In order to avoid reproducing existing works and to help clarify my own intensions I Compiled this detailed but, I am sure, not entirely exhaustive list of Plays featuring Shakespeare as a character in June 2013.
In reverse chronological order:
For All Time, Rick Thomas: 2009 (this is the date of its showing at at the Lake theatre Keswick)
Thomas looks at Shakespeare's life towards the end of his successful and prolific career and comes up with an imaginary scenario, set in a room above a pub in 1613, to explore why it was that Shakespeare may have stopped writing and left London shortly before he died. Thomas portrays Shakespeare as drunken and raucous and unable to remember the names of his own plays ('The Donkey Play' is A Midsummer Night's Dream, and he remembers Antony and Cleopatra only as 'The Snake Play') and Fletcher as camp and foppish as they meet in a room in a pub run by Shakespeare's mistress Margaret to collaborate on the final draft of Two Noble Kinsmen, which Richard Burbage has requested by the following morning for rehearsals to commence. Shakespeare is reluctant to get down to work on the manuscript, leading Fletcher to make accusations about the authorship of Shakespeare's whole canon, and a revelation from the great man about why he stopped writing alone after completing The Tempest. The dialogue is deliberately modern and littered with anachronisms
Swansong, Patrick Page: 2008
About Ben Jonson's love-hate relationship with Shakespeare The play was subsequently presented Off-Broadway at the Lion Theatre at Theatre Row as part of the New York Summer Play Festival
A Matter of Life and Death, Kneehigh's National Theatre adaptation: 2007
A stage adaptation by Tom Morris and Emma Rice of Powell and Pressburger's film of the same name for the company Kneehigh Theatre. Its first run at the National Theatre lasted from 3 May 2007 to 21 June 2007
Reworked by Tom Morris and Emma Rice, this 1946 story of airman Peter Carter, who, in 1945 baled out over a foggy English channel without a parachute and lived to tell the tale, rarely evokes the period nor the haunting quality that made the film so memorable. And the narrative is nothing if not haunting. For, as you may recall, Carter (Tristan Sturrock), should - to all intents and purposes - be dead. And he would have been had the messenger of death, Conductor 71, who has been sent from the afterworld to escort him back to the other side, not lost his way in the fog.
Though Carter has miraculously survived his plunge, his brain has been affected and he is in a coma and/or clearly delusional. What he imagines is a raging battle in heaven for his body and soul as his surgeon (Andy Williiams) makes a case for keeping him alive. n the movie the "trial's" witness for the prosecution is a lawyer representing the spirit of a Boston patriot killed in the Revolutionary War; on stage it is Carter's deceased father, widows from the Coventry and Dresden bombings and Shakespeare who are questioning his right to live
I am Shakespeare, Mark Rylance: 2007
I Am Shakespeare’ Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show was created for the Chichester Festival Theatre: a post modern play that toys with identity.
Shakespeare's Will, Vern Thiessen: 2005
Shakespeare doesn't appear in this one-woman show, commissioned by Geoffrey Brumlik, then Artistic Director of the River City Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton premiered at the Citadel Theatre. It has been regularly revived and was performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2011. It focuses on Anne Hathaway on the day of her husband William Shakespeare's funeral.
Mrs. Shakespeare the poet’s wife, Avril Rowlands: 2005
Tongue in cheek comedy is told from HER point of view and shows Anne as a confident woman of genius with a deep love for William who despite his infidelities loves her husband unconditionally. Rowlands proposes that Anne wrote the plays and William passed them on as his own works, adding another candidate to the authorship debate. Passionate about writing since her childhood days and described as having “a way with words”, she wrote in secret as her mother dismissed women’s love of writing as the devil’s work. When William suffers rejection as a playwright, Anne comes up with the cunning plan to get her plays performed under his name
Where there’s a Will, Olly Crick, Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury: 2004
Community theatre piece featuring Shakespeare as a character appearing in a contemporary setting.
