Mawa Theatre Company: An All Black All Women Shakespeare Theater Company?

Primarily established to increase the inclusiveness of the theatrical works of William Shakespeare, can the Mawa Theatre Company manage to shed a new light on the works of the great bard?

By: Ringo Bones

The Mawa Theatre Company was said to be the Shakespeare Company with a difference as the UK’s first to be comprised of Black and Black mixed race women – a sizable number of which are displaced citizens from the African continent’s conflict zones. Founded by actors Maisey Bowden, Gabrielle Brooks, Danielle Kassaraté and Jade Samuels, the newfangled Shakespearean company aims to examine how women of the African Diaspora are represented in classical literature and reframe them for contemporary audiences that find “conventional classical literature” alienating by drawing out themes that still resonate with universality. According to Maisey Bowden, the newfangled Shakespearean theater company’s namesake Mawa means tomorrow in Chichewa, which is a Malawian dialect and an apt label of the company’s forward, future looking perspective.

Primarily, the newfangled company’s long-term goal is to change the current live theater industry from within by creating more space for marginalized voices in the field that, at present, is currently dominated by privileged men of white European descent that is currently devoid of inclusiveness and diversity. When the company started back in June 2021, their first project was a video series entitled: “What’s Past is Prologue”.

Can the Mawa Theatre Company successfully cast a new light and perspective of the theatrical works of Shakespeare and at the same time attract a new generation of fans? Well, Shakespeare’s works has told stories of life that managed to remain timeless and relevant for over four centuries. There’s a story of the heart and a story that exposes the soul that all of which await a skillful acting company to entertain and inspire a new generation of audiences regardless of race, religion, creed, gender and of age.

Midsummer Night’s Dream Using 21st Century Motion Capture Suits?

Even though the great bard’s plays are praised for their “timelessness”, but can Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream performed using 21^st Century motion capture suits?

By: Ringo Bones

After seeing the performance back in March 21, 2021, what immediately captured my attention was that how most of the computer generated avatars that represent the various characters in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream reminds me of Norman Wilkinson’s “dazzle paint job” used on World War I era naval ships. Even though the great bard’s plays has been praised for their “timelessness” since they were first performed back near the end of the 16^th Century, does the latest “pandemic evading” performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream a 21^st Century “digital visual extravaganza too far”?

Titled Dream, it is an online show by the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed using the latest motion capture suits as the performance occurs in a virtual space that can be accessed via internet connection anywhere in the world. For those who had experienced performing one of Shakespeare’s plays live onstage, one cannot overlook the importance of maintaining eye contact between the performers, not just in maintaining timing, but also to project the pathos and emotion of the play. Even though this newfangled method of performing a live Shakespeare play is due to the ongoing global pandemic as a way to preserve the health of the actors, those with a “traditional” view of Shakespeare commented on how this newfangled digitized Shakespeare resembles a massive multiplayer online gaming event.

Even though the timelessness and the spirit of a live Shakespeare play is more or less preserved this time around, those with a more conservative sensibility that dates back to before World War II may have a harder time getting this “newfangled Shakespeare”. Hopefully, everyone will get vaccinated and as the world get’s back to normal, we will once again enjoy a more “traditional” form of a live Shakespeare play circa 1599.

Shakespeare’s First Folio Auctioned For $10 Million At Christie’s

With only 235 copies known to exist, is auctioning the great Bard’s first folio now a multimillion dollar business?

By: Ringo Bones

Published back in 1623, seven years after the great Bard’s death, this was the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays. The edition sold on Wednesday, October 14, 2020, was the first complete copy to go under the hammer at Christie’s since 2001, when one fetched for $6.1m (£4.9m) – the previously held record price for an auctioned Shakespeare’s First Folio.  About 235 copies of the book exist, but only a handful of complete versions are known to exist and most of them are held in private hands.

