lördag 23 april 2016

Billy-Boy

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, (sonnet 104)
To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd, 
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold, 
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, 
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd, 
In process of the seasons have I seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, 
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. 
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand, 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd; 
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, 
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd: 
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred: 
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead. 
Mina kunskaper om dagens jubilar, och hans verk, är minimala — men jag gillar honom, utan att egentligen veta varför. Kanske fick jag upp ögonen för honom när vår klass spelade "En midsommarnattsdröm" i åttan, och jag plötsligt förstod sådant jag inte förstått tidigare. Dessförinnan hade jag nog varit mest fascinerad av hur barn i brittiska böcker alltid citerade Shakespeare, och spelade hans pjäser, både i skolan och för familj och vänner på sommarloven.  
Jag minns så väl första gången jag slog upp ett shakespearcitat, det var när jag läste Gwendoline Courtneys bok Teaterbitna (Stepmother), då var jag i yngre tonåren. 
First Witch 
    When shall we three meet again? 
    In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch 
    When the hurlyburly's done, 
    When the battle's lost and won.
Third Witch 
    That will be ere the set of sun.
First Witch 
    Where the place?
Second Witch 
     Upon the heath.
Third Witch 
    There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch 
    I come, Graymalkin!
Det var då jag blev medveten om hans existens, en av nöjesläsningens fantastiska biverkningar.
Möter jag ett okänt citat, brukar jag först se efter om det härstammar från Billy-Boy eller Bibeln, jag skulle tro att de två är de största källorna till uttryck och citat.
I dag har jag roat mig med att se vad Gutenberg har att bjuda i shakespearväg, och det var inte lite. Det roar mig att se den mängd av olika aspekter på Shakespears skrivande, som författare genom tiderna har gett sig i kast med. Hans liv, naturligtvis, men även hans syn på växter, fåglar, mat och läkekonst, för att nämna några få ämnen. Somliga låter Shakespears namn markera vilken tidsepok de skrev om, andra i vilken del av England deras böcker utspelar sig. I sanning intressant. Det kommer att ta lång tid innan jag har tittat på de böckerna som intresserar mig mest  här markerade med en illskär asterisk.
Jag inser att om jag vill skriva, om det jag tänkte skriva om den gode William, så får jag återkomma en annan dag.