Shakespeare is dead, get over it, Paul Pourveur: 2003 For the Arnhem theater Keesen & Co date of production)
Post Dramatic piece where postmodern and early modern influences and references collide. An August 5, at the end of the sixteenth century, William kills a deer on the property of a significant Stratford-upon-Avon. Fined, refusing to pay he flees to London where he will become the greatest playwright of all time this leads to a journey between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries, between theatrical passion and global justice. Today in Brussels, Anna, an actress fan of Shakespeare, meets William, a follower of Jean-Luc Godard denouncing consumerism and capitalist exploitation while working for ... Gap. These two will fall in love, but they overcome their differences? Features police investigation or black farce, with projections, stills, mixing places and mixtures of the time Shakespeare is dead, get over it!
Murdering Marlowe, Charles Marowitz:
2002
William Shakespeare, in his mid-twenties, an aspiring playwright without a foothold in London, is desperate to make his mark. The greatest obstacle to his achieving the success he believes he richly deserves is the prominence of Christopher Marlowe, the "superstar" of the Elizabethan theatre. So formidable is his envy against this charismatic playwright that he persuades himself the only way to achieve his goal is to remove Marlowe from the scene. To this end, he musters the support of Robert Poley, a man who detests the atheistic, homosexual young Marlowe. Poley and his cohort Ingram Frizer proceed to devise the plan which will dispatch the detested anti-Christ. Will's wife, Anne Hathaway, constantly rails against her feckless husband, who can provide no support for the family and who is wasting his time and measly talents in "playmaking." To elude the abuse of his embittered Stratford wife, Will finds solace in his mistress, Emilia, without realizing that she is Marlowe's mistress as well. The fateful day of the murder arrives: the site, Eleanor Bull's Tavern where Poley, Frizer and another accomplice zero in on the hapless Marlowe. Sodden with drink, woozy and unsuspecting, the Cambridge poet is brutally murdered. After the fatal blows have been struck, Will reveals himself to Marlowe as the arch conspirator who has masterminded his downfall. With his last gasps, Marlowe condemns the paltriness of his dramatic rival, proclaiming his artistic superiority to Shakespeare. Marlowe's supremacy in the Elizabethan theatre has been successfully eclipsed by the conniving Shakespeare. His posters are torn from their hoardings, and Shakespeare's star rapidly begins to rise.
The Beard of Avon, Amy Freed: 2001
The Beard of Avon is a play by Amy Freed, originally commissioned and produced by South Coast Repertory in 2001. It is a farcical treatment of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, in which both Shakespeare and his wife become involved, in different ways, with secret playwright Edward de Vere and find themselves helping to present the works of several other secretive authors under Shakespeare's name, including Queen Elizabeth I herself.
Peter Barnes, Jubilee :2001
An RSC commission to commemorate the first celebration of Shakespeare's life and works. A mischievous satire on the foundation of the Shakespeare industry. This irreverent comedy dissects the cult of the theatrical personality, with guest appearances from the Bard and Sir Peter Hall.
Nay Remember Me, Amelia Marriette: 2001
It tells the story of the creation of the First Folio and the history of those who were connected with it; Hemmings and Condell (and wives), Henry Clay and Emily Folger, and Mr and Mrs Shakespeare themselves
Mutabilitie, Frank McGuinness : NT 1997
Set in Ireland, 1598, towards the end of the notorious Munster wars.
A young English playwright called William and two of his English friends, who are actors, are visiting Ireland in a hope to introduce theatre to the natives. The three men are attacked, William, who was taken ill during the voyage, manages to escape by falling into a lake. This complicated drama conflates a period in Irish history with fantasy characters and scenes: 'William' is suggested to be Shakespeare.
The Herbal Bed, Peter Whelan (RSC 1996)
The Herbal Bed (1996) is a play by Peter Whelan, written specifically for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play is set in the year 1613 and is about Susanna Hall, daughter of William Shakespeare, who is accused of adultery with local haberdasher Rafe Smith.
Dead White Males, by David Williamson: 1995 ?
