Discovered, rediscovered, etc.: Shakespeare poem?
An 18-line poem written by William Shakespeare is being published for the first time since it was discovered by American scholars. [It was apparently read Saturday on BBC Radio 4's"Today" program by actor Geoffrey Streatfeild.]
"To the Queen by the Players" is believed to have been written for a performance at the court of Queen Elizabeth in 1599.
The poem was actually unearthed 30 years ago by Americans William Ringler and Steven May, who were searching through collections of British court poetry. It's an epilogue to one of his plays that the Bard appears to have written quickly but then discarded.
However, it was inexplicably left out of the last Complete Works of Shakespeare, published in 1986. Editors of the new edition describe it as a"precious addition" to the canon just published by Macmillan.
"When plays were put on at court, it was a requirement that there should be a prologue and an epilogue tailor-made for the occasion," Jonathan Bate, co-editor of the new edition, told the Daily Express newspaper...
Scholars believe Shakespeare may have delivered the poem himself on Feb. 20, 1599, when his troupe was known to have performed for the Queen, Elizabeth I.
The poem has been compared to the epilogue to A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the same metre and similarities in language.
Read entire article at CBC
"To the Queen by the Players" is believed to have been written for a performance at the court of Queen Elizabeth in 1599.
The poem was actually unearthed 30 years ago by Americans William Ringler and Steven May, who were searching through collections of British court poetry. It's an epilogue to one of his plays that the Bard appears to have written quickly but then discarded.
However, it was inexplicably left out of the last Complete Works of Shakespeare, published in 1986. Editors of the new edition describe it as a"precious addition" to the canon just published by Macmillan.
"When plays were put on at court, it was a requirement that there should be a prologue and an epilogue tailor-made for the occasion," Jonathan Bate, co-editor of the new edition, told the Daily Express newspaper...
Scholars believe Shakespeare may have delivered the poem himself on Feb. 20, 1599, when his troupe was known to have performed for the Queen, Elizabeth I.
The poem has been compared to the epilogue to A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the same metre and similarities in language.