Shakespeare Weekend

We are halfway through Nicholas Rowe’s (1674-1718) The Work of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes! Published in London in 1709 by Jacob Tonson (1655–1736), this second edition holds an important place within Shakespearean publication history. The Work of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes is recognized as the first octavo edition, the first illustrated edition, the first critically edited edition, and the first to present a biography of the poet.  

This week, we explore the third volume of The Work of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes. The third volume encompasses historic plays including a Shakespearean Henriad depicting the rise of English kings. The volume is comprised of King John, King Richard II, Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, King Henry V, King Henry VI Part I, and King Henry VI Part II. While the plays have recurring characters and settings, there is no evidence that they were written with the intention of being considered as a group. A full-page engraving, designed by the French Baroque artist and book illustrator François Boitard (1670-1715) and engraved by English engraver Elisha Kirkall (c.1682–1742), precedes each play. 

In addition to Rowe’s editorial decisions to divide the plays into scenes and include notes on the entrances and exits of the players, he also normalised the spelling of names and included a dramatis personae preceding each play. The only chronicled critique of Rowe’s momentous editorial endeavor is his choice in basing his text on the corrupt Fourth Folio. 

View more volumes of The Works of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes here.

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts.

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

Histories Characters Vs. Christmas

(Feel free to add your own)

-Richard and Aumerle decorate the tree perfectly with shiny gold ornaments. Mathe proceeds to knock all of them off the branches.

-Hotspur falls out of the attic while trying to bring down boxes.

-Falstaff is mistaken for Santa, who was being mistaken for an intruder.

-Bardolph the red-nosed reindeer.

-Francis bakes a batch of cookies and as soon as he turns his back, they’re gone.

-Ned is wrapped in Christmas lights.

-Henry frantically flips through a Berlitz French book in preparation for Kate’s parents’ visit.

-Richard III is asked what he wants for Christmas. His list includes the crown and the right to decide who lives and who dies.

-When Clifford is asked the same, he just wants revenge.

-Margaret is mad that Henry did not take advantage of a sale.

-Clarence gets a bottle of wine. Everyone is suspicious.

-Kate Percy tries to keep Hotspur out of fights with family. She fails.

-The Boar’s Head runs out of mulled wine in record time.

-King John is not invited.

-Humphrey tries desperately to cover for Hal not being there.

-John of Gaunt grumbles about “When I was your age…”

-The Dauphin is in charge of the nativity set. It’s very horse-heavy this year.

-Chorus apologizes for the lack of preparation.

-It’s Henry IV’s turn to read In Hoc Anno Domini and he gets very emotional.

-Silence will not stop singing Christmas songs. Loudly and off-key.

-Ned is no longer allowed to light the Advent candles. Not after last year.

-Douglas mixes up Henry IV’s and Blunt’s presents.

-Henry gets a crate of tennis balls.

Henry VI gets all teary when Linus recites from the Gospel of Luke.

- Edward IV gets ugly drunk on spiked eggnog and Richard steals the Santa hat from him.

- Richard II was in charge of decorating the tree. He micromanages it and then sneaks off to snog Aumerle, so Boilingbroke takes over the step ladder. Richard comes back to complain that the tree isn’t sparkly enough. He is exiled to the back porch.

- Henry V uses google translate to write his Christmas card to Katherine’s family. It is accidentally offensive.

^ These are glorious

Edward IV spends the whole evening doing this:

This post just keeps getting better.

Hastings decides not to open the door in the middle of the night in case it’s those bloody carol singers again.

I’m gonna reblog everything people add :D

Falstaff signs all his Christmas cards “Sir John Falstaff, KNIGHT.”

His presents for everyone are still in the mail. They were delayed by the snow. And the stupid delivery boys. But they’ll be there soon. Tomorrow surely. And no one does their jobs correctly today, absolutely shameful. How dare you suggest he didn’t buy any! He got you the best present, Hal, you’ll absolutely love it. In fact it’s two presents, one of them is really large and I thought it was just perfect for you. The other three I found in London and the fourth one came all the way from France and….

^ Another quality addition

Aumerle brings Richard some hot chocolate while he’s exiled to the back porch and it results in makeouts.

York and Somerset are arguing about whether the tree should be covered in white or red lights. Henry (VI) passes by and unwittingly comments on how festive those red lights look!

York nods and smiles at Henry, but he’s already silently plotting to cover THE ENTIRE HOUSE with white lights when the others are asleep. Nobody will suspect a thing.

Someone bumps into the tree and an old, fancy ornament that Richard II just happens to hate breaks. Boilingbroke and Mowbray are about to get into a fight over who did it, when Richard sends them both to buy cranberry sauce. Mowbray is sulking and doesn’t come back. Boilingbroke gets fabulous cranberry sauce and also eggnog and is welcomed back as a hero.

Bonus if Bagot blames Aumerle for putting it in a place where it could be easily broken.

Richard sees the cranberry sauce and eggnog, tearfully puts Bolingbroke in charge of all remaining festivities, and then makes a melodramatic exit. (Aumerle finds him sulking in the basement shortly afterwards.)

Bolingbroke’s first action is to take down all the ridiculous decorations Bushy and Green put up. Why do the holidays have to be so impractically fancy, anyway?

Histories Characters Vs. Christmas

(Feel free to add your own)

-Richard and Aumerle decorate the tree perfectly with shiny gold ornaments. Mathe proceeds to knock all of them off the branches.

-Hotspur falls out of the attic while trying to bring down boxes.

-Falstaff is mistaken for Santa, who was being mistaken for an intruder.

