If the distinguished contributors to Shakespeare Beyond Doubt hope their book will place the traditional author of Shakespeare’s canon where the title claims and settle the Shakespeare authorship question for once and for all, they are likely to be disappointed. In the hands of twenty-one eminent Shakespeare scholars, the case for William Shakespeare of Stratford sounds plausible enough, and will reassure the already convinced as well as those who would like to be. But anyone versed in the primary material of the authorship question will emerge essentially unsatisfied. Although a well-written, accessible and interesting read, it is riddled with the common misunderstandings that characterise this ‘dialogue of the deaf’ and contains factual errors that suggest certain contributors haven’t done their homework. Nevertheless it is full of fascinating information for initiate and expert alike, and (with the exception of Paul Edmondson’s final chapter), reasonable in tone.
‘Proving Shakespeare’ Webinar, Friday 26 April 2013, 6.30-7.30 BST.
Recorded in Stratford-upon-Avon by Misfits Inc for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
Sponsored by Cambridge University Press.
Speakers: Professor Stanley Wells CBE, Dr Paul Edmondson, Dr Ros Barber
Also present: Melissa Leon and AJ Leon of Misfits Inc.
For a printable/downloadable PDF of this transcript, click here
[Slide: Text ‘Proving Shakespeare.‘ Images: Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells, Ros Barber]
PE: Well it’s a lovely day in Stratford-upon-Avon, my name’s Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. We’re going to be starting the webinar very soon. About another minute or two. I’m joined by Ros Barber, who’s just published a marvellous book called The Marlowe Papers, and Stanley Wells CBE, our new president for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Okay. So welcome to Proving Shakespeare, this is a webinar about Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, and it’s been sponsored by Cambridge University Press. My name is Paul Edmondson and I’m joined by Stanley Wells and Ros Barber. Thank you very much to Cambridge who published Shakespeare Beyond Doubt last week, and there was a launch for it as part of the Shakespeare Birthplace celebrations here in Stratford.
This month sees the publication of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge University Press), edited by Professor Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the second book published by an academic press to address the Shakespeare authorship question. The first was Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography (Greenwood Press, 2001), recently re-published in an affordable paperback edition. Twelve years on, and following James Shapiro’s Contested Will, orthodox Shakespearean scholars have written an accessible academic text putting forward their side of the argument.
On April 26th at 6.30 BST, I’ll be discussing Shakespeare Beyond Doubt with Professor Wells and Dr Edmondson in a free global webcast organised by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. If you’d like to know what we have to say to each other, you can register by clicking here (you’ll be sent a link to the webcast). This is separate from my live event at Stratford Literary Festival earlier in the afternoon. In this event, at 4.30, Professor Wells and Dr Edmondson will be discussing my book, The Marlowe Papers, with reference to the lives and works of Marlowe and Shakespeare. Both events promise to be very interesting indeed.
Recently someone came here looking for ‘ros barber prosopagnosia poem’. Although it wasn’t called that, I know exactly what they were looking for – an unpublished poem I wrote at the end of the last millennium about the embarrassing affliction of face-blindness. I wasn’t aware there was a scientific name for my condition in those days, so it was simply called ‘Who Are You?’ Having renamed it, and to help fellow sufferers locate said thing in the future, I am publishing it here for the first time.
Nowadays I’m pretty open about my ridiculous inability to recognise/remember people, but I did once invite a visitor into my house (who clearly expected me to know who he was), make him a cup of tea, and chat with him for half an hour, before making an excuse that I had to go out (I didn’t) in order to rid myself of this unplaceable person who seemed to know all about me and my family, but wasn’t helping me out with any clues as to his identity. He decided to walk up the road with me (perpetuating my agony), and as we parted ways, said ‘I’ll go and see Kay then’. Huge relief as I made the connection – friend of Kay’s! The guitarist whose gig we had attended a couple of months previously and put up for the night! (Still couldn’t recall his name.) I very much doubt he missed the blossoming of comprehension across my face. He hasn’t been back.
Yesterday I watched some footage of myself from fifteen years ago. We are not who we were.
