When the famous African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson played the lead in Shakespeare’s O... more When the famous African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson played the lead in Shakespeare’s Othello in London in 1930, tickets were in high demand during the production’s first week. The critical response, however, was less positive, although the reviews unanimously praised his bass-baritone delivery. When Robeson again played Othello on Broadway thirteen years later, critics praised not only his voice but also his acting, the drama running for 296 performances. My argument concerning Robeson uses elements first noted by Henri Lefebvre in his seminal work, The Production of Space, while I also draw on Paul Connerton’s work on commemorative practices. Using spatial and memorial theories as a backdrop for examining his two portrayals, I suggest that Robeson’s nascent geopolitical awareness following the 1930 production, combined with his already celebrated musical voice, allowed him to perform the role more dramatically in 1943.
The Federal Theatre Project, which was established in 1935 to put unemployed Americans back to wo... more The Federal Theatre Project, which was established in 1935 to put unemployed Americans back to work after the Great Depression, and later employed over 10,000 people at its peak, financed one particularly original adaptation of Shakespeare: the “voodoo”
After examining the effect of World War I on the Shakespearean criticism of the Cambridge scholar... more After examining the effect of World War I on the Shakespearean criticism of the Cambridge scholars I. A. Richards and William Empson, this chapter focuses on F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny. The last section considers the criticism of Caroline Spurgeon, Una Ellis-Fermor, and John Dover Wilson, highlighting instances where they collaborated, as Spurgeon did with Wilson and Arthur Quiller-Couch on the 1921 Board of Education report for “The Teaching of English in England,” and as Wilson did with Quiller-Couch as co-editors of the New Cambridge Shakespeare series, 1921–1966.
This essay focuses on the alleged attack by Robert Greene on Shakespeare as an “upstart crow,” a ... more This essay focuses on the alleged attack by Robert Greene on Shakespeare as an “upstart crow,” a work reprinted in almost every collection of Shakespeare’s works, and a document that has produced its own body of scholarly assessment. Employing recent textual criticism of the print industry in early modern England —including works by Zachary Lesser, John Jowett, Jeffery Masten, and D. Allen Carroll— we re-read “Green’s Groatsworth of Wit” as a kind of literary criticism that helps to illuminate both its own textual status as well as the material conditions of the late sixteenth-century theatrical world which produced it. Following a review of the basic lines of interpretation of the piece, I examine the nexus of the Henry Chettle, Robert Danter and Greene connection, in an attempt to show that by considering the “collaboration” between these three, we should come to a better understanding of the document itself. Equally important, by re-examining the text, reviewing the printing proc...
When the famous African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson played the lead in Shakespeare’s O... more When the famous African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson played the lead in Shakespeare’s Othello in London in 1930, tickets were in high demand during the production’s first week. The critical response, however, was less positive, although the reviews unanimously praised his bass-baritone delivery. When Robeson again played Othello on Broadway thirteen years later, critics praised not only his voice but also his acting, the drama running for 296 performances. My argument concerning Robeson uses elements first noted by Henri Lefebvre in his seminal work, The Production of Space, while I also draw on Paul Connerton’s work on commemorative practices. Using spatial and memorial theories as a backdrop for examining his two portrayals, I suggest that Robeson’s nascent geopolitical awareness following the 1930 production, combined with his already celebrated musical voice, allowed him to perform the role more dramatically in 1943.
The Federal Theatre Project, which was established in 1935 to put unemployed Americans back to wo... more The Federal Theatre Project, which was established in 1935 to put unemployed Americans back to work after the Great Depression, and later employed over 10,000 people at its peak, financed one particularly original adaptation of Shakespeare: the “voodoo”
After examining the effect of World War I on the Shakespearean criticism of the Cambridge scholar... more After examining the effect of World War I on the Shakespearean criticism of the Cambridge scholars I. A. Richards and William Empson, this chapter focuses on F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny. The last section considers the criticism of Caroline Spurgeon, Una Ellis-Fermor, and John Dover Wilson, highlighting instances where they collaborated, as Spurgeon did with Wilson and Arthur Quiller-Couch on the 1921 Board of Education report for “The Teaching of English in England,” and as Wilson did with Quiller-Couch as co-editors of the New Cambridge Shakespeare series, 1921–1966.
This essay focuses on the alleged attack by Robert Greene on Shakespeare as an “upstart crow,” a ... more This essay focuses on the alleged attack by Robert Greene on Shakespeare as an “upstart crow,” a work reprinted in almost every collection of Shakespeare’s works, and a document that has produced its own body of scholarly assessment. Employing recent textual criticism of the print industry in early modern England —including works by Zachary Lesser, John Jowett, Jeffery Masten, and D. Allen Carroll— we re-read “Green’s Groatsworth of Wit” as a kind of literary criticism that helps to illuminate both its own textual status as well as the material conditions of the late sixteenth-century theatrical world which produced it. Following a review of the basic lines of interpretation of the piece, I examine the nexus of the Henry Chettle, Robert Danter and Greene connection, in an attempt to show that by considering the “collaboration” between these three, we should come to a better understanding of the document itself. Equally important, by re-examining the text, reviewing the printing proc...
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