Talk:William Shakespeare

Edit request on 9 April 2012

On Shakespeare Festival 2012, every play of the author is going to be staged in different languages. It says that there's going to be 37 plays. So Shakespeare had 37 plays not 38.

Ahdiker (talk) 08:46, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Read the article. The 38th is The Two Noble Kinsmen. In reality we can't be absolutely clear about the number of plays he wrote, since some may be lost and in other cases we can't be sure how much he actually contributed to the text. The exclusion of The Two Noble Kinsmen is due to historical doubt about its authorship, though frankly, I've never quite understood why Pericles, Prince of Tyre got canonised before TTNK. TTNK is also the only play not included in the BBC Television Shakespeare, a 'complete' production of the works which also only does 37 of the plays. Paul B (talk) 09:49, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

James S. Shapiro on BBC4 television

Tonight at 9pm UK time and at the same time for the next two weeks, Shapiro presents three programmes entitled "The King & the Playwright: A Jacobean History". The episodes are entitled "Incertainties" [what sort of word is that?], "Equivocations" and, uh, they aren't saying what the third is called. Here's the bumf and a clip, together with repeat times. For those who can't get BBC4, the episodes will probably each be available via the BBC iPlayer for a week. --GuillaumeTell 16:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Living in London

I would like to elaborate. The old, and suggested new text, is:

By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear

By 1604, he was north of the river again. This was in an area with many fine houses known as Cripplegate, which adjoined the gateway of that name in the city wall. There he lived, essentially as a lodger, in the probably quite large house cum workshop that accommodated the family, apprentices and servants of Christopher Mountjoy,a French Huguenot maker of decorative ladies' headgear. Various writers and actors lived in and around this area, including two of Shakespeare's closest colleagues in the King's Men - John Heminges and Henry Condell, the future editors of the First Folio. 92.8.175.248 (talk) 09:33, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's nothing wrong with the suggested additions - though they need to be cited, but we don't need too much detail here. It would be better to elaborate in the Shakespeare's life article. Paul B (talk) 15:40, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 24 May 2012

i think you should add a game quiz after the article and put it so it can be fun for the people after they read — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.90.229.228 (talk) 13:52, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

The purpose if Wikipedia is information, not entertainment. There are already thousands of sites for games. Mediatech492 (talk) 19:57, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

minor confusion

I am little confused; at info box; occupation says Playwright, what does it mean ? Or does it should be simply Play writer ? regards :)--Omer123hussain (talk) 23:15, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

"Playwright" is a standard word referring to someone who writes plays. For example, see wikt:playwright. Johnuniq (talk) 23:21, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Oddly enough the word is supposed to have been invented by Shakespeare's chum Ben Jonson. Sometimes it's misspelled as "playwrite", as though it means "writer of plays", but "wright" just means 'maker' - somone who has wrought something, as as in shipwright, wheelwright etc. Paul B (talk) 00:27, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 25 June 2012

his birth date is 23 april 1564. You can search it from google.

117.203.132.45 (talk) 14:10, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

 Not done: this has been requested many times before. See here, and a few other places on that page, for the explanation.--Old Moonraker (talk) 14:28, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Folger Shakespeare Library needs help help uploading their collection images

Hi everyone. The Folger Shakespeare Library wants to upload their collection of images, many (or most) which are documents. See the images here. If you are able to do so, please get in touch with User:Kaldari. Thanks! SarahStierch (talk) 17:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Translations of Shakespeare

I'm surprised to realise we have no dedicated article about the translations of Shakespeare's works into other languages.

My interest was peaked piqued by reading in Maciej Słomczyński the claim that he was "the only person in the world to translate all the works of William Shakespeare". It's a huge claim, and desperately in need of a citation, which I've now called for.

Then, I got to thinking about this. There are legions of Shakespeare translations, into German, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian and all the rest, and many of them were done by very notable people, but most would have been piecemeal translations of individual plays etc. For example, I know Boris Pasternak did a Russian translation of Hamlet and maybe a few other plays (*), but no more. I also have in my library a Russian translation of all 154 Sonnets, by Samuil Marshak, but I'm not aware he ever tackled the plays, and our article makes no such claim. I can't think of anyone who is known for having translated Shakespeare's entire oeuvre into another language, unless the Słomczyński claim can be verified.

I assume there are publications of Shakespeare Collected Works translated into any other language one cares to name, but is any of these publications the work of a single translator?

Where would one start on gathering together material for an article dealing with the various translations of Shakespeare? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 06:22, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

(*) I now see that Pasternak translated Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, King Henry IV (Parts I and II), Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 07:32, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies has an article on Shakespeare, so I would suggest starting there. If any library near you has Shakespeare and the Language of Translation edited by Hoenselaars, Translating Shakespeare for the Twenty-First Century edited by Homem and Hoenselaars, Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance edited by Kennedy, or European Shakespeares: Translating Shakespeare in the Romantic Age by Dirk Delabastita, take a look through those too. I also found an article called "Translating Shakespeare for the Theatre" by Jean-Michel Déprats, who oversees the translation of Shakespeare's work for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. There is also a journal devoted to the subject called Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance (previously Shakespeare Translation), and electronic copies of many back issues can be bought rather cheaply here.