The surface impression was disturbing. A face and a body I’d now love to inhabit. Yet I remember the agony of doing so. Looking good was my only compensation for a life more miserable than I could communicate. There’s no sign of the misery. She’s the party girl, full of talk, full of herself. And at every opportunity, full of drink. A person seemingly strong, even forceful, yet incredibly unstable. Little wonder she had so much trouble holding onto friendship, finding love. No wonder she provoked dislike; even hatred. No wonder she experienced men largely as predators.
Around this time, I read poetry in public for the first time. Just before I went up a man said to me ‘How can you write poetry when you’ve got no soul?’ At the time, I felt eviscerated. Watching this footage, I can understand his mistake.
She is not me. She is heading for a catastrophic breakdown. You wouldn’t know, to look at her, how much she cries in private. Three small children she cannot cope with, no help. She drops them off at school and nursery and cries the whole drive home. Drinking used to begin when she put them to bed. Then it began at bath-time. Now six on the dot. Sometimes lunchtime. The tension between how she appears to be, and how she feels inside, will break her. Appearing to be okay takes a huge amount of energy, but is necessary, to prevent the unwelcome attention of strangers. She has seen her friend sectioned, Largactyled, subjected to Electro Convulsive Therapy. So no trip to the doctors. Medication would only be a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. Talk therapy: did that in her twenties. It taught her *why* she was messed up. But after a year she was still messed up. In some ways, worse. Picking a scab doesn’t heal it.
I want to say a little something about the poem ‘How to Leave the World that Worships Should‘ because so many people have been coming here looking for it since it appeared on the English Literature GCSE syllabus last year. I’ll leave the analysis to others because my days of doing other people’s homework are over. Unless you’re going to threaten to flush my head down the toilet, obviously. I will, however, give you a small hint about the title, which I know flummoxes some people. The word ‘should’ should be in italics, or inverted commas. How to leave the world that worships (the word/concept of) ‘should’. Simple enough, once that’s clear, although I know when the poem reproduces itself on websites the italics or quote marks can disappear, making the title utterly nonsensical.
No, no analysis, because I would hope – outside the demands of exams etc – that it doesn’t need one. But I will give a little background.
First off, I should tell you this poem owes its existence to the generous funding of Arts Council England and two lovely people who worked at Canterbury City council nearly a decade ago. So if you like this poem, support the funding of the arts! The two lovely people had seen me speak about my public art commissions at a conference and approached me to write a number of poems about Herne Bay, on the coast of Kent. We ended up agreeing on eight sonnets (which became known as the Seaside Sonnets), and this was the first. The day I wrote it, I knew it was something a little bit special. Since then it has proved to be so: popular in postcard form with people working in cubicles, it has proliferated itself all over the internet. Someone even posted it on the Bolton Wanderers fan forum, at which point I realised it was really going mainstream. Read the rest of this entry »
Between Will Brooker and Irvine Welsh at the Edinburgh Book Fest 2012
On this final day of 2012 I want to acknowledge what an incredible year it has been for me. The publication of The Marlowe Papers in May was the realisation of a childhood dream and in the hardback Sceptre produced something incredibly beautiful that I would adore even if it didn’t have my name on the spine. Launch day couldn’t have been more perfect. Will Self was incredibly generous to give his time and brilliance (especially given the front of his house had just collapsed!) to create a launch event worthy of one of my favourite places on earth, The British Library – and co-create an entertaining and thought-provoking evening. And then the reviews in the press and on the radio: copious and enthusiastic. This was the year that Twitter finally came into its own for me; I loved the fact that readers swept away by the book could so easily let me know and more than one day started with the news that someone, somewhere, was blown away by the words I’d been quietly honing for half a decade.
The highlight for me was probably the Edinburgh International Book Festival: a wonderful experience. I’ve been invited to many literature festivals over the years in my capacity as a poet, but the EIBF beats all others so far in terms of hospitality to its authors. Authors often spend years (indeed, decades) feeling like outsiders; we are observers rather than get-stuck-inners, therefore not great joiners, even though we long (as all humans do) to feel like we belong. Edinburgh managed to generate a feeling of belonging and being appreciated that I have rarely found elsewhere. It spurred me on properly begin (after over a year’s composting) the next novel, motivated by the knowledge that I must write another book to have a chance of being invited again.