The copy auctioned at Christie’s on Wednesday was previously owned by Mills College in Oakland, California – a private college that owned its complete copy of Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio since th1960s. Unfortunately, the identity of the buyer was not immediately known at the time when the auction was finalized. Auction house Christie’s had conservatively estimated the value of the Mills College owned First Folio at between $4 million to $6 million.

What’s so special about the Mills College’s copy of the First Folio is that it is one of the only of the handful of the 235 existing copies of the book that is complete. One previously owned by Oxford University was sold for £3.5 million back in 2003. Only five or six of the 235 copies are documented to be fully complete copies and all of them are in private hands. Shakespeare’s First Folio was the first printed book to incorporate 36 of his plays together – 18 of which would otherwise not have been recorded. If the First Folio was never published, there would otherwise not have been copies of such plays as Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and The Tempest.

William Shakespeare: World’s Greatest Literary Character Creator?

Even though how he exactly does it is now lost to posterity, but does William Shakespeare qualify as the greatest literary character creator of all time?

By: Ringo Bones

Despite were still in awe in Shakespeare’s power of character creation, his methodology on how he does it seems lost to posterity. And unlike more contemporary literary geniuses – like Tom Clancy for example – who had managed to release a book stating their creative methodology of character creation that also includes their specific inspirations – the great Stratfordian bard was derived the fortune of releasing one. Nonetheless, the cast of characters that Shakespeare wrote are not types or allegorical abstractions, but living men and women with the mingled qualities, often the inconsistencies, of life itself. His characters seem so real that they often mislead readers into taking them for actual historic characters whose motives, actions, and mental states can be analyzed like those of Julius Caesar or King Henry V. The sort of magic that has cast too strong a spell on unwary readers, yet it is just this magic that carries us to Arden with Rosalind or let us revel at the Boar’s Head with Sir John Falstaff. It is, no doubt, too much to say that Shakespeare’s range of characters has universal qualities.

But it may not only be me that finds it strange the kind of characters that are absent from the Shakespearean Characters’ gallery. Despite of his plays containing more Biblical references than his contemporaries, Shakespeare never did a portrait of a saint. Given that the age he lived in is often called the age of voyage and discovery, none of his characters had ever led men beyond the far horizon akin to Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco Da Gama or Sir Francis Drake. Weirder still, there are no Shakespearean Characters based on a popular outlaw and rebel – such as Robin Hood. And yet Shakespeare’s range of characters far exceeds that of the most gifted of his contemporaries.

Shakespeare’s gallery of women characters was especially impressive, where extremes are represented by the likes of Cleopatra and Dame Quickly. His heroines have been much praised for their practical qualities, their tenderness, and their readiness to forgive. Something more might be said of their infinite variety.

When it comes to the retinue of his created characters, Shakespeare has been accused of a lack of democratic sympathy. No doubt he disliked the common herd; but of his sympathy with the individual commoner there can be little doubt. He laughs at the impudence of bully Bottom in The Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the officious stupidity of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing – but with a kindly laughter; these too are men and brothers. He appreciated at its true worth the homely wisdom of the common man – as seen in the shepherd Corin – for example in As You Like It, or in Hamlet’s gravedigger. Most of all he paid homage to the common man’s trait of loyalty, embodied in old Adam in As You Like It, and in Gloucester’s tenant in King Lear, ready to succor his blinded master, “come on’t what will”. Homely wisdom and enduring loyalty are permanent qualities in human nature, and it is this recognition of the permanent that gives Shakespeare’s characters their perennial appeal.

Non Stratfordian Shakespeare: It Began In The Victorian Era?

 Did doubts over the authenticity of authorship of William Shakespeare’s works actually started in the Victorian Era – as opposed to a 21^st Century movement?

