. We once used certain sonnets as monologues in an acting class - there's just so much to them. Unfortunately here, I never got swept up in the emotions Shakespeare was writing about - the narration seemed detached.

Warwick Collins' The Sonnets explores Shakespeare's life while he was writing his beautiful sonnets. The sonnets are often cited as the most autobiographical of Shakespeare's work, and here Collins rearranges and weaves them together to form a narrative about Shakespeare's love triangle with his patron the Earl of Southampton and the mysterious dark lady.

I loved the premise - using the sonnets as a basis for a historical novel about Shakespeare's life and loves is a brilliant idea and could really serve to infuse him with emotional life rather than the focus on the playhouse that most Shakespearean novels take. That said, I'm not sure the format wholly works here. In trying to let the sonnets speak for themselves by including so many of them, Collins doesn't give us much of his own interpretation of Shakespeare's emotions - which is problematic in a novel told in the first person. His Shakespeare seems overly detached from the world he inhabits - a characteristic often remarked upon by his patron, but which doesn't seem quite right given the deep conflicting emotions shown in his sonnets.

The method of incorporating the sonnets is also a bit awkward - even jarring. Often times they are introduced with a quick statement that Shakespeare has spent the night 'at his board'. Then the first two quartets (or so) are quoted, then the poem is taken over by one of his patrons reading aloud. This is very effective as a scene transition on film, but on the page it seemed strange and affected - particularly since it happened over and over again.

Writing about Shakespeare is difficult. Writing from Shakespeare's point of view is even more so. There are sections where I thought Collins succeeded admirably. On p. 72, a snippet of conversation:


"Thou art a flatterer."
"No better and no worse."

sounds just like the sort of rejoinder the playwright would come up with - it even scans. And further on that page there are sentences that flow in (almost) iambic pentameter:


"Inside the sullen gloom, his rooms were a scholar's den, with manuscripts piled high on chests and chairs."


Sections like this just sound RIGHT. They sound like something that could come from Shakespeare's quick mind. But all too often, I found myself as detached as Shakespeare was depicted. Partially this was due to differences in interpretation - Collins depicts Shakespeare's love for Southampton as ironic and chaste. I'm not sure I agree with either assessment. But mostly I think it was because Collins' reimagining in The Sonnets didn't offer enough emotional context to bring the poems to life in a new and different way.

Shakespeare's Face - Book Review

Shakespeare's Face
By Stephanie Nolen
Alfred Knopf Canada
2002
Stephanie's website
LARGE Sanders Portrait on the right

I thought it timely to read this book after the most recent portrait was discovered. (see the large Sanders Portrait link above. The Cobbes portrait is on the left).


But since the Cobbes Portrait has now been identified as actually being Sir Thomas Overbury, then the Sanders Portrait may still be in the running.

This was an excellent book to read. There are some chapters written by Stephanie Nolen and others by other experts who have written about this portrait and why it may or may not be Shakespeare. Stephanie writes about how she discovered the portrait, and she tells the story of the Sanders family who owned the portrait and how it came to be in Canada. Stephanie describes all the testing that was done. Most of it was done by the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa.

The Sanders portrait was painted in 1603 - the year 1603 is painted at the top right hand corner. The wood, and the paint are all dated to the Elizbethan era or before so it is from the right time. The label on the back is the big questions. Since the painting was done in 1603 (Shakespeare would have been 39 that year) there is alabel affixed to the back that states year of birth and year of death, so the label at least was not attached at the time the painting was done. It was attached sometime after Shakespeare died in 1616. This alone is suspicous and may mean that the painting was NOT painted in 1603.

Some of the chapters in this book are written by the experts. Some of them are a little dry, as only experts can be. Other experts chapters are interesting.

The last chapter has summaries by the experts on who they think the portrait may be of. All of them say that this is NOT a portrait of William Shakepeare, because it is so different from the Droeshout print from the first Folio. Only one expert offers a plausible guess as to who the man in the portrait may be.

In 1603, William Shakespeare was aged 39. In that same year, his future writing partner John Fletcher, was just 24. He does have light coloured hair and a receding hairline. This portrait does look more like a young man of 24, and not so much of a man about to turn 40.

Here is another recent review of this same book.

So do YOU think this portrait is of a 39 year old or a 24 years old??

Timon of Athens- John Mutford's 2nd Review

This is the first Shakespearean play I've read since coming back from seeing his birthplace, the Globe reproduction and his grave. I was wondering how those experiences would affect my reading and while it did provide a little more perspective, I don't think it affected my enjoyment one way or the other.

During the tour of his birthplace, our tour guide briefly mentioned how William's father John had gone bankrupt. In the play, Timon also goes bankrupt. I wondered if Timon shared any personality traits with the bard's father.

Timon basically doesn't know how to hang onto his cash. Surrounded by flatterers and false friends, he ends up giving away everything he has. When his creditors come calling, Timon sends out requests to all those he's helped in the past but, to his bitter surprise, none return the favour. He goes from being a wealthy philanthropic lord to a bankrupt misanthropist, running away from his debts and reviled society to live in a cave. However, at the cave Timon discovers gold. Will he hold onto his wealth this time?

Not at all. Timon gives it all away once again. However, this time it's out of hatred, not love. He hands it out to whores to spread disease, to a banished military captain who plans vengeance on Athens, and the rest to an artist, a poet, and a little left over to some senators who come to visit.
Apparently he's as disillusioned with money as he is humanity.

