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Eric Sams
Eric Sams (3 May 1926 – 13 September 2004) was a British musicologist and Shakespeare scholar. Life Born in London, Sams was raised in Essex. He studied at the Westcliff High School for Boys, where he performed well and earned a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge at the age of sixteen. His lifelong passion for puzzles and ciphers stood him in good stead in his wartime service in British Intelligence (1944–47). After the war he read Modern Languages at Cambridge (French and German), 1947–50; upon graduation he entered the Civil Service. In 1952 he married Enid Tidmarsh (died 2002), a pianist. Their elder son, Richard, is a Japanese scholar and chess master working in Tokyo; their younger son Jeremy Sams is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and theatre director. Musicology In music, Sams wrote on and studied a range of subjects and genres, though his specialty was German lieder. He wrote volumes on the songs of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Corpus Christi College (full name: "The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary", often shortened to "Corpus") is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century to the early 19th century it was also commonly known as St Benet's College. The college is notable as the only one founded by Cambridge townspeople: it was established in 1352 by the Guild of Corpus Christi and the Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, making it the sixth-oldest college in Cambridge. With around 300 undergraduates and 200 postgraduates, it also has the second smallest student body of the traditional colleges of the university, after Peterhouse, Cambridge, Peterhouse. The College has traditionally been one of the more academically successful colleges in the University of Cambridge. In the unofficial Tompkins Table, which ranks the colleges by the class of degrees obtained by their undergraduates, in 2012 Corpus was in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund Ironside (play)
''Edmund Ironside, or War Hath Made All Friends'' is an anonymous Elizabethan play that depicts the life of the Anglo-Saxon king Edmund II of England. At least three critics have suggested that it is an early work by William Shakespeare. Text The play was never published in its own era; the unique copy of the text was preserved in MS. Egerton 1994, an important collection of play manuscripts now in the collection of the British Library. Authorship E. B. Everitt, Eric Sams, and Peter Ackroyd have argued that this play is perhaps Shakespeare's first drama. According to Sams, ''Edmund Ironside'' "contains some 260 words or usages which on the evidence of the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' were first used by Shakespeare himself.... Further, it exhibits 635 instances of Shakespeare's rare words including some 300 of the rarest." Sams dates the play to 1587, noting that the play's presentation after that period until the death of Elizabeth I would have been illegal because of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry VIII (play)
''The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth'', often shortened to ''Henry VIII'', is a collaborative history play, written by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, based on the life of Henry VIII. An alternative title, , is recorded in contemporary documents, with the title not appearing until the play's publication in the First Folio of 1623. Stylistic evidence indicates that individual scenes were written by either Shakespeare or his collaborator and successor, John Fletcher. It is also somewhat characteristic of the late romances in its structure. It is noted for having more stage directions than any of Shakespeare's other plays. During a performance of ''Henry VIII'' at the Globe Theatre in 1613, a cannon shot employed for special effects ignited the theatre's thatched roof (and the beams), burning the original Globe building to the ground. Characters * Prologue/Epilogue * Henry VIII – King of England * Cardinal Wolsey – Archbishop of York and Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Two Noble Kinsmen
''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' is a Jacobean tragicomedy, first published in 1634 and attributed jointly to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Its plot derives from "The Knight's Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbury Tales'' (1387–1400), which had already been dramatised at least twice before, and itself was a shortened version of Boccaccio's epic poem ''Teseida''. This play is believed to have been originally performed in 1613–1614, making it William Shakespeare's final play before he retired to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he died in 1616. Formerly a point of controversy, the dual attribution is now generally accepted by scholarly consensus. Characters * Theseus, Duke of Athens * Palamon, nephew of the King of Thebes * Arcite, nephew of the King of Thebes * Pirithous, an Athenian general * Artesius, an Athenian captain * Valerius, a noble of Thebes * Six Knights * A Herald * A Jailer * Wooer of the jailer's daughter * A Doctor * Brother of the jailer * Friends of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Thomas More (play)
''Sir Thomas More'' is an Elizabethan play and a dramatic biography based on events in the life of the Catholic martyr Thomas More, who rose to become the Lord Chancellor of England during the reign of Henry VIII. The play is considered to be written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle and revised by several writers. The manuscript is particularly notable for a three-page handwritten revision now widely attributed to William Shakespeare. Content This play is not a biography; it is a drama that deals with certain events in More's life. Other significant facts are not described: There is no mention of his literary career, his book ''Utopia'', or the dispute between Henry VIII and the Pope in Rome. Also the life of More is at times expanded beyond what actually occurred and beyond the sources that were used, in order to suit the drama. What the play is about has been debated, but the issues revolve around obedience to the crown and rule of law, particularly when a populace beco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Shakespeare's Collaborations