By: Ringo Bones

Contrary to popular belief – the non-Stratfordian movement, a school of thought casting doubt on the authenticity of authorship of William Shakespeare’s works wasn’t started in 2011 with the release of the Roland Emmerich film titled Anonymous whose plot revolves around the insinuation that it was Edward de Vere The Earl of Oxford – as opposed to William Shakespeare himself – is the true author of Romeo and Juliet and other plays and works attributed to Shakespeare. The truth is, for more than two centuries after his death in 1616, the belief remained unshaken that the great bard himself – William Shakespeare of Stratford, a prominent member of the King’s Company, wrote the poems published under his name and the plays assembled in the Folio by his fellow-actors.

Suddenly, about 1850, a doubt arose which has persisted in some quarters to this day. It is hard to determine the cause of this “Victorian Doubt”. Possibly it sprang from the Victorian belief in the necessity of formal education, linked with the notion that Shakespeare of Stratford was illiterate. The Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881) was well-known in labeling William Shakespeare as a “poor Warwickshire peasant”.

The notion of William Shakespeare’s “illiteracy” goes back to a well-known comment by the English dramatist and poet laureate Ben Jonson (1573 – 1637) that goes: “Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek”; it should be remembered, however, that Ben Jonson was a great Classical scholar, accustomed to express himself as easily in Latin as in his native tongue. There is every reason to believe that the young Shakespeare received at the Stratford Grammar School a sound Classical training, even though from Ben Jonson’s perspective, Shakespeare seemed to have “small Latin”.

However, since learning was assumed to be a prime necessity in the creation of literature, the Victorian era skeptics naturally settled on the most learned of the Elizabethan era bards – i.e. Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) – as the probable author of the works passing under Shakespeare’s name. It was an unfortunate choice, since of all Elizabethan era “men of letters”, Francis Bacon was probably the least capable of writing these works, a fact which may easily be verified by comparing Bacon’s essay Love with Romeo and Juliet or the Sonnets. This theory, bolstered by the supposed discovery of cryptograms in the First Folio, ran to fantastic extremes, culminating in the alleged discovery that Francis Bacon was the unacknowledged son of Queen Elizabeth I and an English courtier named Robert Dudley the 1^st Earl of Leicester (1532 – 1588), and therefore the true heir to the English throne – as well as the author, not only of Shakespeare’s plays, but of the great body of Elizabethan literature. It may be stated with a degree of assurance that this particular theory is no longer acceptable.  

To advance the claim of any other than William Shakespeare of Stratford to the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is, to speak plainly, to disregard the weight of all contemporary evidence. This evidence culminates in the testimony of the English dramatist and poet laureate Ben Jonson. Jonson knew the actor Shakespeare, who had performed repeatedly in Jonson’s plays. Jonson was well-known in criticizing the extravagance of Shakespeare’s style and noted some of his mistakes, yet Jonson hailed Shakespeare as a dramatist who might challenge “all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome” had done. If there were any mystery about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, Jonson would have known of it. If Jonson knew and yet hailed Shakespeare in such terms as these – he – the most independent and self-respecting Elizabethan man of letters, would have been a common liar.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Themed Cocktail Parties: Shakespearean Inebriation?

Are A Midsummer Night’s Dream themed cocktail parties the most inebriating of Shakespearean spin-off traditions?

By: Ringo Bones

Although I’ve never been invited into one, or lucky enough to have wandered into one, back in the 1990s, it is said that Midsummer Night’s Dream themed cocktail parties are usually celebrated whenever there’s a bar that’s within a comfortable walking distance of a campus with students old enough to drink. Usually held near the end of June in the northern hemisphere, the festivities are largely inspired by William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – the great bard’s work of comedy where four young lovers find themselves in an enchanted forest full of fairies, magic and mischief. It is not just the bar that is decorated to resemble the stage of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – the participants are also encouraged to dress like the characters of the play and – most important of all – the cocktail drinks that are served are all inspired by the setting and the characters of the comedy. More often than not – some are even inebriated enough to give an impromptu Shakespearean performance of epic proportions.

