Graham Holderness

Hamlet: The First Quarto, 1603 by William Shakespeare is a reproduction of an earlier version of Hamlet. Included with the play is a lengthy discussion of its history as well as it was known in the 1960s as well as some thoughts on why this version is so very different from the one performed now, written by Albert B. Weiner.

Now I'm not a Shakespearean scholar — just a casual consumer. Hamlet happens to be one of my favorite plays. The reason I read this version was I wanted to look up show more Claudius's name just to verify that I'd remembered the king's name correctly. Turns out in this version, the king didn't have a name and most of the other characters didn't have the names they have now.

So while the First Quarto didn't help me answer my initial question, I got sucked into the discussion of piracy and story tropes. If you think the internet has made piracy worse, I would argue this book shows it hasn't.

While Albert B. Weiner argues in his introductory essay that Hamlet wasn't outright pirated, piracy did exist back then. Copyright, though, wasn't owned by the author. It was owned by whomever commissioned the play just as modern day patents are often owned by the company who hires the inventor.

But plays were remembered by audience goers and there were probably guys there who were great at whatever the Elizabethan version of shorthand was. So just as cellphones are now used to record films in theaters, plays were watched, transcribed, changed up a bit and shipped out to other places to be put on.

So if you're interested in reading something that is clearly Hamlet but isn't quite, I recommend reading the First Quarto version. It's really no different than the numerous relaunches of various comic book stories that Marvel and DC have done. But it's Hamlet! show less

The Faith of William Shakespeare sets out to prove that William Shakespeare, far from the Catholic or atheist current criticism would have him be, lived his life as a Protestant. Holderness acknowledges that the plays are a poor route to knowledge of Shakespeare’s life, but they are also the only evidence really available. He combines his understanding of the plays with extensive knowledge of historical context in an attempt to illuminate Shakespeare’s personal faith.
While The Faith of show more William Shakespeare deals with complex ideas, it is very accessible. The book assumes the reader does not have an in depth knowledge of either the religious context or the plays themselves. The introductory chapter on the English Reformation is particularly good, and I enjoyed his analysis of King Lear and genre. Holderness’s analysis looks at each play as a whole, and focuses on philosophical and linguistic echoes in scripture.
Often his readings are broadly “Christian” rather than specifically Protestant (or Anglican, or Calvinist), which sadly works against his “Shakespeare is a Protestant” argument. However, just because I did not end the book convinced that Shakespeare or his plays were Protestant, does not mean this was not an enlightening and interesting exploration of one of the key issues in Shakespeare criticism.
Thank you to Graham Holderness and Lion Books via NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Full review available here: https://infinitetypewriters.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/the-faith-of-william-shakes... show less

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