Sonnet Book We have a run of 750 sonnetbooks. Each book signed by William S
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…to read a good book. Or awake and restless to while away the hours forgetful of your dis-ease. The book of William, the promised blog.
Solopsism central to any understanding of these words reviewing my greed reading this book.
It arrived late and unsigned as promised in the sell but to hell with that. The anticipation and wait was ten times worth it. I’d read some reviews and missed it before a trip to Minnesota in deep nature.
Therefore its arrival was announced by Bugs and Botany Bill who read it before me arrival. It had captivated him as I, and his name too is Will, though Bill as a by-name. ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’.
It talks of books and the love of books and what it means to love a book. The history of his book is his story of the First Folio. The primary sources for information on SHakespeare, in lieu of his own descriptions of himself, would be the people who worked with him.
Stuttering John Heminges and business savvy Henry Condell had survived the Theatre scene of the late 1570’s, 1580’s, 1590’s and 1610’s.
They retired grand old men of the stage, acclaimed for a hundred supporting roles opposite or in competition with the likes of Richard Burbage, John Lowin, and Edward Alleyne.
And as principal sharers in the King’s Men, what was the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, their wives and extended families ate and slept well. They were not rich but felt compelled they said, to publish these plays for the sake of our Will, their friend.
One might wonder where Dickie Burbage was in all this collecting Will’s plays into Folio. But the reckoning is that could only be done by the people who held the earliest form of copyright by stayin a play in the Stationer’s Register in the first place, the writers and printers.
As Paul explains in his book on Will, William Jaggard knew the old swindlers around Saint Paul’s churchyard, where the incestuous Elizabethan publishing industry kept its intrigues and deals.
Back when the Globe was moved in the winter of 1597/8 SHakespeare and his colleagues hit the big time. They had Court and Public theatres in their pockets. Will’s son had just died a year before and change was due.
Our man was about to embark on a creative period lasting until at least 1609. Extend that to 1613 in collaboration and Will’s passing on chief writers of the company laurels to Fletcher and Beaumont.
Obviously he was unaware he would make history with his writings as he would and will still. Never bothering with their eternal longings after being spoken, performed and presumably forgotten as his next project took over.
After Will’s death on his birthday in 1616 his fellows and friends, whom he remembered in his Will, gathered, or gave the order to gather, as much as could be rescued of Will’s writings, in Quarto and manuscript form. Remember the First Folio meant 18 plays would have been lost, so they must have been in some form of manuscript or scribal copy.
Jaggard made a consortium deal with the actors and other printer holders of Sh. titles and finally and incipiently in 1623, some 6 years after first being approached Jaggard produced a Folio of Histories Comedies and Tragedies that supposedly Will wrote.
I snarfed this book up over a two and a half day period, rendering it as read as any manuscript. I myself put out the light on a persistent wasp using its back cover.
Worsely and briefly, dropped it in the toilet at home while peeing and reading, should have sat. I rescued it in milliseconds or lightnings peed and after drying on an SUV dashboard in 28 Degree Celsius temperatures, read it to the end.
(on a Starbuck’s terrace at highway 10 and QEW with a cold non-sugar espressoed milked iced coffee. Though the book remains free from that particular stain).
But forget the book he wrote here (buy it, well worth it) the other book is preserved in Folio at the Meisei University in Hano, a suburb of Tokyo THE BEST BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON JUST THIS SUBJECT.
And its FREE and it contains something better than a dedicated and funny modern historian. Another Early Modern Will, a Dumfrieshire Scot named William Johnstoune bought a copy of the Histories, Comedies and Tragedies of William Shakespeare sometime around 1627/30.
Better still this Will loved our Will as much as we Wills do here and marked his copy of Will with marginalia and annotations the which kind, patient, and persistent Dr. Akihiro Yamada delivers to your screen at the click of a mouse or tap of your pad.
Imagine being the first commentator on the First Folio?! Not only that imagine the insights gained into how an Early Modern reader read. There is a method to his madness and the good Professor has marked it all up for you, dear Post Modern reader.
