The Shakespeare Newsletter

09/05/2025

Mary Z. Maher has died.

Prof. Maher was emerita at the University of Arizona in Tucson. After teaching there for many, many years, Mary moved to Ashland, Oregon and became an important part of the local community of Shakespeare scholars. She called a monthly Shakes-beer at a local pub for us to gather and talk. While there was no agenda, you put Mary, Alan Armstrong, Geoff Ridden, Lue Douthit, Don Weingust, and me at the same table and Shakespeare will come up a lot. This helped a newcomer, me, get to know some great people.

Mary wrote some wonderful books.
Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies, Iowa, 1992
Actor Nicholas Pennell: Risking Enchantment, PublishAmerica, 2005
Actors Talk About Shakespeare, Limelight, 2009
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Actors: Telling the Story, Alan Armstrong, co-author, Wellstone, 2014

08/27/2025

Here is one of the free articles in the new SHAKESPEARE NEWSLETTER. Kelly O'Connor is a superb observer of live theater.

The Merry Wives of Windsor RSC July 2024

08/09/2025

The new issue of Shakespeare Newsletter has been published. The double-issue includes 3 book reviews on early modern studies, 5 theatre reviews, and 3 reprinted articles. Here are the details.

Books Reviewed
Darren Freebury-Jones’s Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd
Sujata Ivengar’s Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory
Robert Darcy’s Misanthropoetics: Social Flight and Literary Form in Early Modern England

Performance Reviews
King Lear at the Shed’s Griffin Theater, directed by Rob Ashford, Kenneth Branagh, and Lucy Skilbeck
The Merry Wives of Windsor at the RSC, directed by Blanche McIntyre
Coriolanus at The National Theatre, directed by Lyndsey Turner
A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Collaborative Theatre Project, directed by Susan Aversa
And a review/essay about Shakespeare productions in the Rogue Valley, Oregon, that includes the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Reprinted Articles
Upstairs, Downstairs in Merry Wives (49.4, Winter 1999/2000), by George Walton Williams
Review of Periodicals (55.4 Winter 2005/2006), by Grace Tiffany
Kristina Bedford’s “Coriolanus” at The National (42.4, Winter 1992,) by David George
The archival articles are available to non-subscribers.

Subscribers may read everything now. Ohers may subscribe by going to the following link. At just $25 per year, SHAKESPEARE NEWSLETTER is one of the best bargains in academia.

07/29/2025

Here is a second posting of this Call For Papers.
Audio Shakespeare Around the World

The Shakespeare International Yearbook will publish a special issue on audio Shakespeare around the world: histories of recorded, radio, and streaming global Shakespeare productions from early phonographic recordings to the latest Internet audio productions. We are looking for international scholars with diverse backgrounds to research and document these performances. While audio works in the English-speaking countries of the northern hemisphere are well documented, those in the southern hemisphere are not, nor are performances in Arabic, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, other Eastern European languages, Spanish, Japanese, various Chinese dialects, various Indian dialects, and any other languages not listed here.

We hope you will contribute to this most understudied area of Shakespeare performance studies. Please contact special issue editor Mike Jensen at [email protected]

The Shakespeare International Yearbook surveys the present state of Shakespeare studies across the whole spectrum of his literary output and afterlife in world cultures. New trends are evaluated from the point of view of established scholarship, and emerging work in the field is encouraged, to present a view of what is happening all around the world. Each volume includes a special section under the guidance of a specialist Guest Editor. Alexa Alice Joubin is the general editor.

07/17/2025

Arden Shakespeare has expressed interest in publishing a book based on my SAA seminar if the papers are of high quality. Look below for the official seminar description. I hope you will give this seminar serious consideration and please contact me at [email protected] with all questions.

07/09/2025

Publication of the next issue is just around the bend so it is time for the reminder that this page exists to alert subscribers to log on and read that issue upon publication. Thing is, there are many more people who like this page than subscribe to Shakespeare Newsletter. The time to start or renew your subscription is NOW!

07/05/2025

FOUND ANOTHER SHAKESPEARE!
George Herriman, KRAZY KAT, 10 January 1926, A riff on the balcony scene in R&J.

06/26/2025

Hardy M. Cook has passed away. Hardy is a past member of the SHAKESPEARE NEWSLETTER family. Here is his CV.

06/02/2025

Michael P. Jensen, our contributing editor, will lead a seminar at the 2026 Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting in Denver: Audio Shakespeare Around the World: Radio, Recordings, Internet. The Shakespeare Newsletter is proud to spread the word and invite our subscribers and followers to consider signing up for this seminar. Here is the description from the SAA Bulletin.

"Global audio Shakespeare is the most neglected area of Shakespeare performance studies. This seminar is open to all radio, recorded, and internet audio performances. Papers may include any country and language, studies of specific audio performances, audio series, or performances by themes such as navigating race, gender, period, culture, and other issues that inform audio performances. The field is wide open. Let’s fill it."

04/23/2025

01/13/2025

Another free article in the current SHAKESPEARE NEWSLETTER is actually a reprint of an old "Review of Periodicals" from 1992 that still has some interest. You may find the article behind this link.

Review of Periodicals 42.2 Summer 1992 (pp. 35-36)