Wuthering Expectations

The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606 or so) has been the subject of much fuss about its author.

We last saw brilliant, prickly, ambitious Ben Jonson flop badly with his Roman tragedy Sejanus His Fall (1603).

Now and again, Geiser finds himself wondering what he really wants to know, what he hopes to gain from all this knowledge.

Time to get back to the Age of Shakespeare, the non-Shakespeare parts.

Soon I will put up a fall schedule for my plunge back into non-Shakespearian plays, from say 1604 to 1614, an exciting stretch.

Oh right, I can pretend I am writing something.

MALHEUREUX This lust is a most deadly sin, sure.

NOT SHAKESPEARE Poems and a Defence of Ryme (1592-1605), Samuel Daniel – Author of the “Delia” sequence of fifty sonnets, a genuine sequence, with for example lines ending one poem and beginning the next.

George Chapman has the funny distinction of being famous, courtesy of Keats, but unread.

Thomas Mann filled a lot of my time, alongside the non-Shakespearian stuff.

The English theater world was deeply hostile to women, possibly until quite recently, but the late 16th and early 17th century period went a step beyond, when even female characters are played by males.

Zeitblom, the narrator of Doctor Faustus, presents an interpretation of his composer friend Adrian Leverkühn suggesting that his avant garde aestheticism is the reason German intellectuals were so often so gullible and accepting of fascism.

A funny thing happened while reading Thomass Mann’s 1947 novel Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend.

I have called Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle hacks, but Thomas Heywood was the greatest hack of the Age of Shakespeare, having “an entire hand or at least the main finger” in “two hundred and twenty” (!)

Several years ago I came across a survey of British teachers of English literature.

What do I want to say about John Marston’s The Malcontent (1603, maybe 1604)?

London and Cornwall, St.

His father hanged by the neck until dead for the high crime of piracy, Hoffman vows Revenge!

After triumphantly beating up John Marston, Ben Jonson indulged in some Shakespeare envy and wrote a history play, or perhaps a tragedy, Sejanus His Fall (1603), about the soldier who rose to rule the Roman empire, for a few years, under dissolute Emperor…

I am almost on my way to London.

It’s the War of the Theatres!

The plays that have survived from the early London stage are language-crazed.

John Marston does something with the pair of plays Antonio and Mellida (1599?)

I think of Thomas Dekker as one of the great hacks of Shakespeare’s time, writing over a long career a large number of plays, mostly lost, the survivors mostly with better-known co-writers.

I will be in London in early March, so my reading has been v v British, more so than usual.

Dolce Bellezza hosted her 19th Japanese Literature Challenge last month.