The three central characters are Angela Judd, a young female student of English literature at 'New West University', Dr Grant Swain, her lecturer in literary theory, and William Shakespeare himself who comes back to life via Angela's imagination. Williamson's central concern is the notion that French poststructuralist philosophy and literary theory have toppled the old certainties of Western culture. Williamson pits the wit of the bard against the literary theory of Grant Swain as the latter tries to indoctrinate and coerce his hapless students into accepting his own worldview. While making a big show of his lofty non-sexist ideals, Swain reveals his interest in "jouissance" and the bodies of his female students is much more than theoretical.
In the contest between Shakespeare and Swain for Angela's mind, Williamson does load the dice in the bard's favour. He is a genuinely modest and delightful character who is most surprised to find his plays are still performed in the late 20th century.
Dead White Males by David Williamson, was staged by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, March 9 - May 6 1995.
The School of Night, Peter Whelan: 1992.
This play Concerns the circumstances surrounding the death of Marlowe. It was first performed in "The Other Place" in Stratford by the Royal Shakespeare company on 28 Oct 1992, directed by Bill Alexander. Shakespeare appears in the play, but is cast Under the name "Tom Stone." Only as the play progresses does it become apparent that he is Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Dog, Rick Chafe (adaptation of Leon Rooke's novel: 1981
Based on the novel by Leon Rooke. Shakespeare's dog, tells the story of ‘how the Stratford rogue became the world's most famous playwright, and how in the Elizabethan era, lust, love, and lives collide—and it is anyone's guess who is top dog’.
Cameos, Inter-Actions: 1977
The London based community theatre company featured three actors living and performing (independently of each other) as historical characters in community settings (Shakespeare, Edward Lear and Captain Cook).
I was Shakespeare’s Double, John Downie and Penny Gold: 1974 (Performed Straford other place) Will's Way, David Rudkin: 1984
Royal Shakespeare Company, The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Frogs, Aristophanes / Sondheim:1974
The Frogs is a musical "freely adapted" by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove from The Frogs, an Ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in Yale University's gymnasium's swimming pool. Dionysus, despairing of the quality of living dramatists, travels to Hades to bring George Bernard Shaw back from the dead. William Shakespeare competes with Shaw for the title of best playwright, which he wins. Dionysus chooses to bring Shakespeare back instead, thereby improving the world, and its political situation. This original production is most famous for having Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Durang in its ensemble. Sondheim compared the acoustics of the original production to "performing in a urinal.,
The Trouble with Shakespeare, Sibley S Morrill: San Francisco: Cadleon Press, 1974.
Edward Bond:1973
Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death : 1973 play by Edward Bond depicts an aging William Shakespeare at his Warwickshire home in 1615 and 1616, suffering pangs of conscience in part because he signed a contract which protected his landholdings, on the condition that he would not interfere with an enclosure of common lands that would hurt the local peasant farmers. Although the play is fictional, this contract has a factual basis.
A Cry of Players, William Gibson: NY: Atheneum, 1969.
Stratford Boy, Morris, T. B: 1964
A one act play for five women.
Will Shakespeare, Gent, John Garton: 1964
Jester of Stratford, Rae Shirley: 1964
The synopsis says: Anne and Joan are preparing for Susanna's wedding when William arrives from London. William is not welcome back in Stratford - so the two women give him 30 to go back. He promptly gives the money to Susanna as a wedding gift and leaves.
Shakespeare 400, Bentley, Phyllis: 1963
Shakespeare Fantasy, Anon: 1960
Will Shakespeare, Clemence Dane: approximately
Clemence Dane was the pseudonym of Winifred Ashton (21 February 1888 – 28 March 1965), an English novelist and playwright.
