A stick-figure Shakespeare comic by Mya Lixian Gosling
One final Apocrypha for the time being. This one sounds particularly fun, if you ask me.
Action packed with lots of magic and comedy and hijinks! The Birth of Merlin was originally printed attributing it to Shakespeare and William Rowley, but most people agree it was written by Rowley alone, or possibly with another collaborator who was definitely not Shakespeare. It still sounds like a lot of fun, though.
There are more apocrypha to tackle in the future, but that's it for the moment!
I'm particularly intrigued by today's Shakespeare Apocrypha play, Thomas of Woodstock, as it is, essentially, a prequel to Richard II.
Richard II picks up almost immediately after Thomas of Woodstock, with people arguing over who murdered him. When I saw Breath of Kings, which condensed Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V into two plays, at the Stratford Festival last season, they actually opened with the murder of Thomas from Thomas of Woodstock, which I thought was a nice way to try and fill in the backstory of Richard II a bit.
Thomas of Woodstock exists only as an incomplete, anonymous manuscript. Many people have tried to argue that Shakespeare wrote it, but, as with the other apocrypha, there is no evidence and no scholarly consensus to back up that claim.
Let's continue our journey through Shakespeare's Apocrypha, with a play that SOUNDS like it should be a rogue Jane Austen novel, but absolutely isn't.
Arden of Faversham was actually based upon the real-life murder of Thomas Arden, which caused quite a stir at the time. I haven't read it, but the synopsis makes it sound unintentionally hilarious, with Alice reruiting what seem to be a dozen different people to murder her husband, none of whom actually manage to do so until the very end.
The author or authors of Arden remain unknown. The play was published anonymously, and subsequent generations of scholars have cycled through all the likely suspects: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, and others. It's possible Shakespeare contributed some material to it, but there doesn't seem to be any overriding consensus on the matter.
I'm giving the opening address at the Utah Shakespeare Festival Wooden O Symposium! Here are all the fun details:
WHO: Me!
WHAT: Opening address at USF's cross-disciplinary Shakespeare conference! I'll be talking about Good Tickle Brain, comics, and Shakespeare!
WHEN: Monday, August 7, 5:00pm
WHERE: Movie Theatre, Sharwan Smith Student Center, Cedar City, Utah
WHY: Because they asked me!
HOW: My talk is free and open to the public! Just show up!
Let's get back to Shakespeare's Apocrypha, a.k.a. plays that have, at some point in time, been attributed to Shakespeare but either have not survived or are generally agreed to have been written mostly or entirely by people who were definitely not Shakespeare! Today's installment is the extremely problematic Yorkshire Tragedy!
This rather hideous play was originally registered and printed with Shakespeare listed as the author, but general consensus today is that it was actually written by Thomas Middleton. It sounds like a terrible evening at the theatre, if you ask me. Shakespeare is well out of this one.
I'm giving the opening address at the Utah Shakespeare Festival Wooden O Symposium! Here are all the fun details:
WHO: Me!
WHAT: Opening address at USF's cross-disciplinary Shakespeare conference! I'll be talking about Good Tickle Brain, comics, and Shakespeare!
WHEN: Monday, August 7, 5:00pm
WHERE: Movie Theatre, Sharwan Smith Student Center, Cedar City, Utah
WHY: Because they asked me!
HOW: My talk is free and open to the public! Just show up!
We continue our 3-panel play journey through Shakespeare's "apocrypha" with a closer look at Shakespeare's infamous lost play, Cardenio!
GET IT? BECAUSE IT'S LOST? HAHAHAHAHA I AM SO FUNNY
...ahem. But seriously, folks...
Cardenio, based off an episode from Miguel Cervantes's novel Don Quixote, is a lost play attributed to Shakespeare and his frequent collaborator John Fletcher. It is "lost" because, while we have a record of its existence and performance, it does not exist in manuscript or published form.
In the 18th century, editor Lewis Theobald claimed to have come into possession of several manuscripts of a hitherto unknown Shakespeare play, which he edited into Double Falsehood. The manuscripts he used have mysteriously disappeared. It's impossible to say if Double Falsehood is, indeed, Cardenio, but it seems to be as close as we're going to get to the lost play.
If you really want to know what happened to Cardenio, you should read Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. I can't recommend Fforde's Thursday Next series of books enough, by the way. Lots of Shakespeare and literary in-jokes wrapped up in a totally surreal universe.
Continuing my 3-panel play journey through Shakespeare's so-called "apocrypha"...
Sir Thomas More exists as a heavily revised manuscript showing evidence of collaboration by around six different people, with playwrights Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle credited with the bulk of the original material.
It is generally agreed now that Shakespeare contributed three pages of material covering Sir Thomas More's confrontation of the rioters threatening to evict and murder Flemish immigrants. Sir Ian McKellen has been particularly active lately in highlighting More's most impassioned speech to the rabble. I've shared this video before, but it's still worth a look:
Those three pages of material - housed, with the rest of the Sir Thomas More manuscript, in the British Library - are probably the closest we're going to get to any Shakespeare manuscript. PRETTY COOL, EH?
I've pretty much run out of standard Shakespeare plays and epic poems to turn into three-panel plays, but fortunately there's still a lot of kinda-sorta Shakespeare material out there! Let's take a look at the anonymously-published Edward III, which is now generally accepted to have been at least partially written by Shakespeare:
OK, so I (a) haven't read Edward III, and (b) haven't read any of the scholarship surrounding Edward III, so I can't tell you anymore about which bits may or may not have been written by Shakespeare. As a huuuuge history play geek, however, I would absolutely love to see this at some point, as it serves as a very nice prequel to Richard II.
Edward III geeks out there (and you know who you are), feel free to geek about Edward III in the comments. If you have any easily-digestible reading material on Edward III to recommend, do share!