I was invited into one back in June 2001 by our local Shakespearean acting troupe, but to my then ignorance of such events, mistaken it for just an after performance party of their own production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Though this wasn’t as elaborate to the one that they’ve posted on Facebook back in 2007 when they did A Midsummer Night’s Dream themed cocktail party in a bar somewhere in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Sadly, in the age of the COVID 19 pandemic, it seems that all A Midsummer Night’s Dream themed cocktail parties in 2020 will be held with social distancing in mind. But, still, maybe Shakespeare will agree that this is a great tradition that needs to be preserved.

William Shakespeare: The Biblical Bard?

Given that his works contain more biblical references than any of his Elizabethan contemporaries does this mean that Shakespeare was a “biblical bard”?

By: Ringo Bones

Legend has it that a decade after his death, the authors of the King James Bible had reached a consensus that Shakespeare could have single-handedly written an English language version of the Holy Bible twenty years before King James issued such edict.  And when they’ve found out that Shakespeare’s works contain more biblical references than any of his Elizabethan contemporaries, had they’ve pondered too, that Shakespeare could be a “biblical bard”?

It could be said that a certain philosophy of life is implicit in Shakespeare’s plays. It was, in the main, an unconscious philosophy. He has been called, indeed, the least moral of writers because he had no moral lesson to proclaim, no sense of what is called “poetic justice”. Cordelia dies in her father’s arms for no other reason than that she was the captive of a strong and ruthless man. Such – Shakespeare seems to have thought – was the way of the world; it was for him to declare that way as it was, not as he thought, perhaps, it should be. A man or a woman’s life on earth was a mystery to Shakespeare, and “the rest is silence.”

Taken as a whole – his works and what of his contemporaries have thought of him – Shakespeare had neither the faith of the Catholic in the doctrine of the Church nor the Puritan’s assurance of individual salvation. Yet his unconscious philosophy was firmly based on Christian ethics, on charity that endures all things, on the brotherhood of man that implies tolerance and readiness to pardon. The Deadly Sins of Catholic theology were no mere abstractions to Shakespeare, but active forces working for destruction, and against these it was man’s task to contend to the uttermost. Shakespeare was no fatalist to accept passive endurance of evil; again and again he urges that man’s powers and virtues were given to him not to waste in idleness, but to shine like torches giving light to others. And when the inevitable end comes, man should meet it calmly.

It is not a comfortable philosophy; Shakespeare is not one of those who sit at ease in Zion. Yet it is a wholesome and “manly” one. Shakespeare – the Elizabethan dramatist – has still a word to say in behalf of Christian Civilization.

Emilia Bassano Lanier: Shakespeare’s Dark Lady Inspiration?

Even though all living fans of Shakespeare only knew of her existence after 1973, is Emilia Bassano Lanier William Shakespeare’s “dark lady inspiration” or even the great bard himself?

By: Ringo Bones

Most stone-cold Stratfordians probably scoff at the idea that William Shakespeare is not the actual author of his works, never mind just a mere pseudonym of some other Elizabethan era bard willing to remain anonymous. And there are some who suggested that William Shakespeare is actually a pseudonym of a Elizabethan era woman bard of really great skill. Is there any truth to this?

A recent article on The Atlantic by Elizabeth Winkler titled “Was Shakespeare A Woman?”  is a well-researched insight into the possibility that the great English bard might actually be a woman wishing to remain anonymous in Elizabethan era England despite of her really great literary skills. Many so-called “anti-Stratfordians” cite that William Shakespeare’s life is remarkably well documented – yet no records from his lifetime identify him unequivocally as a writer. Recently, probably due to the advent of the “hash-tag me-too movement”, the theory that William Shakespeare might actually be a woman has regained renewed scrutiny.

Prior to the “unearthing” of her existence back in 1973 by the Oxford historian and maverick Elizabethan scholar A. L. Rowse, the world at large was very much oblivious to the existence, never mind her brilliant literary works, of Emilia Bassano Lanier. Also spelled Aemilia or Amelia, she was born in 1569 and became a well-known English poet in the early Modern English era. She was the first Englishwoman to assert herself as a professional poet through a single volume of poems Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum back in 1611. Unfortunately, she was largely forgotten after her death in 1645. But thanks to Oxford historian A.L. Rowse’s speculation that she was Shakespeare’s mistress that was described as the “dark lady” in the sonnets, the life and works of Emilia Bassano Lanier was rescued from obscurity.