( I do not have much information yet on the play although apparently Marlowe dies accidentally in it. irrelevant but: According to Arthur Marshall Ashton she was famous for her indecent, though entirely innocent, remarks. " Time and again she settled for an unfortunate word or phrase. Inviting Noël Coward to lunch during the war, when food was difficult, she boomed encouragement down the telephone; 'Do come! I've got such a lovely cock.' ('I do wish you'd call it a hen', Noel answered). To use correctly, in a literary sense, the words 'erection', 'tool' and 'spunk' was second nature to her. When wishing to describe herself as being full of life and creative energy, she chose, not really very wisely, the word 'randy')[
No Bed for Bacon, Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin: 1959
The plot concerns a young woman who disguises herself as a boy to gain membership of Richard Burbage's and William Shakespeare's, theatrical company (a device later employed by Tom Stoppard as the central plot of his 1999 screenplay Shakespeare in Love). Reviewing the book in the Shakespeare Quarterly, Ernest Brennecke wrote:
A lighthearted fantasy recently perpetrated by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon. Their book is irresponsible, irreverent, impudent, anachronistic, undocumented. The authors warn all scholars that it is also "fundamentally unsound." Poppycock! It is one of the soundest of recent jobs. The more the reader knows about Shakespeare and his England, the more chuckles and laughs he will get out of the book. It is erudite, informed, and imaginative. It solves finally the question of the "second-best" bed, Raleigh's curious obsession with cloaks, Henslowe's passion for burning down Burbage's theatres, and Shakespeare's meticulous care for his spelling.
Wife to Will Shakespeare: Shirley Rae: 1957
'Encore' performed at the Co-op Hall in Leicester in January 1955
I am told that the Lord Chamberlain stipulated that: 'Shakespeare not to be played as a homosexual' referring to a stage direction in the original script which read 'Enter Shakespeare– rather pansy.
Shake versus Shav, GBS: 1949
A puppet play written by George Bernard Shaw. It was Shaw's penultimate dramatic work. The play runs for 20 minutes in performance.
The play was written by Shaw for the Lanchester Marionettes who were based in their own theatre in Foley House, Malvern, Worcestershire, UK. The company's founders, Waldo and Muriel Lanchester, performed regularly in the Malvern Festival. Shaw, having seen their performances over the years, wrote Shakes Versus Shav for the company in 1949.[1] The play comprises a comic argument between the two playwrights, as a form of intellectual equivalent of Punch and Judy.
William's other Anne: Brown, Ivor : 1947
in which Shakespeare returns from London to meet Anne Whateley eight years after their broken engagement, just as Anne is about to marry a priggish schoolmaster. Shakespeare and Anne are reconciled, and Shakespeare saves his father from bankruptcy at the hands of Anne's vengeful mother.[21] The play was broadcast on BBC television in 1953 starring Irene Worth as Anne and John Gregson as Shakespeare.
Mr. Shakespeare comes home, John Worthington: 1945
RSC's pantomime 'Swan Down Gloves' features Shakespeare as one of its principal characters.
Le Grand Will, Maurice Constantin-Weyer :Paris Editions de la
Nouvelle France 1945. Truth About Shakespeare, Box, Sydney:1939 The Death of Shakespeare, Blair, Wilfred: 1916
A chronicle play in prose and verse.
The Wooing of A. Hathaway, Carlton, Grace:1937
Carlton gives us an Anne who understands William’s creative genius completely and encourages him to go to London: “You are free to go. I have said so many a time.” Carlton’s Anne Hathaway is not a feminist yet but she’s confident enough to allow William his freedom and is not a deserted woman.
Island, North Carolina, 4 July 1937.
With Golden Quill; a cavalcade, depicting
Shakespeare's life and times, E Hamilton Gruner: Stratford-on-Avon: The Shakespeare Press, 1936.
Clipt Wings; a drama in five acts, being an Explanation of the mystery concerning the authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare, the parentage of Francis Bacon, and the character of Shaxper. William Robinson Leigh :New York: Thornton W Allen Co., 1930
Houseboat on the Styx, Richard Penn Smith: 1928.
The Making of an Immortal, George Moore: New York: Bowling Green Press, 1927.
Shakespeare's Legacy, James Matthew Barrie: Drury Lane Theatre, London, 14 April 1916.
night's dream in three acts with a prologue and an epilogue, Louise (Ayres) Garnett: 1916.
