Matthew Steggle
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matthewsteggle.bsky.social
Matthew Steggle
@matthewsteggle.bsky.social

Prof of Early Modern Eng Lit. Shakespeare and other C16-17 stuff. The rest is silence, mostly. Views own.

History 29%
Art 29%

Reposted by Kathleen Kennedy

Really enjoyed this, in which @oldfortunatus.bsky.social, @lucycmunro.bsky.social, and my esteemed colleague Laurence Publicover, all wearing lightly their massive learning, talk about how much fun the Henry IV plays are.
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
In Our Time - Henry IV Part 1 - BBC Sounds
Shakespeare's powerful exploration of power and succession with Hotspur, Hal and Falstaff.
www.bbc.co.uk

Mayne’s The City Match, satirizing puritans: “Yesterday I went / To see a lady that has a parrot. My woman / While I was in discourse converted the fowl, / And now it can speak nought but Knox’s works. / So there’s a parrot lost.”
Not specified that it comes on - but you couldn't not, could you?

Next week: “At half-time, the home crowd were delighted when the second XI performed some scenes from that perennial favourite The Island Princess”.

Prospect magazine have suspended their paywall for this weekend - so if you want to read their review of Hamnet, or indeed anything else, it’s free till Feb 2.

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/the-...
How ‘Hamnet’ sidelines Anne Hathaway
Historical records suggest that Shakespeare’s wife was central to his career and life. So why does this film reduce her to a woman of the woods?
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

Very pleased that the Mrs Shakspaire letter is mentioned in the Sunday Times today!

Yes, absolutely! It would have made Imtiaz Habib very happy to see it.

And there's some great detail. Was that the Moorish Ambassador watching Hamlet in 1600? Not categorically impossible. And the night scene by the Thames, where as the camera moves Old St Paul's looms up where you would expect. For someone immersed in the stuff, the effect is uncanny. (3/3)

From a Shakespearean's POV - much more Hamlet than was in the novel, and that worked thrillingly well. Inevitably scope to argue about historical fidelity, but Shakespeare, glass houses, stones. (2/3)

I loved Hamnet, which was beautiful throughout, and very joyful (by the standards of films about the plague). (1/3)

Have emailed you!

That piece by you and Heather likewise! I had no idea Adams was a card-carrying white supremacist, which as you say gives a pretty chilling twist to the whole affair.

But it’s Berkhout’s show, and his essay is really marvellous. (5/5)

furtling around some typhoid-ridden backstreets around 1840, looking for an address that Shakespeare obviously never lived at, you might enjoy it. Meanwhile, Paster, Lesser, and Wolfe start on the more serious concerns. (4/5)

Berkhout’s essay is vast, and I only get to one small part, basically trying to reinforce and expand on his footnotes 89-102. If you like old maps, old newspapers, and (3/5)

Berkhout’s subject is the copy of Lambarde’s Archaionomia (1568) now at the Folger which contains what’s often called the “seventh signature” of Shakespeare.  No spoilers here, but it’s quite a wild ride. (2/5)

Reposted by Lucy Munro

he new issue of SQ is devoted to an epic bit of detective work by the late Carl T. Berkhout: wide-ranging, technically brilliant, and really alarming. Brief contributions from Gail Kern Paster, Zachary Lesser, Heather Wolfe, and me, start picking up the pieces. (1/5)

academic.oup.com/sq/issue/76/4
Volume 76 Issue 4 | Shakespeare Quarterly | Oxford Academic
Shakespeare Quarterly (SQ) is a leading journal in Shakespeare studies, publishing highly original, rigorously researched essays, notes, and book reviews.
academic.oup.com

Likewise! Just don’t let on and hopefully no-one will ever know.

I second that OHHHHHHH!

That’s an amazing object!

Reposted by Matthew Steggle

Last BPL new acquisition of the year is a copy of the very rare gradual printed by Johann Emerich for Lucantonio Giunta in Venice in 1499. This is the largest book (by dimensions) printed during the 15th century and it required a custom-manufactured paper stock to print. 1/8

Had not seen that! Thank you!

John Carey was a brilliant scholar and public intellectual, but he was also a model professional academic, and personally kind. In the 90s he ended up supervising my D Phil when no one else much fancied it, and for that I am eternally grateful.

I mean, it’s there in black and white on the internet, but I still have some doubts…

Thanks to Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group for hosting me for a zoom talk the other week on Mrs Shakespeare and binding waste! They also recorded the talk, which was kind: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9PK...
In the Company of Mrs Shakespeare
YouTube video by David Stoker
www.youtube.com

Did not know that! Will check it out! Also, fun trivia - it features in an episode of Peep Show where Mark is watching a performance of it.

I’m sorry to hear that. The Satanic Epic is one of my favourite Milton books.

Bowers’s in works of Thomas Dekker, with commentary in a separate volume by Cyrus Hoy. Great choice of play!
Out now!

The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Constance Crompton, @raysiemens.bsky.social , Richard J. Lane, and myself

And better yet? It's #openaccess!
www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edi...

Order hard copies here: www.routledge.com/The-Companio...

Thanks to all contributors! 🎉

Congratulations on the D Phil!

Thank you so much for sharing this!!