-Bardolph the red-nosed reindeer.

-Francis bakes a batch of cookies and as soon as he turns his back, they’re gone.

-Ned is wrapped in Christmas lights.

-Henry frantically flips through a Berlitz French book in preparation for Kate’s parents’ visit.

-Richard III is asked what he wants for Christmas. His list includes the crown and the right to decide who lives and who dies.

-When Clifford is asked the same, he just wants revenge.

-Margaret is mad that Henry did not take advantage of a sale.

-Clarence gets a bottle of wine. Everyone is suspicious.

-Kate Percy tries to keep Hotspur out of fights with family. She fails.

-The Boar’s Head runs out of mulled wine in record time.

-King John is not invited.

-Humphrey tries desperately to cover for Hal not being there.

-John of Gaunt grumbles about “When I was your age…”

-The Dauphin is in charge of the nativity set. It’s very horse-heavy this year.

-Chorus apologizes for the lack of preparation.

-It’s Henry IV’s turn to read In Hoc Anno Domini and he gets very emotional.

-Silence will not stop singing Christmas songs. Loudly and off-key.

-Ned is no longer allowed to light the Advent candles. Not after last year.

-Douglas mixes up Henry IV’s and Blunt’s presents.

-Henry gets a crate of tennis balls.

Henry VI gets all teary when Linus recites from the Gospel of Luke.

- Edward IV gets ugly drunk on spiked eggnog and Richard steals the Santa hat from him.

- Richard II was in charge of decorating the tree. He micromanages it and then sneaks off to snog Aumerle, so Boilingbroke takes over the step ladder. Richard comes back to complain that the tree isn’t sparkly enough. He is exiled to the back porch.

- Henry V uses google translate to write his Christmas card to Katherine’s family. It is accidentally offensive.

^ These are glorious

Edward IV spends the whole evening doing this:

This post just keeps getting better.

Hastings decides not to open the door in the middle of the night in case it’s those bloody carol singers again.

I’m gonna reblog everything people add :D

Falstaff signs all his Christmas cards “Sir John Falstaff, KNIGHT.”

His presents for everyone are still in the mail. They were delayed by the snow. And the stupid delivery boys. But they’ll be there soon. Tomorrow surely. And no one does their jobs correctly today, absolutely shameful. How dare you suggest he didn’t buy any! He got you the best present, Hal, you’ll absolutely love it. In fact it’s two presents, one of them is really large and I thought it was just perfect for you. The other three I found in London and the fourth one came all the way from France and….

^ Another quality addition

Aumerle brings Richard some hot chocolate while he’s exiled to the back porch and it results in makeouts.

York and Somerset are arguing about whether the tree should be covered in white or red lights. Henry (VI) passes by and unwittingly comments on how festive those red lights look!

York nods and smiles at Henry, but he’s already silently plotting to cover THE ENTIRE HOUSE with white lights when the others are asleep. Nobody will suspect a thing.

Shakespeare in reading order (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5)

Kings and 1st-person pronouns in Shakespeare’s histories

This is a little corpus linguistics experiment I ran to satisfy some curiosity. I’m sure I’ll come back with more things to say after I’ve actually read all the histories, but for now here’s a summary of the results and a few of the more striking trends I noticed. I’d love to hear thoughts/theories/ideas from more experienced Shakespeeps! Disclaimer that this is not the most scientifically rigorous study. I just did it for my own amusement and thought I’d share in case it’s of interest to the fandom.

While reading the Henry VI plays, I noticed that the title character doesn’t seem to use the “royal we” very much. Is this because he’s a particularly reluctant king? How does his 1st-person pronoun usage compare to that of Shakespeare’s other historical kings?

Experimental materials: Downloadable .txt file versions of the 10 history plays (King John, Richard II, Henry IV Parts I-II, Henry V, Henry VI Parts I-III, Richard III, Henry VIII) from the Folger Digital Library.

Method: I wrote a simple Python script to identify all lines spoken by a given character and tally up the 1st-person pronouns.

Here’s what I found!

Keep reading

Here’s a pretty bar chart to go with this analysis. Doing this for Bolingbroke’s names made me realize it’s a great way to visually compare percentages and overall amount of usage at the same time. (And also I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to code up pretty graphs in R.)

Richard’s speech to Aumerle in R2 III.iii (“What must the King do now? Must he submit?…”) is kind of the opposite of Henry’s molehill speech (H6P3 II.v), isn’t it? Both of these involve a king contrasting his royal position with a simpler life, but the attitudes are completely different. Richard desperately wants his position back, while Henry desperately wants to be anything but a king and is actually fantasizing about the kind of quiet, obscure death that Richard fears.

Yes yes – and also, Richard’s thorough identification with his position does grant him a certain level of clarity about the only way you get out of being a king. He can’t even keep up an ironic fantasy of being an ex-king for very long; after all, the real exchange he’s going to have to make is “my large kingdom for a little grave.” Once you’re king, you’re king until you die, and this is true even if your asshole cousin seizes your crown.

Agreed. Richard spends way more time describing his imagined grave, while for Henry it’s just a footnote at the end of his meticulously thought-out shepherd fantasy. That “exchanging a large kingdom for a little grave” image also makes me think of Richard’s "sad stories of the death of kings” speech (III.ii.156-159):

…and Pembroke’s reaction to hearing about Arthur’s death in King John (IV.ii.98-102):

…and also Warwick’s death in H6P3 even if that’s not about a kingdom (V.ii.25-27):

Conclusion: This is an effective image to invoke when you have powerful characters forced to face their own mortality. And there are plenty of those in Shakespeare’s history plays.