And as always a book is not just him who writes it. There is and always will be a whole team of others behind it: the supporting cast and as all directors will say in their speech after a good run, you know who you are!
The book of William lets you know who they are and were who helped bring this book to our consciousness. Thanks Paul Collins!
…silence is rare. lapping of water, rushing of wind through reeds, chirring and chuffing of birds, plopping of insects or fish mouth on lake surface, buzzing of insistent fly, bee, or mozzy.
the opening of a lily is that silent? Bald eagle baby screeches, dragonfly azure and slender flashing feathery wings. the gate on the pontoon boat ticks and an ant marches over the offending lock mechanism.
Birch bark tatters off the trunks, 3 trees in one. Six shades of green mutually reflected narcissus-like shimmering. The creaking dock sways its load in the rising breeze. The bulrushes wave and bend their slight bearded heads once more to the shore.
The orchestra of each and all resounds: water, woods, sky, sun or moon, wind and rain, all elementally one and the same constant shifting bigger picture.
…Ok finally a place where the sonnets are together in text and sound. Many thanks got to my techies: Peter Mitchell who designed the code, and Tim Egmond who recorded the sound.
We are up and running NOW HERE!
There’s also a link under Ahem! Hear William, which will remain when this post is buried amongst other posts.
There’s also a thanks to Ron Severdia who used them for his i-phone, i-pad application now available at your i-tunes store.
So what does a contended and contentious music writer have to say about Shakespeare?
Well first off, he’s a damn fine scholar in my estimation. Second he’s got a bone to pick with another Lady scholar. And Clinton Heylin’s scholarship picks that bone like a starving hyena.
The premise is that the sonnet quarto published by Thomas Thorpe is a Bookleg: a bootleg copy of the sonnets as unauthorised as Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.
Absolutely, unequivocally, unauthorised by their author, W. Sh. that dedicated follower of fashion. Just as absolutely juxtaposed is the Lady Scholar, Katherine Duncan Jones position.
Her thesis in The Arden version of the Sonnets is that Thomas Thorpe actually was somewhat respected and wasn’t a bad penny after all. And Shakespeare trusted him to publish his revised sonnets, whilst he took care of a court case in Stratford about the six quid John Addenbrooke owed him, scornfully highlighted by Clinton.
Now I personally like the revision theory of the sonnets. And as KDJ points out in her introduction Drayton and Daniel both revised their work. And as we see from the manuscript versions of sonnets 2 and 8, and the 1599 published 138 and 144 variations do occur and the differences do look like revisited lines by their ever-loving poet.
I’ve always thought the fact that there was only one print run* of the Quarto of 1609 and some foofah about their existence and some talk of a dissatisfied author disallowing their further publication and retrieving the ones in print, was suspect.
The run would probably have been about 750 copies, tops was 1500 allowed for a print run. We just don’t know. We do know of the 13 extant copies of Q1609 Sonnets are the basis of all editor’s versions. What’s the chances of finding another to bring it to a most fitting number of 14?
*( until John Benson’s bastardised, bowdlerized version of 1640, which is a study in its own right, dealt with by Heylin in its own chapter).
Just like we know of 230 First Folios that are extant; of a more probable 1500 original print run. The difference being there are open leads on another 13 copies of the First Folio. But that’s another post.
Now the chain of events of how Sonnets in manuscript came to be Quarto in print remains unsolvable. Heylin takes dire exception to the Lady’s pat answer that plague forced Shakes to sell the revised manuscript to Thorpe via Ben Jonson.
Heylin sets out to prove they were pirated with excellent discussions of John Davies, Richard Brome (Ben Jonson’s self-serving manservant and later playwright) and Thomas Thorpe and the shady world of playwrights, poets, publishers and printers of Jacobethan England.
More importantly is the idea that Jacobethans loved to copy material down in manuscript. Their transmission then is outside the influence of the author and in the hands of scribal copyists like John Davies.
Who better placed to pilfer texts than they? Plus they appreciated the subject matter, had an affinity to it, perhaps even knew the author they were ripping off. Not that Thorpe ever really made any money off the sonnets.
