University Daily Kansan
Friday, April 11, 1980
3
Guest lecturer outlines Shakespeare's life
By KEVIN MILLS Staff Reporter
George Bernard Shaw once said that the life of William Shakespeare could be summed up in a 30 minute lecture.
"But I have the good fortune of speaking to you tonight for 50 minutes or so," Samuel Schoonham, distinguished professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, said last night.
Part of the Mid-America Shakespeare Chauatua, Schoenbaum addressed about 100 people in the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art auditorium.
Schoenbaum said Shakespeare's personal life had remained a matter of mystery and intrigue to most.
"We really know more about Shakespeare than any other playwright of his time, except Ben Johnson," Schoenbam said. "The exception is that he doesn't excite us, it's not exciting information."
"Bingo," a play by Edward Bond staged recently in London, dealt with Shakespeare's life after his retirement, Schoenbaum said.
"In it, he deals with a crisis in the town of
Straford, where Shakespeare was born and
sevent his later days," he said.
IN THE play, *Stratford* is divided between wealthy landowners and poor farmers who are threatened with the prospect of losing their land.
Shakespeare is asked to resolve the matter, and after "driving a strict bargain, signs a paper signifying his acquiescence with the landowners." Schoenbaum said.
After this deed, his wife, Anne Hathaway,
shuns him. Distraught, Shakespeare gets drunk with Ben Jonson, and in the final scene swallows noiseless tablets.
"And Shakespeare's final line is 'Was anything done?'" Schoenbaum said. "Repeated three times, these words have a meaning." He noted that if spoken by another historical character,
"But of course, Bond is not a biographer, he is an artist. His play, though based on certain facts, would not have relied in intelligence those interested in Shakespeare's life."
ACCORDING TO Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, in 1709, the bard's final days were spent in ease and
conversation with friends, Schoenbaum said.
"No hint of despair here, rather a twilight," Schoenbaum said. "We do have, I suppose, certain conventional ideas about how to be a person. He is not supposed to have it good."
"But of course, Shakespeare lived before the Romantic age, and wasn't able to conform to the image."
Schoenbaum said a matter of continuing controversy to most Shakespearean scholars was Shakespeare's marriage.
"In his time, a marriage license was not normally required," he said. "All that was needed was a proclamation of the banns in church."
"Shakespeare was only 18, and subject to the laws of minors." Schoenbaum said. "And his wife, who was eight years older, was pregnant."
DOCUMENTS FOUND in 1811 by Richard Fenton, a Welsh historian, suggest that whatever the circumstances of marriage, his love's love was genuine, Boehlemba said.
"Was this, as many have suggested, a shotgun marriage?" Schoenbaum asked.
One manuscript contained verses from Hathaway to her husband and read them back: "I am a girl in England's queen look down. For queens themselves might envy me. Wily's form takes on that."
Shakespeare responded in a separate entry with, "Is there on earth a man more true, than Willy Shakespeare is to you?"
Shakespeare's will, however, has baffled many historians with its seeming slight of his wife, Schoenbaum said.
The will read, "I give unto my wife my second best bed." It was the only reference to Hathaway in the will.
"What is the meaning of such a request?" Schoenbaum asked. "What you have to do is go through other wills of that time and see if there is something anomalous."
Schoenbaum speculated that the second best bed was the martinial bed, and that the first best bed was reserved for the guest bedroom.
AND BY English law, Hathaway is entitled to one-third of her husband's life earnings, which explains the omission her earl has rested on the rest of the will, Schoenbaum said.
Shakespeare's death remains a mystery, he said, but there was a report that claimed Shakespeare had a merry meeting with Ben Jonson and contracted a fever from it.
Schoenbaum is the author of several books, including the most recent. Shakespeare: the Globe and the World. He was elected president of the Shakespeare Association of America last fall.
Messina has been working on the series for four years, and the second installment will be shown on PBS this spring.
The Chauqua continues today with a
Broadcasting Corporation producer, who is
in charge of the BBC Shakespeare series.
Spectacle will be at 3:30 in Swordback Burlit Hall in Chauqua.
"The guiding principle has always been to make the entire set of plays in a permanent form which is accessible to audiences throughout the world," Messina said.
KANSAN Police Beat
A 19-year-old KU freshman was released at 6 p.m. the day before Wednesday after the bicycle was riding collided with a flower delivery van at 22nd and Naismith street, police said.
The student, Elizabeth Brank of Leavenworth, a bicyclist, bikes down Nassau when the delivery person and from 22d Street and struck the bicycle, police said. The woman was cited for an offense under the right to ride.
The home of a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas was burglarized Wednesday night.
Mark Bernstein, 33, teaching assistant in the School of Fine Arts, reported that $1,400 worth of guns and $1,800 worth of camera equipment were him and his roommate, Michael Manley, 32.
"WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE?"
Psalms 2:1 and Acts 4:25
Are you concerned and troubled about the great insecurity in lawsuits? Hold up, ailing cheesesteaks and overpriced burgers, kinds of violence and anarchy! At times these things strike close to our hearts, loved ones, and friends. Are they the cause of such violence?
In the days of Noah God destroyed the earl... In the days of Noah God destroyed the fish and the eight members of Noah's family, and the animals they kept in the Ark according to God's orders. The cause of all these wickedness is that man corrupted God's way on the earth, and the first today: "Man corrupted God's way on the earth," he said.
"MY SPIRT SHALL NOT ALWAYS STRIVE WITH MAN—" The Almighty announced in the days of Noah, and sent the flood. Gen. 8.3 It may be the time has about come for the kingdom to enter. Until that time comes we would do well to remember that Christ used to us to do some striving": "STRIVE TO ENTER IN AT THE STRICT GATE; FOR MANY, I SAY UNTO YOU. TO SEER TO ENTER IN, AND SHALL NOT BE ALEB!" The vows were to God in joining His Church to the vows made to God in joining His Church.
We should strive to be faithful in our testimony that The Bible is the Word of God, and be careful not to get in the "brood" way of unbelief of those who both in and out of our church are guilty of failing to be faithful in our testimony that The Ten Commandments
reveal the mortality, righteousness, and very character of God; and strive to be workers together with His Holy Spirit in writing these Commandments in our hearts to the end. We call this 'the which is' to 'fear God, and keep His Commandments.'
Concerning God's judgements and slaughter of the foresman, he says, "You must not say to him: 'I am not like that.' Permit this comment on us. Consider the slaughter, death, and suffering go on all the time in our own generation." We need gravel and granite to pain and death even until now: "Think of the death, suffering, and sorrow in our own city, in our own generation, and the wars of God."
If your god don't control all these things, then surely your god must have lost control. Surely you need to seek and find the God who has not lost control, even the true God without His permission. He explains why this all death, slaughter, suffering; THE CAUSE IS SIN! DISOBEISEMENT OF YOUR WAGES IS SIN IS DEATH! BUT, BUT, "THE BUG OF GOD is ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH our LORD JESUS CHRIST — FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, THAT HE BELIEVETH IN HIM SHOULD BE PERISH, but HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE." John 3:16.
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