Are Shakespeare’s Folio and Sonnets Secret Treasure Maps?

Given that his skill as a bard is already well-known, is William Shakespeare also a skilled cryptographer?

By: Ringo Bones 

This so-called “new way” of looking at Shakespeare’s Folio and Sonnets as a cryptographic device was absolutely newfangled to me after it was mentioned in an episode of the History Channel’s The Curse of Oak Island and thus familiarizing the rest of the world with Petter Amundsen’s new way of looking at Shakespeare’s works as a secret treasure map. To most grade-school pupils in the early 1980s – Shakespeare was usually synonymous with one of the “most boring” aspects of the English language ever taught in school. It was just too bad that a swashbuckling and Knights Templar treasure related aspect of Shakespeare was relatively unknown to grade-school kids at the time. 

Petter Amundsen’s day-job is a church pipe organist and while he admits that his maybe a strange profession for someone writing a book about hidden treasure. Amundsen remarks that his training as an organist is similar to that of a symbologist – as it includes learning about languages and symbols. 

Amundsen’s initial experience with Shakespeare during his formative years didn’t impress him, as with most boys elsewhere in the world with “swashbuckling daydreams” during their mundane seventh-grade Shakespeare class. Later in life, Amundsen came across a story about a cipher on William Shakespeare’s gravestone while investigating stocks and future’s markets online. Amundsen became so fascinated with the subject of cryptographic aspects of Shakespeare’s literary works that he dropped his pursuit of stocks and futures investing to pursue the Shakespeare cipher angle. Amundsen bought a facsimile of Shakespeare’s original Folio of thirty-six plays and when he began looking for cryptic patterns, he found several, not only in the original folio of thirty-six plays but also in the original collection of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which translated to a celestial map that could correlate with locations on the ground.   

The pattern Amundsen found is a square and compass celestial pattern that mimics some aspects of some secret societies – such as those of the Freemasons – and he then mentioned features that locked in a source point on the map, such as the star Deneb. Amundsen then went on to say that if the original zero meridian of Shakespeare’s day – i.e. around the reign of Queen Elizabeth I – one which ran through west of the Canary Islands – rather than the modern-day meridian located on Greenwich, that celestial point corresponds to the coast of modern day Nova Scotia on Oak Island itself. 

Amundsen noted that the Rosicrucians probably had a hand in the publication of Shakespeare’s portfolio and notes that the Rosicrucians created patterns in their own publications of the day and invited people to search for these. So for Rosicrucians to place patterns in Shakespeare’s work wouldn’t be far-fetched. Amundsen also theorizes that Shakespeare wasn’t the author of all of his plays, acting more like a “front-man” for the speculated actual three authors of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, pointing out that the children of the man called William Shakespeare were illiterate – something that would be highly unusual for someone who virtually was credited for codifying the modern English language.

Shakespeare’s First Folio: The Most Important Shakespearean Document?

Even though it was published seven years after his death, did you know that Shakespeare’s first folio could be the most important Shakespearean document cause without it he would be largely forgotten?

By: Ringo Bones 

With the recent find of a rare first edition copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio that was published in 1623 at a stately home on the Scottish island – i.e. the library at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute back in April 7, 2016 seems to yet again to remind the whole world how important this vital document is, not only to Shakespeare fans but also to all of humanity as well. Even though it was published seven years after his death, without a number of Shakespeare’s First Folio surviving over the centuries, William Shakespeare would have been largely forgotten if there are no surviving copies of his plays. 