My first feeling toward Timon was that he was an idiot. One of my faults with the play was the lack of explanation of how a man this stupid and careless with money would have had any to begin with. He has extraordinary luck to happen upon the stash of gold, then blows his one chance to get back on his feet. Unforgivable?

Maybe. Maybe not. The cynical side of me thinks that his disillusionment, especially with money, might have led to the wisest decision of all: getting rid of it. Wishing venereal disease on his fellow countrymen? Well, I don't condone that.

It's a more obscure play but I quite enjoyed it.

(Cross-referenced at the Book Mine Set and The Obscure Challenge.)

About that new Shakespeare Portrait

The Cobbe Portrait from 2 weeks ago, said to be that of Shakespeare.

Well the truth is out at last.

The Jacobean painting from the family collection of art restorer Alec Cobbe was thought to be the bard because it closely resembled the engraving in Shakespeare's First Folio. It is also noticeably similar to another painting believed to be the playwright owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.



Dr Tanya Cooper, the sixteenth-century curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London, believes the portrait bears a greater likeness to Sir Thomas Ovebury. She told The Times: “if anything, both works, the Folger and Cobbe portraits, are more likely to represent the courtier Sir Thomas Overbury".

This means the Folger library in Washington DC has been deliberately committing a fraud for a number of years, by showing a picture claiming it to be Shakespeare. BUT they could not be bothered to pay a little money for an airfare and actually go visit the National Gallery in UK and see for themselves that their portrait is a fraud.

This portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury is in the National Gallery of England.

The Cobbe family claimed their picture to be Shakespeare because it was the same as the picture in the Folger library. That is an error that an amateur art historian might make. BUT NOT for a professional library like the Folger.

Sir Thomas Overbury (1581 - September 15, 1613) was the son of Nicholas Overbury, of Bourton-on-the-Hill, and was born at Compton Scorpion, near Ilmington, in Warwickshire.


He was also an English poet and essayist, and the victim of one of the most sensational crimes in English history.

Just look at those dates. Overbury was born 16 years after Shakespeare and would have been aged 32 when he died. Remember how I remarked that the portrait did not look like a man of 46 years in that era? I was right.

And now experts believe the elaborate lace collar and gold embroided doublet are too grand for the playwright. Which is exactly what I said!!!!

According to the BBC, the Jansson Portrait of Shakespeare, which was painted in 1610, is also considered to be that of Sir Thomas Overbury, and not Shakespeare.

Painted around 1610, (the Jannson) work emerged as a compelling candidate as a life portrait of Shakespeare in the later 18th Century. Now, however, the sitter is believed to be the courtier and author Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), while Cornelis Janssen (1593-1661) is no longer accepted as the artist.

How interesting that the Cobbe picture was also painted in 1610. Would Shakespeare have been able to afford to commission TWO portraits of himself in the same year? I seriously doubt it.

So, what does all this mean? Well I personally think this whole mess means that the Sanders portrait found in Canada is most likely still the only true likeness of William Shakespeare. Cobbe portrait on the left, Sanders portrait on the right. I must read the book.

Shakespeare: The World As Stage

Yesterday I read Shakespeare: The World As Stage by Bill Bryson. In this very small book, Bryson says he sums up all the real facts that we have about Shakespeare. There aren't many. We know the date he was christened but not the exact date of birth. We know when he married, how many legitimate children he had, what property he bought and sold, but not the first performance dates of the majority of his plays or what order his sonnets should be in. And we know almost nothing about his personality. Bryson tries to avoid extrapolating Shakespeare's personality and character from the text of the plays but he does talk about other analyses that do have some validity. He mentions the reason that Shakespeare had to know some Italian is because a few of his plays are cribbed from Italian works that had not been translated to English.

Bryson devotes a chapter to the "other author" theories and i have to say he's pretty convincing that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Apparently there was no controversy at all until the 1850's when an American woman, Delia Bacon, wrote a book implying that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare plays. She came up with this idea by traveling to Bacon's hometown and picking up mental vibes. Ugh. He writes about the various conspiracies that would have to be in place for others besides Shakespeare to write the plays.

Overall this book is a nice overview of what we know, or don't know, about Shakespeare.

New Shakespeare Portrait Found

One of the books I was planning to read for this Shakespeare Challenge is called Shakespeare's Face about the Sanders portrait found in Canada.

But today there is news that another new portrait has been identified and has been claimed to now be THE DEFINITIVE portrait of Shakespeare.

The first thing I said to myself when I saw this portrait was - too upper class. Just look at the neck collar. Only the rich wore those and Shakespeare was NOT rich.



And at aged 46 - I would have thought that in that era Shakespeare looked a lot older than this person does. This fellow has a full head of hair. The Droushout portrait from the First Folio shows a definite receding hairline, making the man look older.

In fact I think it's Henry Wriothesley. He does have a moustache as well. You cannot see the long hair that Wriosthesley had. But then, with such a dark background, you cant tell if this fellow has any hair either.

It is interesting that the family who held onto this portrait for so many generations, was distantly related to the Wriothesley Family. And now conveniently they wish to cash in in these hard economic times.

The portrait has been in the Cobbe family for generations. The family is distantly related to Shakespeare's only known literary patron, Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton.

Another possibility is Sir Henry Neville - who is one of the possible candidates to be the author of the plays.