Sunday, May 8, 2011

This Week's Reading Assignment

As we've seen, Edward III has a reasonable claim to Shakespearean authorship (at least in part). This week's play, Double Falsehood, is definitely not by Shakespeare, but it is allegedly based on the lost Cardenio, which Shakespeare co-authored with John Fletcher.

The play has been in the news a lot lately, with a flurry of recent productions and a new Arden edition of the text, so it seems like a timely play to include on our agenda.

After this, we have just two weeks left. Can you believe it? I think we're actually going to pull this off. As a heads up, next week's reading isn't a play at all, but rather Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro. If you don't have it, go find a copy!

2 comments:

  1. Are you familiar with Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series? They're brilliantly witty, sort of fantastical-realist adventure mystery, uncategorizable but delightful books, of which the second - "Lost in a Good Book" - uses "Cardenio" as a plot point.

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  2. I actually have "The Eyre Affair" on my bookshelf, waiting to be read, but I didn't realize it was part of a series! It looks like maybe another one of the books is based on "Hamlet," which I'm guessing from the title "Something Rotten." I'll have to give the series a try!

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