The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 23rd April 2003
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 2
We have now completed 7743 ebooks!!!
In this part of the Project Gutenberg Weekly newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) A small feature on Shakespeare (with apologies to Mr Curtis and Mr Elton)
3) This week in history
4) Mailing list information
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1) Editorial
Hello,
Welcome to a celebration issue for 1000 ebooks this year so far, and a
small feature on Shakespeare.
Happy reading,
Alice
(newsletter at schiffwood.co.uk - If you hit reply, the mail you
send does not reach me and disappears into the ether.)
We welcome feedback, critisism (of any kind), ebook reviews, featured
author suggestions, writings and awkward questions at the address above. Please feel free to send our general ramblings to a friend.
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2) A small feature on Shakespeare
English poet, dramatist, and actor, considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time. Shakespeare became the first to appeal and to meet with the full approval of a broad and mixed public embracing almost all levels of society. He possessed a large vocabulary for his day, having used 29,066 different words in his plays. Today the average English-speaking person uses something like 2,000 words in everyday speech.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. He was the eldest son of Mary Arden, the daughter of a local landowner, and her husband John Shakespeare (c. 1530-1601), a glover and wood dealer. In 1568 John Shakespeare was made a mayor of Stratford and a justice of peace. His wool business failed in the 1570s, but the family's position was restored in the 1590s by earnings of William Shakespeare, and in 1596 he was awarded a coat of arms.
Shakespeare is assumed to have been educated at Stratford Grammar School, and he may have spent the years 1580-82 as a teacher for the Roman Catholic Houghton family in Lancashire. At the age of 18, he married a local girl, Anne Hathaway (died 1623), who was eight years older. Their first child, Susannah, was born within six months, and twins Hamnet and Judith were born in 1585. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died in 1896, at the age of 11.
According to a legend, he left Stratford for London to avoid a charge of poaching. After 1582 Shakespeare probably joined as an actor one or several companies of players. By 1584 he emerged as a rising playwright in London, and became soon a central figure in London's leading theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, renamed later as the King's Men.
Shakespeare was known in his day as a very rapid writer, his publishers Heminges and Condell reported, "and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Despite all the praise, some writer's were not enthusiastic about his plays. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) called A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM "the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life."
About 1610 Shakespeare returned to his birthplace and lived as a country gentleman. A number of his plays were published during his lifetime, but none of the original dramatic manuscripts have survived. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.
On Shakespeare's gravestone are four lines of verse.
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed here!
Blest be ye man that spares thes stones
And curst be he that moues my bones.
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From: Tonya Allen
My favorite plays, in approximate order: The Tempest; Hamlet; Julius Caesar;
Macbeth; The Merchant of Venice. But one of my favorite speeches comes from
Antony and Cleopatra (Cleopatra's speech upon the death of Antony):
Noblest of men, woo't die?
Hast thou no care of me? shall I abide
In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty?--O, see, my women,
[Antony dies.]
The crown o' the earth doth melt.--My lord!--
O, wither'd is the garland of the war,
The soldier's pole is fallen: young boys and girls
Are level now with men: the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
--Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, SCENE XV
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3) This week in history
Literary Dates of Interest this week
Birthdays this week:
April
23rd Ngaio Marsh, Vladimir Nabokov, Halldor Laxness, William
Shakespeare(189)
24th R M Ballantyne(1), Daniel Defoe(9), Anthony Trollope(39), Carl Spiteller,
Robert Penn Warren
25th Walter de la Mare
26th Vicente Aleixandre, Anne Fried, Morris West, Akseli
Gallen-Kallela
27th Cecil Day-Lewis
28th Johan Borgen, Alistair Maclean, L. Onerva, Harper Lee
29th Pedro Antonio, Correia Garcao
Deaths
1616 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote, aged 69
1616 William Shakespeare, renowned playwright, and hated by UK
schoolchildren, aged 52
1740 Thomas Tickell, poet
1910 Bjornstjerne Bjornson, aged 77
1915 Rupert Brooke, poet, aged 27
1926 Joseph Pennell
1929 Rudolf W Nilsen, author, aged 28
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Credits
Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
the booklists. Mark, Greg, Michael and Larry Wall. Entertainment for
the workers provided by Andrew Collins from Northampton.
pgweekly_2003_04_23_part_2.txt
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