British Author Challenge June 2025: Tudor & Jacobean Eras (1485-1625)

Jacobean traveling library https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/397314

The start of the Tudor Era coincided with the start of the English Renaissance, from which came some of Britain's greatest works. Many of the greatest playwrights and poets of the era wrote at the end of Elizabeth's reign and continued to create under James's, so I have included the Jacobean era as well.

William Shakespeare
Christopher Marlowe
Edmund Spenser
Thomas Kyd
Walter Raleigh
Philip Sidney
Mary Sidney
Ben Jonson
George Chapman
Margaret Hoby
Elizabeth Cary
John Knox
John Webster
Thomas Middleton
Thomas More
John Donne
Francis Bacon
Francis Godwin
Elizabeth Melville
The Maitland quarto manuscript
Queen Elizabeth I
King James VI and I

Thanks for setting the thread up, Amanda!

Oh, to have a travelling library! How wonderful.

I picked up my planned June reads from the library earlier this week. I’ll be reading some Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, aside from Shakespeare.

BBC’s In Our Time podcast had an episode on Thomas Middleton in April, which I highly recommend. Apparently scholars believe he is at least partially responsible for the witches in Macbeth. I won’t be able to read any Middleton this time around but I’m definitely more interested in reading him now than I was before.

I had had a cunning plan to read Jacobean science fiction and cockily picked up Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World only to realize that it was published in 1666. I had lazily assumed that this was Tudor and Stuarts but as we are ending with James I (VI of Scotland) - the plays of the Bard or good old Ben Jonson will have to do.

>3 PaulCranswick: hee I did the same thing tho I was thinking more medival! finally got in straight for the RTT 17th century.btw I read a bio of her for that challenge pure wit interesting but lots of repetition and her bibliography and n otes are almost the size of the book

I read Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. It might be all I get to this month.

I'm planning on Henry IV, Part I.

I haven’t decided on which Shakespeares to read - I have all the ones I have yet to read downloaded on my iPad so I could read any of them. I’ve thought about letting a random number generator decide for me. However, as I have multiple “big books” (both physically and metaphorically) planned for the month, I might end up picking one of the “light and easy” comedies just to make it easier on myself.

>2 PawsforThought: Sidney and Spenser, plus Shakespeare? Wow!

>3 PaulCranswick: Oops! Hang on to it because I will almost certainly feature Restoration literature in the near future.

>8 amanda4242: I’m clearly mad and didn’t realise what I was getting myself into. Though the Spenser is less actual text than I first thought, as most of it is comments and explanations.

I will sort of tie the European Grand Tour to the British Author Challenge and take up the Bard's take on Julius Caesar.

I might also re-read and enjoy again Ben Jonson's brilliant play Volpone.

>10 PawsforThought: Never a good sign when there's more commentary than text...

Since Shakespeare is proving a popular choice this month, I thought I'd share two of my favorite Bard-related shows:

Upstart Crow, a sitcom created by Ben Elton. It streams on Britbox in the US and might be available through your library if they have Kanopy.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). All the plays in just 90 minutes!
https://archive.org/details/reduced-shakespeare-company-the-complete-works-of-wi...

>12 amanda4242: I do normally sigh very loudly when there's a bunch of commentary, but in this case I can see why it's there - it's not the most easy to read text and there are tons of allusions to things I'd never have picked up on or understood without glancing at the explanations. It's nicely done, though, as each books begins with explanations and then the cantos are printed in dual columns with the original text on the left and the comments/explanations on the right, so it's easy to skip if you don't feel you need it.
It is still a decidedly slower read than most books, because the language is so old-fashioned and the spelling is not even slightly standardized (u and v are used almost completely opposite to how we use them today - it took me a while to realise that "Yuorie" meant "ivory", etc.

>13 amanda4242: upstart crow was the name of a great bookstore in San Diego
love Ben Elton his this other eden was pure genius

I am still trying to finish May's read for the BAC, so I likely will not get one read in June (especially since I will be traveling a bit this month), but I hope to be back in fine fettle for July!

I've finished Twelfth Night, which has a lot more sex jokes than I remembered. I followed it up by watching the delightful 1996 adaptation.

I have read Julius Caesar and watched the decades old film adaptation with luminaries such as Charlton Heston (Mark Anthony), Richard Chamberlain (Octavian), Jason Robards (Brutus) and John Gielgud (Caesar). Jason Robards was horribly wooden as Brutus.

>18 PaulCranswick: I remember being forced to watch that version in high school! The casting was certainly...interesting.

Just as an aside my nephew, Ryan, has recently graduated from LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) and has landed his first role with the Royal Shakespeare Company who will be performing A Winter's Tale which will run at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford from 12 July to 30 August. Ryan will play the Clown (Young Shepherd). Not one of his plays I am particularly familiar with but I will try to become more so.

Ryan is my twin brother's son and has the surname Duval as my brother changed his name due to his disputes with my father and his love for the Godfather! Ryan has overcome a lot to win this role as he had a stroke as a baby and still has restricted use of one of his arms.

https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-winters-tale/cast-and-creatives

>20 PaulCranswick: Congratulations to Ryan! For the role and for pushing ahead to get it!

>21 quondame: Thank you so much Susan.

Congratulations to Ryan.

>20 PaulCranswick: Congratulations Ryan!

>20 PaulCranswick: That’s a great feat, congratulations to Ryan!

>20congrats! thats so wonderful to hear stories like that, does the heart good. I bet he does great!

The July thread is up!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/371930

I managed to finish The Faerie Queene with one day to spare. It’s a dense and pretty difficult readin, but one I’m glad to have read.

I ended up listening to BBC audio productions of both Henry IV, Part I and Henry IV, Part II. They cut a few scenes for time, I guess, but several members of the cast had a particular appeal for me, especially Timothy West as Falstaff.

>28 PawsforThought: Congratulations on making it through! Alas, my copy still sits unread upon the shelf.

>30 amanda4242: Thanks! I had hoped to read more, but the other books will have to wait until later in the year.