Primrose Road

Edward deVere: known comedy writer

noreply@blogspirit.com (PrimroseRoad) — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 09:50:00 -0400

Eddie deVere and I keep running into each other.

I was doing some research on the advent of blank verse as a new medium in English in the late 16th century, and came across two short accounts that at least take a good swipe at the ahistorical idea that a nobleman would have necessarily had to write plays anonymously:

In 1589, George Puttenham (or possibly a writer with the first name Richard), wrote a treatise on English poetry in which he praised the Earl of Oxford for his comedy writing. In another essay, Francis Meres describes Oxford as one of the better comedy writers of his time.

What's that again about the Earl of Oxford having to write plays in secret?

Yes, it would have likely been far more acceptable for a nobleman to write poetry than to write plays, but Puttenham's and Meres' references suggest that Oxford was a known comedy writer by 1589, the year before Shakespeare first appears on the scene, and at least five years before any of Shakespeare's plays is printed.

There is also the far more significant fact that the Earl of Oxford died in 1604 and Shakespeare wrote until at least 1611.

HyperHamlet

noreply@blogspirit.com (PrimroseRoad) — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 08:40:00 -0400

HyperHamlet is up and running. I saw an early version of this project presented at a conference in 2006, and its aims remain the same: it doesn't attempt to supply an edition in the sense of an editorial reconstruction, and it doesn't want to work backwards from the text. Instead, the project seeks to map the text forward, cataloguing references to Hamlet from all walks of life and culture.

When I first heard about the project, I asked myself what cataloguing every reference to Hamlet ever could do for us. Interestingly, the project page now explains that such an endeavor can serve as not only a research database but also as a means of questioning the point of bookish editorial reconstructions.

* Hattip to Shakespeare Geek, who found this before I did. *

Best search phrase ever.

noreply@blogspirit.com (PrimroseRoad) — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 07:35:00 -0400

At some point during the last three days, someone arrived at Primrose Road via a search for the phrase

"prostate squib"

, which I believe resulted from someone looking up prostate cancer treatments produced by the Bristol-Meyers-Squib pharmaceutical company, but still.