This book is a no-nonsense take-no-prisoners look at the scholarship covering this most fought over ‘bookleg’ of sonnets. His focus leaps years from before they were published up to the present day. All the while delineating the battle lines of those who believe they were authorised and those who don’t.
The final chapter talks of a little red notebook in Bob Dylan’s handwriting, today housed in a library in NYC subject to Dylan office approval to be read. Yet, there is a bootleg version of said red book.
If only there were a little red book for these sonnets!
Praise goes to Clinton for not even deigning to mention the conspiracists. As for me I can’t help it. If Stratfordians had a series of letters written throughout his lifetime by me Shakespeare scholars would be kicking their heels and signing book contracts.
For example Oxfordians have such a collection of letters, claim their man is Shakespeare and yet use one or two slight references to the letters and ignore the rest. We’ve got handwriting D from Sir Thomas More. And yes Clinton deals with that too.
…makes me feel fine, flowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.
Ok enough, enough with the Ron Rosenbaum enthusiasm. I spent yesterday cruising the web for reviews of his Shakespeare Wars. (I hear cries of ‘get a life’)
The reason being I’m having trouble finishing his book, despite repeated attempts to do so. I love the premise. What are the major clashes in present day Sh. scholarship?
Intrepid Reporter Ron seems to have solipsistic issues, but then so do i. Personally I laughed my cynical ass off at the Don Foster SHAXICON chapter, as did he I’m sure. ‘I am Ron Rosenbaum, know ye not that!’
For those in-non-a-cognoscenti that don’t follow such things. Don Foster attributed the worst poem ever to SHakespeare, A Funeral Elegy.
Don had a database, SHAXICON (SEXY ONE). Don knows ‘Computers are smarter than people because they have no feelings or sensibilities. Just the facts ma’am’.
Ron, myself and many ‘old school’ scholars believe our subjectivity is inherent in our recognizing SHakespeare when we read it. Don’t ask me how, we just do. Go and do the Golden Ear test in the sidebar.
In fact Ron spends most of his book trying to answer the question: ‘how do I know what is Shakespearean?’ And not some copyist scribe or printer’s apprentice, or John Ford (not he of the Western fame) or horror of horrors, Teddy Oxenforde. Anyway Ron was right and it turned out ’twas the former Ford that penned the elegy.
Mr Foster went to Gloucester and had to swallow all his big mouthed threats and gloats, which i remember him kinda not doing on the Shaksper discussion list. Humble pie doesn’t seem to be Mr Foster’s piece of cake. But the adage holds true, he who larfs last…
So Ron’s book deals with issues out there in post-modern Shakey-land. Things like: Pausing at the end of a verse line, dry-humping Gertrude’s leg, bashing Bloom and deifying Booth and Brook, the ‘revised’ last lines in 2 Lears and 3 Hamlets, scandalous! (I’m still hearing the cries of ‘get a life’).
But every self-respecting SHake-spherean has his own take on this all and more. Although the scholars Ron deals with are no slighties in the Scholarly firmament, my scholar heroes are people like Brian Vickers, Alan Nelson, MacDonald P. Jackson, and Anthony James West. This latter brings us to today’s post title.
It started with the Google alert to a new book named the Book of William by Paul Collins. And it’s about the history of THE First Folio. Now back in 1998-9 at the Shakespeare Institute I bemoaned the dearth of literature on said book. Plus the fact that there was little in the way of a modern census.
Enter Antony James West. This is scholarship I love, almost as much as using a colon: getting a grip on one thing and not letting go until it or you is exhausted in every sense.
Now Paul Collins, who gets big ups from his homies here at Philobiblos. and Library Thing, which linked to Jeremy’s blog, is potentially my new BFF.
Paul teaches at Portland State University and writes for SLATE , which i obviously don’t read regularly, where he covers AJW’s quest to document the Folios. More importantly a sidebar First Folio permalink is happening from dwelling on this all.
Press here for Japanese scholarship and ownership of First Folios. BTW there still exists an unbroken theatrical tradition in Japan dating from the time of SHakespeare. Damn Cromwell!
