Comments for Shakespeare Quarterly Forum

Comment on Sarah Werner’s Interview with Mickey B Director Tom Magill by Pat Cahill

Pat Cahill — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:06:23 +0000

Great interview, Sarah! Sounds like a wonderful film. Hope I get to see it at some point.

Comment on Sarah Werner’s Interview with Mickey B Director Tom Magill by Sarah Werner

Sarah Werner — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:56:39 +0000

I should add that people who don't have access to the final version of the Wray article as printed in SQ can find an earlier version of it from when it went through our open peer review. It's not exactly the same, of course, but it will give you a sense of how Mickey B works and her reading of it.

Comment on Lee Edelman’s “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint” by print journal / digital world | THATCamp Publishing 2011

print journal / digital world | THATCamp Publishing 2011 — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:18:01 +0000

[...] with its readers. There has been printed content that appeared for free in the Forum (a Lee Edelman essay and a book review). But the bulk of the content so far has extended on what has appeared in the [...]

Comment on Lee Edelman’s “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint” by links for 2011-09-15 « Blarney Fellow

links for 2011-09-15 « Blarney Fellow — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:23:16 +0000

[...] Lee Edelman’s “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint” | Shakespeare Quar… (tags: hamlet psychoanalysis theatre freud derrida) Share this:StumbleUponDiggRedditLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. [...]

Comment on Queer Theory and Hamlet by Andrew Cowie

Andrew Cowie — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:18:46 +0000

Fascinating post. You might be interested in this post on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s blog about Neil Bartlett’s 2007 production of Twelfth Night at the Royal Shakespeare Company in England: http://bloggingshakespeare.com/queering-shakespeare

Comment on Shakespeare Portraits and Controversies by garrick huscared

garrick huscared — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:35:28 +0000

In sculpting both the death mask and the Cobbe portrait. I discovered that the death mask had to be manipulated to obtain the overall dimension of the Cobbe portrait. However this is consistent with early (and more recent death masks) which would A. suffer from the fact the target was lying down and flesh area would naturally fall back widening the face. 2 the actual mold would suffer some widening on its removal from the target. Overall as a sculptor experienced in the human face I believe that the two objects are likely to be the same person. Who that person is of course I leave to you guys.
Garrick Huscared Stratford

Comment on Shakespeare Portraits and Controversies by Robert Bearman

Robert Bearman — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:55:00 +0000

I didn’t expect anyone to interpret my earlier posting (17 June) as literally to imply that there was such a thing as formal admittance to the squirearchy, or that this would entitle a man who felt able to adopt such a style to wear distinctive clothing. But, leaving that aside, a more important, and interesting, line of enquiry, as Marc Broch recognises, would be to establish quite how wealthy Shakespeare was when he died. The loss of the inventory taken on his death is clearly a major obstacle to assessing this but we do at least know that he owned New Place and 107 acres of land and that he had a half-interest in a long lease of a portion of the Stratford tithes. He must, then, clearly have been thought a man of sufficient credit to have been able, until 1605 at least, to raise the considerable sums necessary for such investments. What this might have yielded in disposable income is, however, a different matter, bearing in mind that in the early years loans might have had to be repaid. But the fact that his daughters (after Hamnet’s death the effective heiresses to his estate) married, in their maturity, only the second son of a doctor and the third son of a mercer, suggests that they were not regarded as first-choice partners for the sons of land-owning gentry. The charge Shakespeare made on his estate as a marriage portion for his younger daughter (£150, on conditions, and a further £150 after three years) was also modest when set alongside similar provision by other Stratford gentry. Thomas Combe (died 1609) gave £100 to his wife and provided marrriage portions of £400 apiece for his two daughters, and one of £250 for a ‘daughter-in-law’, as well as arranging for the payment of annuities of £15 to each of his daughters and another of £30 to his younger son. His younger brother John Combe, who died two years before Shakespeare, charged his estate with well over £1,000 in bequests to relatives and friends, and set aside £60 for the erection of his tomb. Anthony Nash, who died in 1622, charged his estate with payments totalling over £1,000. Shakespeare’s monetary bequests are much smaller, totalling less than £400, including the modest £20 to his sister and £5 apiece to her three sons. Such comparisons suggest that, even in the context of Stratford’s local gentry, Shakespeare was by no means pre-eminent. This does, however, raise an interesting issue in connection with his monument in Holy Trinity Church. This may not depict him as anything grander than a local gentleman but, given that John Combe had set aside the very large sum of £60 for the erection of his own tomb, Shakespeare’s monument, though smaller, must also have involved a considerable outlay. This was not allowed for in his will: in fact, Shakspeare, unlike many fellow Stratford testators, particularly those of means, didn’t even specify burial in the churchyard, let alone in the church, merely committing his body ‘to the Earth’. But it does not automatically follow that his family came up with the money for the production and installation of the monument. Dugdale attributed the work to Gheerart Janssen, a member of the family of stonemasons whose workshop was in Southwark, not far from the Globe. Its ambiguous and unsatisfactory inscription could therefore be explained as the result of work commissioned by Shakespeare’s theatrical colleagues, carried out at a distance in the expectation, as suggested some years ago by Diana Price, that it would be placed over a recognisable tomb.