Shakespeare’s End, Conal o’ Riodan: 1912
Catholic Protestant schism, Irish politics and artistic vanity are discussed in this depiction.
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, GBS 1910
Sonnets 127 to 152 are addressed to a woman commonly known as the 'Dark Lady' because her hair is said to be black and her skin "dun". These sonnets are explicitly sexual in character, in contrast to those written to the 'Fair Youth'. It is implied that the speaker of the sonnets and the Lady had a passionate affair, but that she was unfaithful, perhaps with the 'Fair Youth'. The poet self-deprecatingly describes himself as balding and middle-aged at the time of writing.
Shakespeare and his Love, Frank, Harris: 1910
W.Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher, Richard Gurnett :1904
Shakespeare and Company, Christopher Brooke Bradshaw: London, 1845.
_Shakespeare's Early Days; a drama in two acts, Charles a Sommerset. London: TH Lacy, 1829.
in Love, Richard Penn Smith: 1804.
Harlequin's Invasion, David Garrick , Drury Lane, London: 31 December 1759.
Sancho; or, The Student's Whim, Elizabeth Boyd: The Green Room, Drury Lane, London, 1739.
In order to avoid reproducing other works and to help clarify my aesthetic I compiled this detailed but, I am sure, not entirely exhaustive list of plays featuring Shakespeare as a character in June 2013:
For All Time, Rick Thomas, 2009 (this is the date of its showing at the Lake Theatre, Keswick)
Thomas looks at Shakespeare's life towards the end of his successful and prolific career and comes up with an imaginary scenario, set in a room above a pub in 1613, to explore why it was that Shakespeare may have stopped writing and left London shortly before he died. Thomas portrays Shakespeare as drunken, raucous, and unable to remember the names of his own plays ('The Donkey Play' is A Midsummer Night's Dream, and he remembers Antony and Cleopatra only as 'The Snake Play') and Fletcher as camp and foppish as they meet in a room in a pub run by Shakespeare's mistress Margaret to collaborate on the final draft of Two Noble Kinsmen, which Richard Burbage has requested by the following morning for rehearsals to commence. Shakespeare is reluctant to get down to work on the manuscript, leading Fletcher to make accusations about the authorship of Shakespeare's whole canon, and a revelation comes from the great man about why he stopped writing alone after completing The Tempest. The dialogue is deliberately modern and littered with anachronisms.
Swansong, Patrick Page, 2008
About Ben Jonson's love-hate relationship with Shakespeare. The play was subsequently presented off-Broadway at the Lion Theatre, Theatre Row as part of the New York Summer Play Festival.
A Matter of Life and Death, Kneehigh's National Theatre adaptation, 2007
A stage adaptation by Tom Morris and Emma Rice of Powell and Pressburger's film of the same name for the company Kneehigh Theatre. Its first run at the National Theatre lasted from 3 May 2007 to 21 June 2007. Reworked by Tom Morris and Emma Rice, this 1946 story of airman Peter Carter, who, in 1945 bailed out over a foggy English channel without a parachute and lived to tell the tale, rarely evokes the period nor the haunting quality that made the film so memorable. And the narrative is nothing if not haunting, for, as you may recall, Carter (Tristan Sturrock), should - to all intents and purposes - be dead. And he would have been had the messenger of death, Conductor 71, who has been sent from the afterworld to escort him back to the other side, not lost his way in the fog.
Though Carter has miraculously survived his plunge, his brain has been affected and he is in a coma and/or clearly delusional. What he imagines is a raging battle in heaven for his body and soul as his surgeon (Andy Williiams) makes a case for keeping him alive. In the movie the 'trial's' witness for the prosecution is a lawyer representing the spirit of a Boston patriot killed in the Revolutionary War; on stage it is Carter's deceased father, widows from the Coventry and Dresden bombings and Shakespeare who are questioning his right to live.