But now a book, with that for me solipsistic title, therefore a must have on my bookshelf. Besides, at 25 US dollars for a 256 page HARD Cover SIGNED copy available here at Powell’s this is a bargain. And which of us doesn’t have a piston engine or two tucked away in our closets, hmmm?
Excited little Shakespeare bunny who can’t wait to get this one. My birthday money from Moms and Pops well spent.
Next posting we’ll travel back several weeks to when I devoured Clinton Heylin’s ‘so long as men can breathe’. Now my fellow Rock and Roll swindlers we started with music we’ll end with it too. Just sing, “this is not re-view” to the tune of This is not a love song!
BTW I’ve got a life.
…Shakespeare’s patron the Earl of Southampton was prepared to go to the Tower for his friend the Earl of Essex. And all because of some deal he (Essex) made with an Irish chieftain in the middle of a river with no-one around to hear what they really talked about. Add to that a failed rebellion against the almost dead Elizabeth 1st, and he (Essex) forfeited his life for the Irish question.
Lacey Baldwin Smith reveals an awful lot more in her book ‘Paranoia and Treason in Tudor England’ about Essex in particular. And makes a brilliant case for the paranoid state of education in Elizabethan England.
And as for the SHakespeare Ireland thing, check out this link for the far down the line conspiracy theory that Shakespeare was Irish!!!
As for myself, today I pretend to be Irish in Irish pubs in den Bosch and Oosterhout, pimping Bushmills Whiskey (note the extra ‘e’, which stands for excellence) with a story or two in exchange for a taste of the Bushmill’s Original.
A sample can be seen HERE. An actor’s life for me….
…Sir Peter Hall’s insistence on a pause, howsoever slight, at the end of an IP verse line is sound.
Silence rather.
It allows the listener’s ear to hear,
their mind to digest the meaning of the utterance;
and the speaker to remain poised,
if it is a run-on line.
Or stop,
and continue fresh at the beginning
of the next line, if it is end-stopped.
The one speaks to the mind, the other the voice.
Both are of major-minor and equal importance,
in terms of balance in Sh’s style of writing.
His words were written to be spoken.
Indeed he infuses his Sonnets with direct speech.
He was/is addressing such persons in verse and rime as:
Time, the fair young man, mistress, other poet, a rose, his Muse,
to name but a few who were once real and imaginary still.
He questions his thought process as it’s evolving,
so making it appear alive and spontaneous,
despite its dead delivery in dried ink.
So back to looking at breathing and phrasing,
in immortal lines some two thousand
more long, sounded and furiously dumb.
It’s the silences and the mind’s churnings that fascinate,
determinedly in the moment, figuratively for all eternity.
His eternal lines promised in his Sonnets,
are at once a monument to time and lovers past,
and a living monument ‘even in the mouths of men’,
courtesy of your senses and wits.
BTW Sonnets are not how to make
your name as an actor.
The play’s the thing.
The characters you best adapt.
The roles they offer.
If you’re lucky.
…So dipping into Sh’s philosophical perspective we find a slew of themes which any decent philosopher (ie anyone who thinks about what life is all about) encounters today. Such as:
* Skepticism and the possibility of human knowledge
* The nature of self and personal identity
* The understanding of causation (no cause, no cause)
* The existence and nature of evil
* The formative power of language
Are you epistemologically at sea?
Do you strive for epistemological perfection?
Does your epistemological modesty prevent your full blown skepticism?
Is your desire for knowledge thwarted by illusion, error and uncertainty?
How much more can we know than we actually know nothing?
Enter the world of the skeptic. A philosophical tradition Shakespeare got from the arch Euro-skeptic Michel de Montaigne. Let’s compare the two.
Montaigne = dramatic, anecdotal, poetic, powerful writer
His Essays = personal lively pungent exposes of his self-knowledge
His Style = persuasive, affective, full of rugged wisdom and brutal honesty.
In a word: Unflinching.
Sound familiar Shakesphereans?
Death is never far from their discourse; a steady eyed contemplation of its terrors and mysteries.
