As we continue to browse through Jack’s bookshelf, David interviews Dr. Sarah Waters about William Shakespeare.
S6E33: Jack’s Bookshelf: William Shakespeare (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast platform, such as iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and many others…
For information about our schedule for Season 5, please see the our season roadmap, containing a list of all the episodes we plan to record together, as well as “After Hours” interviews with special guests.
Finally, if you’d like to support us and get fantastic gifts such as access to our Pints With Jack Slack channel and branded pint glasses, please join us on Patreon for as little as $2 a month.
Show Notes
Introduction
Drop-In
Quote-of-the-week
A critic who makes no claim to be a true Shakespearian scholar and who has been honoured by an invitation to speak about Shakespeare to such an audience as this, feels rather like a child brought in at dessert to recite his piece before the grown-ups. I have a temptation to furbish up all my meagre Shakespearian scholarship and to plunge into some textual or chronological problem in the hope of seeming, for this one hour, more of an expert than I am. But it really wouldn’t do. I should not deceive you: I should not even deceive myself. I have therefore decided to bestow all my childishness upon you.
C.S. Lewis, Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem
Biographical Information
Dr. Sarah Waters is a Lecturer in English Literature and Honorary Junior Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham. Her main research areas are Shakespeare, Early Modern drama, Medical Humanities, C.S. Lewis, and Inklings studies. Her interests in CS Lewis lie especially in the literary influences on his writing and the interplay between his academic life and writings and his fiction, with a particular focus on Shakespeare.
Guest Biographical Information
Chit-Chat
Toast
- David was drinking a latte
- His guest was drinking a coffee and claims not to be a coffee snob!
- They toasted Patreon supporter, Matt Nash.
Discussion
1. “The Man”
Q. Who was Shakespeare and what was the world he lived in?
2. “The Myth”
Q. Did Shakespeare actually exist?!
03. “The absence of information”
Q. Why are there so few sources of information about Shakespeare’s life?
04: “Influencing culture”
Q. Why is Shakespeare so influential?
He was not of an age, but for all time!
Ben Jonson, To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare
- New compound words: birthplace, watchdog
- New phrases: breaking the ice, wild goose chase, dead as a doornail
Cowards die many times before their deaths
William Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
- Shakespeare possibly introduced about 1,700 words into the English language, one of the most influential forces along with Milton and the Bible (or at least the first to record them)
05. “Encountering Shakespeare”
Q. When did you encounter Shakespeare and what got you hooked?
6. “Influencing Shakespeare”
Q. What were some of Shakespeare’s influences?
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- The Divine Comedy by Dante
- Iliad by Homer
- Holinshed’s Chronicles
- Chronicles by Edward Hall
- …
7. “Corpus”
Q. Would you mind giving us a sketch of Shakespeare’s corpus of work?
A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!
Shakespeare, Richard III (Act 5, Scene 4)
8. “William and Jack”
Q. Would you mind telling us about your research into the connections between Shakespeare and Lewis?
9. “CSL on Shakespeare”
Q. What did Lewis say specifically about Shakespeare’s works?
- Inkling Nevill Coghill directed a lot of Shakespeare and wrote Shakespeare’s Professional Skills.
- Charles Williams wrote a lot about Shakespeare and wrote A Myth of Shakespeare.
- Hugo Dyson gave one of the British Academy lectures on Shakespeare.
A young man with fair hair rose to greet them. He was handsome and looked both bold and kind, though there was something about his face that didn’t seem quite right. He was dressed in black and altogether looked a little bit like Hamlet.
C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (Chapter 10)
- Lewis essays relating to Shakespeare:
- Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem
- Variation in Shakespeare and Others
- John Vyvyan, Shakespeare and the Rose of Love
- Lewis also writes about Shakespeare’s sonnets in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama
- “One Aims at the Officers First”: Reassessing the Relationship of C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot
10. “Starting Shakespeare”
Q. How would you recommend people get started with Shakespeare?
- See a play or watch a movie! Performances are often in the parks during the summer
- Read the Arden editions of his plays or the Signet Classic editions
- Visit ShakespearesWords.com
- Listen to audio book versions of the plays
11. “Fvourite and Best”
Q. What do you think is your favourite play and do you think it’s his best?
- A Winter’s Tale (“He exits, pursued by a bear.”)
- The Tempest
- Hamlet
- Henry V
O, for a muse of fire that would ascend
Shakespeare, Henry V (Prologue)
The brightest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