I am Shakespeare, Mark Rylance, 2007
I Am Shakespeare, a Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show, was created for the Chichester Festival Theatre. It is a post modern play that toys with identity.
Shakespeare's Will, Vern Thiessen, 2005
Shakespeare doesn't appear in this one-woman show, commissioned by Geoffrey Brumlik, then Artistic Director of the River City Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton and premiered at the Citadel Theatre. It has been regularly revived and was performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2011. It focuses on Anne Hathaway on the day of her husband William Shakespeare's funeral.
Mrs. Shakespeare the poet’s wife, Avril Rowlands, 2005
Tongue-in-cheek comedy is told from HER point of view and shows Anne as a confident woman of genius with a deep love for William, who, despite his infidelities, loves her husband unconditionally.
Rowlands proposes that Anne wrote the plays and William passed them off as his own works, adding another candidate to the authorship debate. Passionate about writing since her childhood days and described as having 'a way with words', she wrote in secret as her mother dismissed women’s love of writing as the devil’s work. When William suffers rejection as a playwright, Anne comes up with the cunning plan to get her plays performed under his name.
Where there’s a Will, Olly Crick, Rose Theatre, Tewkesbury, 2004
Community theatre piece featuring Shakespeare as a character appearing in a contemporary setting.
Shakespeare is dead, get over it, Paul Pourveur, 2003, for the Arnhem Theater, Keesen & Co (date of production)
Post-dramatic piece where postmodern and early modern influences and references collide. An August 5, at the end of the sixteenth century, William kills a deer on the property of a significant Stratford-upon-Avon landowner. Fined, refusing to pay he flees to London where he will become the greatest playwright of all time. This leads to a journey between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries, between theatrical passion and global justice. Today in Brussels, Anna, an actress fan of Shakespeare, meets William, a follower of Jean-Luc Godard denouncing consumerism and capitalist exploitation while working for ... Gap. These two will fall in love, but can they overcome their differences? Features police investigation and black farce, with projections, stills, mixing places and mixtures of the time. Shakespeare is dead, get over it!
Murdering Marlowe, Charles Marowitz, 2002
William Shakespeare, in his mid-twenties, an aspiring playwright without a foothold in London, is desperate to make his mark. The greatest obstacle to his achieving the success he believes he richly deserves is the prominence of Christopher Marlowe, the 'superstar' of the Elizabethan theatre. So formidable is his envy of this charismatic playwright that he persuades himself the only way to achieve his goal is to remove Marlowe from the scene. To this end, he musters the support of Robert Poley, a man who detests the atheistic, homosexual young Marlowe. Poley and his cohort Ingram Frizer proceed to devise the plan which will dispatch the detested anti-Christ. Will's wife, Anne Hathaway, constantly rails against her feckless husband, who can provide no support for the family and who is wasting his time and measly talents in 'playmaking.' To elude the abuse of his embittered Stratford wife, Will finds solace in his mistress, Emilia, without realizing that she is Marlowe's mistress as well. The fateful day of the murder arrives: the site, Eleanor Bull's Tavern where Poley, Frizer and another accomplice zero in on the hapless Marlowe. Sodden with drink, woozy and unsuspecting, the Cambridge poet is brutally murdered. After the fatal blows have been struck, Will reveals himself to Marlowe as the arch conspirator who has masterminded his downfall. With his last gasps, Marlowe condemns the paltriness of his dramatic rival, proclaiming his artistic superiority to Shakespeare. Marlowe's supremacy in the Elizabethan theatre has been successfully eclipsed by the conniving Shakespeare. His posters are torn from their hoardings, and Shakespeare's star rapidly begins to rise.
The Beard of Avon, Amy Freed, 2001
The Beard of Avon is a play by Amy Freed, originally commissioned and produced by South Coast Repertory in 2001. It is a farcical treatment of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, in which both Shakespeare and his wife become involved, in different ways, with secret playwright Edward de Vere and find themselves helping to present the works of several other secretive authors under Shakespeare's name, including Queen Elizabeth I herself.