Published in 1623, Shakespeare’s First Folio brought together the majority of Shakespeare’s plays and without it there would be no copies of more than half of them, including Macbeth, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. And the First Folio is also the only source of the famous “balding portrait” of William Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout. The find brings the total of known surviving copies to 234 which is of vital importance given that we will be observing the 400^th Anniversary of the playwright’s death on the 23^rd of April. Academics who authenticated the book called it a rare and significant find. A copy owned by Oxford University sold for UK £ 3.5-million back in 2003. 

Prof. Emma Smith - one of the scholars who authenticated the find and author of Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book – says it is uncertain the exact number of copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio were produced back in 1623, although some put the figure at about 750 copies. The Scottish find had been previously owned by an 18^th Century literary editor and then appears in the Bute library collection in 1896. 

Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Calais’ “The Jungle”: All The World’s A Stage?

With the recent performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Calais’ The Jungle refugee camp proves that all the world’s a stage?

By: Ringo Bones 

“All the world’s a stage”, indeed, when Shakespeare’s Globe Theater took Hamlet into the notorious “Jungle migrant camp” in Calais. About 300 refugees watched Hamlet – “a play that speaks to the human spirit in its darkest moments” – in biting cold. Under a steely gray sky, in bitter cold weather, actors from Shakespeare’s Globe Theater performed Hamlet back in Wednesday, February 3, 2016 to about 300 refugees in Calais at the ad hoc refugee camp notoriously known as “The Jungle”. Majority of the refugees have not even heard of William Shakespeare and his plays their whole life and there are even a large number who don’t even speak the English language. 

It was a wild thing to do but also entirely appropriate, Joe Murphy, a playwright and co-founder of the Good Chance Project, said it was the ideal play. “Hamlet is the story of a young man who is depressed and frustrated, between life and death, who does not know what to do, who is struggling to make decisions,” he said. “That story is going to translate to thousands of people here who are exactly in the same position.” One of the aims of the Good Chance Project is to provide some light amid the bleakness. Approximately 6,000 refugees from 22 countries live in the camp, the vast majority hoping to get to the UK. Volunteers say most are pessimistic that it will ever happen.  

Murphy said Wednesday’s performance was “a remarkable, beautiful thing.” The audience, who were offered popcorn, chai and synopses of the play in English, Pashto, Farsi, Arabic, French and Kurdish, did not get every nuance, but Murphy said: “Who does?” Well, at least the great English bard will gain a few thousand more fans. 

Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: A Farewell To Tragedy?

Of all his tragic chronicle / biographical plays, is Shakespeare’s Coriolanus the bard’s “farewell” to the tragedy play format?

By: Ringo Bones 

Recent studies by scholars have shown that William Shakespeare’s “ruthlessness” as a businessman who profited from famine and hardship was largely influenced by his tragic chronicle / biographical play Coriolanus. After he finished most of his plays, Shakespeare returned to Warwickshire where he had a lot of land planted with corn and barley crops and hoarded the season’s harvests where he managed to manipulate and cornered the then existing grain market during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.  

The bard’s “complex character” was evident on his action as an “illegal food hoarder” 400 years ago who sold grain at inflated prices during famine was recently uncovered by researchers back in 2013. And it seems that this particular play very much influenced Shakespeare as a “shrewd” businessman. And sometimes I also wonder if Shakespeare had read Sun Tsu’s The Art of War.  

To most Stratfordian scholars, William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus are founded on Sir Thomas North’s English translation of Plutarch’s Lives, a fact of which may indicate that the wearied poet felt the need of a source he could follow closely without having to rack his brains in invention. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus – composed between 1608 and 1609 – is a more firmly built play of the most of his “biographical tragedies”. After the civic riots and pitched battles of the first act, recalling the technique of the chronicle plays, Shakespeare concentrates upon the character and fate of the protagonist. And this fate is, perhaps, more rigidly determined by character than elsewhere in Shakespeare. Coriolanus might be called Shakespeare’s farewell to tragedy; the tragic temper, the sympathetic hero and the poetic expression of the tragic theme seem fainter and less effective here than in the earlier and greater plays.