Robben Island 'Bible'

A timely poignancy to "the valiant never taste of death but once": CNN story.

How stories grow

I'm always interested in the question of when and why a "literary" story makes it off the review pages, or indeed out of the academic world, into the "news" sphere. The "new scene by Shakespeare" versus "possible new attribution to Fletcher" scenario ... An under-estimated aspect is the desire of an individual, either regional or freelance, journalist to place a story nationally. It was thanks to Dalya Alberge's interest and tenacity that Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others briefly became a news story. By the same account, my other half, Paula Byrne, had an interesting experience this week: answered a question about the Jane Austen banknote at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival (not exactly the buzzing heart of breaking news), pointing out that it is the "airbrushed" Victorian engraving, not the original portrait (or caricature?) by her sister. An enterprising local journo from Radio Solent is there. She does an interview with Paula for her local station, but then, presumably in order to give good profile to Solent within the fragile ecology of local radio, suggests to Radio Five Live that this could also be worth an interview. Next thing, it is the Today programme, stories in almost every national newspaper and a global twitterstorm. The mediation of author pictures (cf. Chandos versus Droeshout, whether Cobb Portrait really is Sir Thomas Overbury etc. etc.) is a fascinating subject, but of course the "mainstream media" is only interested if (a) there is a controversy, and (b) it's about a big name - Austen or Shakespeare (as opposed to, say, Burney or Fletcher - my candidate for the sitter in the "Sanders Portrait").

Shakespeare's Mucedorus?

What, then, is the claim? Other than that the stage direction "being pursued with a bear" in a King's Men revival of 1610 cannot be entirely unconnected with Shakespeare ...
The new claim, made in Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others, is that the following scene in the revised Mucedorus is either Shakespeare or someone else - Fletcher, perhaps - writing very self-consciously in the style of Shakespeare:

[SCENE 10]

Sound music

Enter the King of Valencia, Anselmo, Roderigo, Lord Barachius, with others

VALENCIA Enough of music, it but adds to torment:

            Delights to vexèd spirits are as dates

            Set to a sickly man, which rather cloy than comfort.

            Let me entreat you to entreat no more.

RODERIGO Let your strings sleep: have done there!     Let the music cease

VALENCIA Mirth, to a soul disturbed, are embers turned,

            Which sudden gleam with molestation,

            But sooner lose their light for’t.

’Tis gold bestowed upon a rioter

Which not relieves, but murders him:

’Tis a drug given to the healthful,

Which infects not cures.

How can a father that hath lost his son—

A prince both wise, virtuous and valiant—

Take pleasure in the idle acts of time?

No, no: till Mucedorus I shall see again

All joy is comfortless, all pleasures pain.

ANSELMO Your son, my lord, is well.

VALENCIA I prithee, speak that thrice.

ANSELMO The prince, your son, is safe.

VALENCIA O, where, Anselmo? Surfeit me with that.

ANSELMO In Aragon, my liege,

And at his parture, bound my secrecy,

By his affectious love, not to disclose it.

But care of him and pity of your age

Makes my tongue blab what my breast vowed, concealment.

VALENCIA Thou not deceiv’st me: I ever thought thee

            What I find thee now, an upright, loyal man.

            But what desire or young-fed humour

            Nursed within the brain

Drew him so privately to Aragon?

ANSELMO A forcing adamant:

            Love mixed with fear and doubtful jealousy,

            Whether report gilded a worthless trunk,

            Or Amadine deserved her high extolment.

VALENCIA See our provision be in readiness:

            Collect us followers of the comeliest hue

            For our chief guardians: we will thither wend.

            The crystal eye of heaven shall not thrice wink

            Nor the green flood six times his shoulders turn,

            Till we salute the Aragonian king.

            Music speak loudly now, the season’s apt,

            For former dolours are in pleasure wrapped.

Tchaikovsky's Byron

Itching to write my book on Romanticism, when I finally have time to finish the one on Ted Hughes. The cult of Byron will be a major part of it: had the pleasure of doing some work for this in the form of research on 19th century composers and their Byronmania (Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt), culminating in Tchaikovsky's Manfred symphony - brilliantly performed at last night's prom. Edited version of pre-show discussion was broadcast in the interval. Discussion of Byron in second half of this. Probably only on "Listen Again" for a week. But there is so much more to say ...

Defence of the Humanities

Never have time to blog these days, with so many other duties - and several writing projects horrendously behind. But I do still keep on the lookout for powerful defences of the humanities, and this is certainly one - rhetorically speaking, if nothing else: commencement address at Brandeis by Leon Wieseltier.

Shakespeare Authorship

This, surely, is one of the great contributions to The Shakespeare Authorship Debate:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/11/21/111121sh_shouts_idle