Their contrarian skepticism is highlighted in the problem of Other Minds: the interior-exterior split, the private-public dichotomy, personal-social relations. This last contained in one anxiously telling axiom
my knowledge of my mind opposed to your knowledge of my mind.
SELF is a drama.
Drama comprises a number of selves (my her him your) in some kind of interaction.
Drama concerns conscious beings equipped with a suitably rich psychology.
Drama also concerns the individual self as it exists over time.
Self leads to our projected personality and character as described by Others.
Are personality and character then a metaphysical essence, or a social construct?
What effect does madness have on personality? Is there a psychological metamorphosis?
What is identity? same as it ever was? How do sleep and dreams affect the self?
The Self is interactive and theatrical. it is a form of role-playing. All the world is a stage, he says. But how well do you know your part? Self-knowledge is not always reliable. Think but on abnormal states of mind, hallucinations, dreams, insanity. The mind is subject to rational and extra-rational conflicting forces.
We are Homo Dramatis conflicting Men of Action and Men of Imagination. Shakespeare dealt his characters sharp epistemic shocks, about who they actually were as opposed to who they thought they were. His dramas are psycho-dramas, where significant action takes place inside the characters’ souls.
He offers us the human mind as we recognise it. He is a moral psychologist. This shocking familiarity is what makes this writer live. Plainspoken, forthright accurate honesty is Sh’s primary virtue. The universe around seems to operate with sublime indifference to the moral status of humans.
Shakespeare is most conspicuous in his absence from his writings. He reflects rather than constructs. He represents human nature as he observed it. Reality imposed itself on his vision. And the world never looked the same again.
The word ‘lendlings’ in the title is actually ‘lendings’. I misread it but it lent itself to my imagination in the sphere of foundlings.
So this post closes with a grateful acknowledgement to Colin McGinn for lending his intellect to these questions. His book is filled with insights into the plays MND, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and especially King Lear.
Further he deals with general themes, gender, psychology, ethics, tragedy and the truth behind Shakespeare’s genius.
…i think i can take it as a truism that I ‘m influenced by the last thing i read. yesterday my amazon order arrived.
1 Shakespeare’s Philosophy: …by Colin McGinn Skimmed read preface and conclusion. Much underlining and agreement with this modern day philosopher.
2 So Long as Men Can Breathe… by Clinton Heylin
3 The Shakespeare Wars: by Ron Rosenbaum
4 The Trivium: The Liberal Arts by Sister Miriam Joseph
5 A Shakespeare Thesaurus by Marvin Spevack
Lost in music…
….to those who turned up to the Shakespeare Centre. Yes the weather got the better of us!
The show had its trial run and nobody had to choose between lead, silver, or gold, or even a pound of flesh. A recording was made and we can now study it to make it better and more streamlined. The 45 plus (age and number) audience had readers and listeners and a scholar or three.
I thank each and everyone. Especially those following on book so i had to fess up to my mistakes. 46 mine eye and heart are at a mortal war (muddled 2nd quatrain) and 66 Tired with all these for restful death I cry, (that damn 5th line).
We stayed at the Quilt and Croissant B&B on the Evesham road. We dined at the Coconut Lagoon and had the experience. We re-acquainted with old friends and caught up on shakespeare’s hall of fame and new painting. I swear he winked and smiled at me.
The dirty duck still provides good shelter for thesps and tourists alike. We didn’t do the Julius Caesar matinee in favour of parents having that rare afternoon lazing in a warm bed without interruption. According to some we made the better choice.
Now let’s get this e-version of the sonnets done and we can relax. Tonight i re-record sonnets 10, 44, 46, 79, 88, 91, 103, 127, 129 and 132 for the various shibboleths that crept in on the first recording.
Not unusual as the newest dollar version downloadable from I-Tunes likewise has its faults that creep in twixt vows and change decrees of kings. At least the former, I’m not sure Kings subject themselves to a sonnet’s tyranny.
BTW it turns out Kenny Brannagh hasn’t turned to the dark side though he is being wooed by the Orksfordians.
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