Like most playwrights of his period, William Shakespeare did not always write alone. A number of his surviving plays are collaborative, or were revised by others after their original composition, although the exact number is open to debate. Some of the following attributions, such as '' The Two Noble Kinsmen'', have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as ''Titus Andronicus'', are dependent on linguistic analysis by modern scholars; recent work on computer analysis of textual style (word use, word and phrase patterns) has given reason to believe that parts of some of the plays ascribed to Shakespeare are actually by other writers. In some cases the identity of the collaborator is known; in other cases there is a scholarly consensus; in others it is unknown or disputed. These debates are the province of Shakespeare attribution studies. Most collaborations occurred at the very beginning and the very end of Shakespeare's career. Elizabethan authorship The Elizabe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
False Folio
False Folio is the term that Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers have applied to William Jaggard's printing of ten Shakespearean and pseudo-Shakespearean plays together in 1619, the first attempt to collect Shakespeare's work in a single volume. Publisher and bookseller Thomas Pavier is also implicated with 'printed for T.P.' appearing on the title pages. There are only two complete extant copies. One is part of the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. The other is held in the Special Collections at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Term The term "false folio" intentionally evokes the folio collections of Shakespeare's works that appeared later: the First Folio of 1623 and its three seventeenth-century successors. The description "folio" is not strictly accurate, since the ten plays were printed in a larger-than-usual quarto format, not in folio; but the key qualifier is ''false'' folio. Modern commentators argue that Pavier's ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memorial Reconstruction
Memorial reconstruction is the hypothesis that the scripts of some 17th century plays were written down from memory by actors who had played parts in them, and that those transcriptions were published.British LibrarRetrieved: 10 December 2007. The theory is suggested as an explanation for the so-called " bad quarto" versions of plays, in which the texts differ dramatically from later published versions, or appear to be corrupted or confused. The theory however is facing growing criticism by a number of scholars for being overly applied, and for being an elaborate theory, yet with little evidence to support it. In 1623, the preface to the First Folio of Shakespeare's works specifically marketed its content as correct, in contrast to the garbled texts of "stolen and surreptitious copies" published previously. Memorial reconstruction has been supposed to be one of the ways in which texts were "stolen". Examples of possible memorial reconstructions are early editions of Shakespeare, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bad Quarto
A bad quarto, in Shakespearean scholarship, is a quarto-sized printed edition of one of Shakespeare's plays that is considered to be unauthorised, and is theorised to have been pirated from a theatrical performance without permission by someone in the audience writing it down as it was spoken or, alternatively, written down later from memory by an actor or group of actors in the cast – the latter process has been termed "memorial reconstruction". Since the quarto derives from a performance, hence lacks a direct link to the author's original manuscript, the text would be expected to be bad, i.e. to contain corruptions, abridgements and paraphrasings.Duthie, George Ian. "Introduction; the good and bad quartos". ''The Bad Quarto of Hamlet''. CUP Archive (1941). pp. 1-4 In contrast, a good quarto is considered to be a text that is authorised and which may have been printed from the author's manuscript (or a working draft thereof, known as his '' foul papers''), or from a scribal c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Leir
''King Leir'' is an anonymous Elizabethan play about the life of the ancient Brythonic king Leir of Britain. It was published in 1605 but was entered into the Stationers' Register on 15 May 1594. The play has attracted critical attention principally for its relationship with ''King Lear'', Shakespeare's version of the same story. Performance The records of theatre impresario Philip Henslowe show that ''King Leir'' was performed on 6 and 8 April 1594 at the Rose Theatre, by a cast that combined personnel from two acting companies, Queen Elizabeth's Men and Sussex's Men. Other records claim that the play was often acted, though these two are the only specific performances known. It has been suggested that Shakespeare, who might have been a player in the Queen's company of the 1590s, may have performed in ''King Leir''. Publication ''The moste famous Chronicle historye of Leire king of England and his Three Daughters'' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 14 May 1594, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Troublesome Reign Of King John
''The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England'', commonly called ''The Troublesome Reign of King John'' (c. 1589) is an English literature#Elizabethan era, Elizabethan history play, probably by George Peele, that is generally accepted by scholars as the source and model that William Shakespeare employed for his own ''The Life and Death of King John, King John'' (c. 1596). Plot Editions The play was printed three times in book size, quarto in Shakespeare's era: First quarto First quarto, Q1, 1591 in literature, 1591, was published by the stationer Sampson Clarke, with no attribution of authorship. The title page of Q1 states that the play was performed by Queen Elizabeth's Men. Although ''The Troublesome Reign'' is not an exceptionally long play, about 300 lines longer than Shakespeare's, the initial publication split the play into two parts. (The scholarly literature often refers to Parts 1 and 2 of the play as a result.) Second quarto Second quarto, Q2, 1611 in literature, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Taming Of A Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a Shakespearean comedy, comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a Frame story, framing device, often referred to as the Induction (play), induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly's diversion. The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina (Kate) Minola, Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate Shrew (stock character), shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship; however, Petruchio "tames" her with various psychological and physical torments, such as keeping her from eating and drinking, until she becomes a desirable, compliant, and obedient bride. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina's younger sister, Bianca Minola, Bianca, who is seen as the "ideal" woman. The que ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
