Leslie ann powers biography of william shakespeare

I am reluctant to break the rule—or what ought to be the rule—that no one should write about Shakespeare without a special licence. Heaven-born critics or thorough antiquaries alone should add to the pile under which his 'honoured bones' are but too effectually hidden. I make no pretence of having discovered a new philosophical meaning in Hamlet, or of having any light to throw upon the initials 'W.H.' I confess, too, that though I have read Shakespeare with much pleasure, I cannot say as much for most of his commentators. I have not studied them eagerly. I spent, however, some hours of a recent vacation in reading a few Shakespeare books, including Mr. Lee's already standard Life and Professor Brandes' interesting Critical Study. The contrast between the two raised an old question. Mr. Lee, like many critics of the highest authority, maintains ​that we can know nothing of the man. He shows that we know more than the average reader supposes of the external history of the Stratford townsman. But then he maintains the self-denying proposition that such knowledge teaches us nothing about the author of Hamlet. Professor Brandes, on the contrary, tries to show how a certain spiritual history indicated by the works may be more or less distinctly correlated with certain passages in the personal history. The process, of course, involves a good deal of conjecture. It rests upon the assumption that the works, when properly interpreted, reveal character; for the facts taken by themselves are a manifestly insufficient ground for more than a few negative inferences. If, with Mr. Lee, we regard the first step as impossible, the whole theory must collapse. Upon his showing we learn little from the works except that Shakespeare, whatever he may have been as a man, had a marvellous power of wearing different masks. There is no reason to suppose that his mirth or melancholy, his patriotism or his misanthropy

The thirteen interrelated stories of Shakespeare’s Kitchen concern the universal longing for friendship, how we achieve new intimacies for ourselves, and how slowly, inexplicably, we lose them. Featuring six never-before-published pieces, Lore Segal’s stunning new book evolved from seven short stories that originally appeared in the New Yorker (including the O. Henry Prize–winning “The Reverse Bug”).

Ilka Weisz has accepted a teaching position at the Concordance Institute, a think tank in Connecticut, reluctantly leaving her New York circle of friends. After the comedy of her struggle to meet new people, Ilka comes to embrace, and be embraced by, a new set of acquaintances, including the institute’s director, Leslie Shakespeare, and his wife, Eliza. Through a series of memorable dinner parties, picnics, and Sunday brunches, Segal evokes the subtle drama and humor of the outsider’s loneliness, the comfort and charm of familiar companionship, the bliss of being in love, and the strangeness of our behavior in the face of other people’s deaths.

A magnificent and deeply moving work, Shakespeare’s Kitchen marks the long–awaited return of a writer at the height of her powers.

Fans of the musical Hairspray may be surprised to learn that it began as a totally different beast.

Leslie ann powers biography of william shakespeare

Specifically, the film version that was made in 2007 was based off of a wildly popular and award-winning Broadway musical, which is itself actually based off of a 1988 film of the same name.

The 1988 version of Hairspray has the same plot as its later iterations, as well as many of the same characters and story elements.

But there's one key difference: It isn't a musical. 1988's Hairspray was created by John Waters, also known as "the King of Filth" for the way he revels in camp and raunchy filmmaking. Despite this, Hairspray was rated PG on release, and is easily Waters' most mainstream work.

It still features several of his hallmark methods and some of his regular cast members, but it's much more palatable than films like Pink Flamingos.

Hairspray is now over 30 years old, and several members of i

Dramatist, poet, actor; b. Stratford-on-Avon, April 1564; d. there, April 23, 1616. The facts of Shakespeare's life, preserved in authentic records, are considerable. Unfortunately he left no diaries or personal letters nor did he attract the notice of gossips or note takers, so that all attempts to write an intimate life must rely on guesswork.

The Biographical Record

The records show that he was the son of John Shakespeare, yeoman and glover, a leading citizen of Stratford, and of Mary Arden of Wilmcote, whose family were staunch Catholic gentlefolk. William was baptized April 26, 1564.

According to Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718), who published the first short biography in 1709, Shakespeare was educated at the Stratford grammar school. The masters of the school during and after his boyhood—all graduates

of Oxford—were Walter Roche, 1569 to 1571; Simon Hunt, 1571 to 1575 (when he went overseas to Douai and was later admitted into the Society of Jesus in 1578); Thomas Jenkins, 1575 to 1579; John Cottam, 1579 to 1581; and Alexander Aspinall, 1581 to 1624. At Elizabethan grammar schools, boys were subjected to an elaborate memory training in Latin (and to a lesser degree in Greek) and read a fair selection of the greater classics. All this fostered in brighter boys a keen interest in language and its use as well as a general knowledge of classical mythology and history.

On Nov. 28, 1582, a license was issued by the Bishop of Worcester to "William Shagspere" to marry "Anne Hathwey" of Stratford after one reading of the banns. According to the inscription on her gravestone, Anne Shakespeare died on Aug. 6, 1623, aged 67 years, and was thus eight years older than her husband. Their three children were baptized in Stratford church—Susanna on May 26, 1583, and Hamnet and Judith (twins) on Feb. 2, 1585. Nothing is certainly known of Shakespeare's early manhood; traditions that he was forced to flee Stratford for stealing