Comment on Shakespeare Portraits and Controversies by Robert Bearman

Robert Bearman — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:36:48 +0000

In discussing the provenance of the ‘Dorchester’ version of the Cobbe portrait, Alastair Laing appears to argue that I am questioning assertions by the authors of Shakespeare Found in order to advance a theory of my own. On the contrary, I have no position other than that of wishing to establish what may reasonably be deduced from the only material evidence currently before us, namely, the label on the reverse of the picture frame. This was written at least 150 years after the first event it records, or, in Mr Laing’s opinion, after some 200 years. Many attributions from the Victorian period have later been found to be inaccurate and this particular label dates from a time when doubtful Shakespearean claims were being made. Many would argue that in this case some earlier corroborative evidence is therefore necessary.
The label was written by Rowland German Buckston, 1828-1903, perhaps around 1875. His account of his forebears, back to his maternal grandfather, Richard Rowland Ward, and to Ward’s uncle, Evelyn Rowland Cotton (1742-1795) is easily substantiated and, as Ward was Cotton’s sole heir, and as it was Ward’s only child who married into the Buckston family, his note that the portrait descended via the same family members is therefore plausible. Before then, there are difficulties. According to the inscription, the portrait was given to Evelyn Cotton by his godfather, Evelyn Pierrepont, second Duke of Kingston. In the 1820s, the descent of the Cotton family estates was much debated in the courts due to the failure of the male line, and the evidence then produced does indeed confirm a close link between Evelyn Cotton’s father, William, and the colourful 2nd Duke of Kingston. The fact that Cotton’s son and the Duke bore the same Christian name clearly gave rise to talk that the Duke was the boy’s godson; and the latter’s proven baptism in 1742, at Cuckney, in Nottinghamshire, only a few miles from the Duke’s seat at Thoresby, provides further confirmation of this link between the two families at that time. The authors of Shakespeare Found, however, significantly up the stakes at this point by stating that the boy was also the Duke’s illegitimate son. They do not give their authority for this vital fact but, for the record, Evelyn was baptised as the child of William Cotton (as were his siblings over the period 1739-49) and the Duke made no mention of Evelyn Cotton in his will of 1770. Allegations of illegitimacy in the Cotton family did surface in the family dispute of the 1820s referred to above, focussing on whether Evelyn’s elder brother (born two years earlier and who had died a lunatic in 1819) was born before his parents had married.
But, whatever the truth behind these rumours, it is still a considerable step to assert, without the support of further material evidence, that the portrait must have come from the Duke of Kingston’s collection. It could as easily be argued that Buckston, fairly well briefed about the more recent family upset of the 1820s, but less well informed about the Cotton family’s connection with the Duke of Kingston some eighty years earlier, was merely weaving the Shakespeare portrait into a family tradition which linked his forebears with the nobility, a link which the label then explained extended back to the Marquess of Dorchester – either the Duke’s grandfather, who had enjoyed that title until 1715, before his creation as Duke of Kingston, or the previous Marquess (of the first creation) his great-great-great uncle who had died in 1680. Mr Laing takes issue with me for keeping the first option open on the grounds that Buckston would not have referred to a deceased member of the peerage by a superseded title. This might well have been the case if Buckston were referring to a man of whom he had direct knowledge; but surely it cannot automatically be assumed that the tradition he was recording so long after the event would reflect such niceties. And, in any case, as I was previously at pains to point out, even if we opt for the later Marquess (assuming, that is, we accept the portrait came from his family), this still puts a sufficiently early date on it to support the Shakespeare Found claim that a ‘bald-headed’ version of the Cobbe portrait was circulating well before other known examples.
One can, of course, with Mr Laing, still press for the alternative, that Buckston really did have in mind the earlier Marquess who had died in 1680. Mr Laing is right to point out that, though the Marquess had no surviving son to succeed him, his entailed estates, and his earlier title of Earl of Kingston, did pass to the descendants of his younger brother. Other effects might therefore also be thought to have followed a similar path. However, this is not easy to substantiate. The Marquess and his brother William had taken opposite sides in the Civil War and in post-Restoration politics. By 1680, when the Marquess made his will, William was dead as was his son Robert. The Marquess’s male heir was therefore his great-nephew, Robert’s eldest son, also Robert. The Marquess does include mention of Robert in his will but not as his heir, only (inaccurately) as one of three nephews; and, in common with other relatives on that side of the family, he simply received a routine and modest bequest of £50 – in contrast, for instance, to legacies of £100 and £80 to the Marquess’s two stewards, and the £500 which he set aside for his own funeral. The Marquess had already given his fine library to the Royal College of Physicians and all the rest of his moveable goods (his money, plate, jewellery and furnishings – rounded off with the phrase ‘and all other Goods and Chattels whatsoever and of what nature or kinde soever’) went to his unmarried daughter Grace. When she died, in 1703, the bulk of her estate was bequeathed to her nephews (sons of her sister) with nothing to the Earl of Kingston (by then Evelyn following the death of his two elder brothers without issue). In such circumstances, it is surely not safe to assume that, if the Marquess did have a portrait of Shakespeare in his possession, it would have passed along the route necessary for it to have reached that side of the family.
The label, on its own, thus provides little, in my view, to substantiate the possible transmission of the painting from earlier than the second half of the eighteenth century; and even if we accept that it had previously belonged to the Pierrepont family, there are particular difficulties in the way of claiming it had passed from the Marquess who had died in 1680 to the younger branch of the family. More material evidence may exist, for instance, to flesh out the intriguing relationship between William Cotton and the Duke of Kingston and to clarify the precise circumstances of Evelyn Cotton’s baptism; and the Cotton/Ward family dispute of the 1820s created a mass of documentation which may not as yet have been thoroughly investigated. But, again as I have already suggested, an examination of the painting itself by independent experts might prove of more direct assistance.