 The Mentor: Shakespeare's Country, Vol. 4, Num. 8, Serial No. 108, June 1, 1916, by William Winter
Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
What Is Man? And Other Stories, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
A Life of William Shakespeare, 1898, by Sidney Lee
Tolstoy on Shakespeare, by Leo Tolstoy
Representative Men, by Ralph Waldo Emerson #3 in our series by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shakespearean Playhouses, by Joseph Quincy Adams
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 8 (of 12), by Robert G. Ingersoll
The plant-lore and garden-craft of Shakespeare, by  Henry Nicholson Ellacombe  *
Is Shakespeare Dead?, by Mark Twain
Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, by  Walter Horatio Pater
Oxford Lectures on Poetry, by Andrew Cecil Bradley
Dark Lady of the Sonnets, by George Bernard Shaw
Voices from the Past, by Paul Alexander Bartlett
Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies, by Samuel Johnson
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14, by Elbert Hubbard
Of All Things, by Robert C. Benchley
Visions and Revisions, by John Cowper Powys
The Art of Letters, by Robert Lynd
Famous Reviews, by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
Elizabethan Demonology, by Thomas Alfred Spalding
Amenities of Literature, by Isaac Disraeli
 Dish Of Orts, by George MacDonald
Shakespeare and Music, by Edward W. Naylor
William Shakespeare, by Georg Brandes
Adventures in Criticism, by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
How Shakspere Came to Write the Tempest, by  Rudyard Kipling and Ashley H. Thorndike
The Man Shakespeare, by Frank Harris
Lectures on the English Poets, by William Hazlitt, Edited by Alfred Rayney Waller and Ernest Rhys
A Critic in Pall Mall, by Oscar Wilde, Edited by E. V. Lucas
Confessions of a Caricaturist, by Oliver Herford
The Facts About Shakespeare, by  William Allan Nielson and Ashley Horace Thorndike
The Age of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Youth, by John Awdeley and Thomas Harman
Shakespeare's Family, by Mrs. C. C. Stopes  *
 The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc., ed. by William Andrews  *
Shakespeare Jest-Books;, by Unknown  *
Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike
Folk-lore of Shakespeare, by  Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer  *
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher by S. T. Coleridge
Journeys to Bagdad, by Charles S. Brooks, Illustrated by Allen Lewis
Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592, by Arthur Acheson
A Day with William Shakespeare, by Maurice Clare  *
Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I., by H. N. Hudson
Plays of Near & Far, by Lord Dunsany
Shakespeare's Bones, by C. M. Ingleby
 Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies, by Samuel Johnson #9 in our series by Samuel Johnson
Books and Characters, by Lytton Strachey
A Book of Burlesque, by Willam Davenport Adams
Shakespeare's England, by William Winter  *
Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) by Lewis Theobald
Shakespeare in the Theatre, by William Poel
The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, by  J. J. Jusserand  *
A Study of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Edited by Edmund Gosse
The Critical Game, by John Albert Macy
Bacon is Shake-Speare, by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
A Warwickshire Lad, by George Madden Martin  *
Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson  *
Henry VIII and His Court, by Herbert Tree
Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by  Edmund William Gosse
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 2, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shakespeare and Music, by Christopher Wilson  *
Master Skylark, by John Bennett, Illustrated by Reginald B. Birch
Pieces of Hate, by Heywood Broun
Among My Books, by James Russell Lowell
Montaigne and Shakspere, by John M. Robertson
The Rising of the Court, by Henry Lawson
The Mystery of Francis Bacon, by William T. Smedley
The Ornithology of Shakespeare, by James Edmund Harting  *
The Shakespeare-Expositor: An Aid to the Perfect Understanding of Shakespeare's Plays, by Thomas Keightley
Shakspere & Typography, by William Blades  *
Aspects of Literature, by J. Middleton Murry
Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm  *
The Unpublishable Memoirs, by A. S. W. Rosenbach  *
Thomas de Quincey #8 in our series by Thomas de Quincey
Bacon and Shakespeare, by Albert F. Calvert
My Literary Passions, by William Dean Howells
An Introduction to Shakespeare, by  H. N. MacCracken and F. E. Pierce and W. H. Durham
The Shakespearean Myth, by Appleton Morgan
England and the War, by Walter Raleigh
A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen, by William Spalding
Shakespeare and Precious Stones, by George Frederick Kunz  *
The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's, by David Masson
Time in the Play of Hamlet, by Edward P. Vining
Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare, by Frederick Gard Fleay
Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies, by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
By-ways in Book-land, by William Davenport Adams  *
Summer Days in Shakespeare Land, by Charles G. Harper
Bacon And Shakspere  Author: William Henry Burr
Shakspere And Montaigne, by Jacob Feis  *
Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost, by Gregory Thornton  *
A Hero and Some Other Folks, by William A. Quayle
What was the Religion of Shakespeare?, by M. M. Mangasarian
A Midnight Fantasy, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, by Richard G. Moulton
William Shakespeare, His Homes and Haunts, by Samuel Levy Bensusan  *
A Maid of Many Moods, by Virna Sheard
More Pages from a Journal, by Mark Rutherford
Views and Reviews, by William Ernest Henley
An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway, by Martin Brown Ruud
Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess by Anna Benneson McMahan
Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof, by Franklin H. Head
The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote by Charles Dudley Warner
Will Shakespeare, by Clemence Dane
The Shakespeare Myth, by Edwin Durning-Lawrence
William Shakespere, of Stratford-on-Avon, by Scott Surtees
William Shakespeare, by John Masefield
The Critics Versus Shakspere, by Francis A. Smith
Shakspere, Personal Recollections, by John A. Joyce  *
Judith Shakespeare, Her love affairs and other adventures, by William Black
Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems, by Jesse Johnson

4 kommentarer:

  1. Du har att göra om du ska läsa alla förprickade böcker!
    Jag skulle vilja läsa några av dem, men när? Livet är kort och konsten ack så lång...
    kram från Mette

    SvaraRadera
    Svar
    1. Mette,
      Jag behöver aldrig befrukta att bli sysslolös!
      Margaretha
      som just nu
      försöker fösa
      ut sitt sämre
      lata jag på en
      stärkande
      promenad

      Radera
  2. Men Otello kunde han låtit bli - jag blir så jävla arg på både den korkade karlen och den mjäkiga damen som ber böner istället för att sticka sin väg.

    SvaraRadera
    Svar
    1. Olgakatt,
      Wee-Willy, var nog ett barn av sin tid, som inte kunde tänka sig att en dam tog sitt pick och pack, och stack.
      Eller gjorde någon av alla hans damer det? Kanske något att skriva en bok om...
      Margaretha
      i den
      snöiga
      nord

      Radera