Michael Shamansky, Bookseller Inc.
Importer of European Publications in the Fine Arts
P.O. Box 3904, Kingston, New York 12402 Phone: 845-331-8519 Email: mshamans@artbooks.com

Item Number: 121168
Title: Shakespeare : Staging the World
Author: Bate, Jonathan ; Dora Thornton
Price: Not Available
ISBN: 9780199915019
Description: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 31cm., hardcover, 304pp. prof. illus., most in color. Exhibition held at the British Museum, London. From the museum's website : The exhibition creates a unique dialogue between an extraordinary array of objects – from great paintings and rare manuscripts to modest, everyday items of the time – and the plays and characters that have had a richer cultural legacy than any other in the western world. Among the objects linked to Shakespeare and his works are the Funeral Achievements of Henry V, which were on public display at Westminster Abbey in Shakespeare’s time and were written into the prologue of act five of Henry V, as ‘his bruisèd helmet and his bended sword’. The striking portrait of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moroccan Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I, depicts the head of a delegation of soldiers from Barbary who came to London in 1600 on a state visit. The presence of these men had a great impact on London at the time. They were a source of fascination and of fear. El-Ouahed and his men were in the city for six months and would certainly have been known to Shakespeare: they may well have informed the character of Othello, the soldier and ‘noble moor’. The exhibition also explores the theatre-going experience at the time, which was very different to that of today. The newly built playhouses were situated in the suburbs: Bankside was an area with a dangerous and notorious reputation. The theatres needed to attract large numbers of playgoers and so performances had to appeal to a wide spectrum of society, from groundlings to courtiers. Objects excavated from the sites of the Globe and Rose theatres, such as a sucket fork for sweetmeats and the skull of a bear, illustrates the Southwark of Shakespeare’s day, the cultural world inhabited by the playhouse, which rubbed shoulders with bear-baiting arenas as well as brothels and pubs.

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Michael Shamansky, Bookseller Inc.
P.O. Box 3904, Kingston, New York 12402 US
Phone: 845-331-8519
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Email: michael@artbooks.com

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