Comment on Shakespeare Portraits and Controversies by Mark Broch

Mark Broch — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:41:02 +0000

Katherine Duncan-Jones (May 13, 2011) and Robert Bearman (June 17, 2011) write that Shakespeare was not admitted to the ‘squirearchy’ or to the ‘honour of “esquire” ’ and of the consequent impact they imagine this would have on his apparel. Their contentions are at odds with an opinion from the centre of learning on such matters, the College of Arms – namely that of Thomas Woodcock, Garter Principal King of Arms (private communication June 18, quoted with permission):

“Much has been written on the distinction between Esquire and Gentleman. Barristers for instance claimed to be Esquires but there was no formal admission ceremony and the idea that they would dress differently because of any technical difference in status is wrong. There has always been more social mobility in England than the rest of Europe and one’s appearance would be governed most by one’s wealth and the clothes you chose to wear.”

The facts in the matter are that by 1610 Shakespeare was wealthy, bore arms, and was a land-owning gentleman We know that his residence in Stratford, New Place, contained ten firepaces which indicates that it must have had around thirty rooms. In the Cobbe Portrait he wears a costume not very different from that delineated in the engraving by Martin Droeshout the Younger, the latter of which has been estimated by costume historians to have cost around £7000 in today’s money.

Comment on Shakespeare Portraits and Controversies by SQ Admin

SQ Admin — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:39:48 +0000

Dr. Laing is right—Shakespeare Quarterly does not print letters in response to published essays or reviews. Instead, this Forum is designed to be an extension of the journal’s pages, precisely for disseminating letters and other comments. Readers of Shakespeare Quarterly are welcome to post comments here or on our Facebook page.