Other highlights? It will be hard to forget sitting in a Norfolk farmhouse on May Bank Holiday weekend, surrounded by my extended family, hiding under my hair and barely daring to breathe as I waited for the first pre-publication feedback – the verdict of the critics on Saturday Review. Or the moment where Will Self wittily demolished my father-in-law’s heckle on historical bibles. Or asking an editor at the Bookseller what he thought of reading the book a second time and his answering ‘I haven’t stopped reading it’. Then there was the moment on the train up to Yorkshire where the opening of the next novel arrived unbidden, followed by the wonderful New Novelist’s night in the recently flooded Hebden Bridge.
It has been an amazing year. 2013 sees the book published in the USA, my travelling to Staunton Virginia to deliver a paper at the 7th International Marlowe Society of America conference, running a writing retreat in the Dordogne, and many other exciting things. It feels like life is just beginning.
On Wednesday I read with Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea as part of the Dylan Thomas Festival. I was very excited about the invitation, and it was only when the organiser, Jo Furber, asked me about whether Dylan Thomas had influenced me, that I realised why it meant so much to me.
I first remember being aware of Dylan Thomas when I was about eleven and my older brother studied Under Milk Wood at school. He relished the language and humour and started reciting chunks of it at home in his best Richard Burton impression. I’m glad to say his class were listening to it, not just reading it. I don’t think I’d realised before the importance of hearing poetry and the great pleasure of speaking it – particularly so with the kind of poetry that fills the mouth as this does. My brother was thrilled with the ‘naughtiness’ of Llareggub and that made a great impression on me, too. Neither of us realised you could be a serious and respected poet and subtly slip in something so rude (as we perceived it). And there was more, of course. My brother’s enthusiasm prompted my mother to dig out a Dylan Thomas collection from the bookcase, and although some of it was beyond me then, I knew Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night very well by the time my brother died three years later. I know that’s the one villanelle everyone digs out when they’re teaching form – something else that has been immensely important to me – but it remains the pinnacle of that particular form, and for good reason. The containment of strong emotion in the manacles of a tight form gives it great power, and that’s probably the most important thing I learnt from this particular master.
I was thrilled to appear at the Dylan Thomas Festival – a festival where the focus is, thanks both to its namesake and location, so much on a fundamental love of language and its musicality. It’s one of my greatest joys to read poetry to an appreciative audience. For me, poetry is meant to be experienced in the mouth and in the ear, and it’s always a thrill to bring those flat words on the page to life for the pleasure of other language lovers. And I’m sure my brother was there in spirit.
Yesterday, the day went to the Wantage (not just) Betjeman Festival. After giving the dog his customary walk, and failing to do my daily yoga, leaving at nine to drive to Portsmouth and pick up a big fan of The Marlowe Papers who I’ve got to know a little over the last few months via Facebook and Twitter. She’ s disabled and the public transport between Portsmouth and Wantage isn’t the easiest to negotiate even for the most sprightly of us – and I thought, what the heck, spare seat in the car, only a small diversion off an alternative route, maybe half an hour longer in total. We got there an hour early so we could have lunch which was on her as a thank you (she also gave me a very lovely planted flower arrangement). The disabled badge was handy parking-wise.
I ran a creative writing workshop for seven people from 1-3pm; they were a good bunch, willing and good-humoured, and Dorothy, chief organiser there at the Vale & Downland museum, commented on the laughter coming through the walls. Between 3.15 and 5.30 I wrote just over 400 words of the next novel at a table in the cafe. From 6 until 7 I did my scheduled reading and talk on The Marlowe Papers. A fabulously lively and interested audience asked some great questions after the reading and – as usual – we could easily have gone on, but there was another event slated. Then back to Brighton via Portsmouth, roof down all the way (the chief benefit of travelling by car, in my view) and pretty much straight to bed. Read the rest of this entry »
I returned to my old home town of Colchester recently to give a talk at one of my old schools, and was asked by a young poet there how to get published. Specifically,
- which are the best magazines or journals to submit to when you want to get published?
and
- is there any way of getting past the shredder other than the poems themselves being very good?
So I thought I’d lay out a few useful pointers for young poets looking to make their way in the world. Read the rest of this entry »