For translation of Shakespeare into individual languages and cultures, try checking out Translation, Poetics, and the Stage: Six French Hamlets by Romy Heylen; "Shakespeare in German"; "Shakespeare Translations in Spain"; Shakespeare in Catalan: Translating Imperialism by Helena Buffery; Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage by Joel Berkowitz; "'Classical' Versus 'Contemporary' in Hebrew Translations of Shakespeare's Tragedies"; "Religious and Cultural Considerations in Translating Shakespeare Into Arabic" Amel Amin-Zaki, in Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts edited by Dingwaney and Maier; and "Shakespeare Translations in South Africa: A History" by Alet Kruger, in Translators' Strategies and Creativity edited by Beylard-Ozeroff, Králová, and Moser-Mercer. - Cal Engime (talk) 00:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Jack, the claim made by Maciej Słomczyński perhaps may be documented as an assertion. It is however false. Tsubouchi Shōyō began his translation of the collected works in the 1880s and finished it, I think, in 1928, when Słomczyński was only 6 years old. I doubt that he completed his version of the omnia opera in his infancy. I might add that Pasternak's translations, while brilliant, are really poetic reworkings that cut the Jacobean rhetoric to the bone. None of those is a useful guide in Russian to the Shakespearean texts.--Nishidani (talk) 12:50, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses, both of you.

Cal Engime, those resources seem well worth checking out.

Nishidani: Tsubouchi's article says "He also did a complete translation of the plays of Shakespeare, ..."'. No mention of the sonnets and poems. Maybe that's the point of the Słomczyński claim - the first to translate literally all of Shakespeare's works. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:14, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Quibble about "town council"

A footnote refers to "September 1769, when the actor David Garrick organised a week-long carnival at Stratford to mark the town council awarding him the freedom of the town", which is cited from a book by Ian Mcintyre called Garrick (1999). In the 18th century there were no town councils, I suppose what is meant is the Corporation of the borough, which perhaps made Garrick a freeman. Can someone with the resources needed please try to fathom this? Moonraker (talk) 21:55, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure. The event organized by Garrick was the Shakespeare Jubilee. Regarding the town councils, I'm not sure what the editor was thinking of. The 'freedom' bit is just bad metaphorical language, and Garrick's not a particularly compelling source; Deelman's Shakespeare Jubilee would probably be better. The 'cult' they're talking about will eventually become known as Bardolatry, a lit-crit joke describing the phenomenon of treating Shakespeare like a god exacted by some enthusiasts. The poem they're talking about is known often as "Garrick's Ode" and can be accessed as an ebook in the public domain. Cfsibley (talk) 22:57, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Apologies, misunderstood the question. It's a misquote--it was the Stratford-upon-Avon Corporation, not the town council. This should clear the mess up. Cfsibley (talk) 23:16, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

In 1768 the Stratford Corporation "resolved unanimously that Garrick be made the first honorary freeman of the borough and directed that the document conferring this honour 'should be presented to him in a small neat chest constructed from a mulberry tree planted by Shakespeare himself.'" p. 223 of Stanley W. Wells' Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford University Press, New York, 2003) I was incorrect: the document is the Freedom. Cfsibley (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, I thought it must be the Corporation. My real objection to "town council" was that it suggested some kind of local democracy. "Freeman of the borough" sounds right. Moonraker (talk) 01:02, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, Moonraker, I find that whole footnote decidedly sketchy. I haven't been able to acquire the Garrick (1999) source, but I find it at least somewhat in conflict with most of the research I've done on the subject. Firstly, while 1769 saw the first official & recorded event marking Bardolatrous worship, Hume and others have pointed out that worship of The Bard predates even the 1730 hype. Secondly, the phrasing "David Garrick organised a week-long carnival at Stratford to mark the town council awarding him the freedom of the town" makes it sound like the Shakespeare Jubilee was celebrating the event of his new freeman status (gained in May of the same year). It's true, as Wells puts it, that it seems he attained freeman status as part of the Corporation's desire to deck-out Stratford with Bill's bust without footing the bill (check out page 223), but the Jubilee wasn't primarily to celebrate Garrick's honor—it piggybacked on said honor. The rest is solid, though it should include a link to the verse. Any thoughts about whether these changes should be made? I tried to effect the first two but couldn't get the insert-citation-within-footnote style right. Cfsibley (talk) 03:35, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Glover

Hello, what does 'glover' mean? It is written in the first sentence here.--Sogenius (talk) 14:54, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

See glover. Essentially a leather-goods merchant. Paul B (talk) 15:34, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you!--Sogenius (talk) 13:00, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 24 January 2013

Most sources agree that William Shakespeare was born on April 23, not the 26th as the site currently states. Please change his date of birth from April 25, 1564 to April 23, 1564. 24.218.81.41 (talk) 04:14, 24 January 2013 (UTC)