Jubilee, Peter Barnes, 2001
An RSC commission to commemorate the first celebration of Shakespeare's life and works. A mischievous satire on the foundation of the Shakespeare industry. This irreverent comedy dissects the cult of the theatrical personality, with guest appearances from the Bard and Sir Peter Hall.
Nay Remember Me, Amelia Marriette, 2001
It tells the story of the creation of the First Folio and the history of those who were connected with it: Hemmings and Condell (and their wives), Henry Clay and Emily Folger, and Mr and Mrs Shakespeare themselves.
Mutabilitie, Frank McGuinness, NT, 1997
Set in Ireland, 1598, towards the end of the notorious Munster wars.
A young English playwright called William and two of his English friends, who are actors, are visiting Ireland in the hope of introducing theatre to the natives. The three men are attacked, William, who was taken ill during the voyage, manages to escape by falling into a lake. This complicated drama conflates a period in Irish history with fantasy characters and scenes: 'William' is suggested to be Shakespeare.
The Herbal Bed, Peter Whelan, RSC, 1996
The Herbal Bed is a play by Peter Whelan, written specifically for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play is set in the year 1613 and is about Susanna Hall, daughter of William Shakespeare, who is accused of adultery with local haberdasher Rafe Smith.
Dead White Males, David Williamson, 1995?
The three central characters are Angela Judd, a young female student of English literature at 'New West University', Dr Grant Swain, her lecturer in literary theory, and William Shakespeare himself who comes back to life via Angela's imagination. Williamson's central concern is the notion that French poststructuralist philosophy and literary theory have toppled the old certainties of Western culture. Williamson pits the wit of the bard against the literary theory of Grant Swain as the latter tries to indoctrinate and coerce his hapless students into accepting his own worldview. While making a big show of his lofty non-sexist ideals, Swain reveals his interest in 'jouissance' and the bodies of his female students is much more than theoretical.
In the contest between Shakespeare and Swain for Angela's mind, Williamson does load the dice in the bard's favour. He is a genuinely modest and delightful character who is most surprised to find his plays are still performed in the late 20th century.
Dead White Males was staged by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, March 9 - May 6 1995.
The School of Night, Peter Whelan, 1992
This play concerns the circumstances surrounding the death of Marlowe. It was first performed at The Other Place in Stratford by the Royal Shakespeare Company on 28 Oct 1992, directed by Bill Alexander. Shakespeare appears in the play, but is cast under the name Tom Stone. Only as the play progresses does it become apparent that he is Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Dog, Rick Chafe (adaptation of Leon Rooke's novel), 1981
Based on the novel by Leon Rooke. Shakespeare's Dog tells the story of ‘how the Stratford rogue became the world's most famous playwright, and how in the Elizabethan era, lust, love, and lives collide—and it is anyone's guess who is top dog’.
RSC's pantomime Swan Down Gloves features Shakespeare as one of it's principal characters, 1981
Cameos, Inter-Actions, 1977
The London-based community theatre company featured three actors living and performing (independently of each other) as historical characters in community settings (Shakespeare, Edward Lear and Captain Cook).
I was Shakespeare’s Double, John Downie and Penny Gold, RSC, 1974
Will's Way, David Rudkin, RSC, 1984
Frogs, Aristophanes / Sondheim, 1974
Frogs is a musical freely adapted by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove from The Frogs, an Ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in Yale University gymnasium's swimming pool. Dionysus, despairing of the quality of living dramatists, travels to Hades to bring George Bernard Shaw back from the dead. William Shakespeare competes with Shaw for the title of best playwright, which he wins. Dionysus chooses to bring Shakespeare back instead, thereby improving the world, and its political situation. This original production is most famous for having Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Durang in its ensemble. Sondheim compared the acoustics of the original production to 'performing in a urinal.'
The Trouble with Shakespeare, Sibley S Morrill, San Francisco: Cadleon Press, 1974.
Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death, Edward Bond, 1973
Depicts an aging William Shakespeare at his Warwickshire home in 1615 and 1616, suffering pangs of conscience in part because he signed a contract which protected his landholdings, on the condition that he would not interfere with an enclosure of common lands that would hurt the local peasant farmers. Although the play is fictional, this contract has a factual basis.
A Cry of Players, William Gibson, New York Atheneum, 1969.
Stratford Boy, T. B. Morris, 1964
A one act play for five women.
Will Shakespeare, Gent, John Garton, 1964
Jester of Stratford, Rae Shirley, 1964
The synopsis says: Anne and Joan are preparing for Susanna's wedding when William arrives from London. William is not welcome back in Stratford, so the two women give him 30s to go back. He promptly gives the money to Susanna as a wedding gift and leaves.
Shakespeare 400, Phyllis Bentley, 1963
Shakespeare Fantasy, Anon, 1960
Will Shakespeare, Clemence Dane, (date uncertain)
Clemence Dane was the pseudonym of Winifred Ashton (21 February 1888 – 28 March 1965), an English novelist and playwright.
I do not have much information yet on the play although apparently Marlowe dies accidentally in it.
(Irrelevant but, according to Arthur Marshall Ashton she was famous for her indecent, though entirely innocent, remarks. Time and again she settled for an unfortunate word or phrase. Inviting Noël Coward to lunch during the war, when food was difficult, she boomed encouragement down the telephone, "Do come! I've got such a lovely cock." "I do wish you'd call it a hen", Noel answered. To use correctly, in a literary sense, the words 'erection', 'tool' and 'spunk' was second nature to her. When wishing to describe herself as being full of life and creative energy, she chose, not really very wisely, the word 'randy').
No Bed for Bacon, Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, 1959
The plot concerns a young woman who disguises herself as a boy to gain membership of Richard Burbage and William Shakespeare's, theatrical company (a device later employed by Tom Stoppard as the central plot of his 1999 screenplay Shakespeare in Love). Reviewing the book in the Shakespeare Quarterly, Ernest Brennecke wrote:
'A lighthearted fantasy recently perpetrated by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon. Their book is irresponsible, irreverent, impudent, anachronistic, undocumented. The authors warn all scholars that it is also 'fundamentally unsound.' Poppycock! It is one of the soundest of recent jobs. The more the reader knows about Shakespeare and his England, the more chuckles and laughs he will get out of the book. It is erudite, informed, and imaginative. It solves finally the question of the 'second-best' bed, Raleigh's curious obsession with cloaks, Henslowe's passion for burning down Burbage's theatres, and Shakespeare's meticulous care for his spelling.'
Wife to Will Shakespeare, Shirley Rae, 1957
Encore, performed at the Co-op Hall in Leicester. January 1955
I am told that the Lord Chamberlain stipulated that: 'Shakespeare not to be played as a homosexual' referring to a stage direction in the original script which read 'Enter Shakespeare– rather pansy.'
Shake versus Shav, George Bernard Shaw, 1949
A puppet play written by George Bernard Shaw. It was Shaw's penultimate dramatic work. The play runs for 20 minutes in performance.
The play was written by Shaw for the Lanchester Marionettes who were based in their own theatre in Foley House, Malvern, Worcestershire, UK. The company's founders, Waldo and Muriel Lanchester, performed regularly in the Malvern Festival. Shaw, having seen their performances over the years, wrote Shakes Versus Shav for the company in 1949. The play comprises a comic argument between the two playwrights, the intellectual equivalent of Punch and Judy.
William's other Anne, Ivor Brown, 1947
Shakespeare returns from London to meet Anne Whateley eight years after their broken engagement, just as Anne is about to marry a priggish schoolmaster. Shakespeare and Anne are reconciled, and Shakespeare saves his father from bankruptcy at the hands of Anne's vengeful mother. The play was broadcast on BBC television in 1953 starring Irene Worth as Anne and John Gregson as Shakespeare.
Mr. Shakespeare comes home, John Worthington, 1945
Le Grand Will, Maurice Constantin-Weyer, Paris, Editions de la
Nouvelle France, 1945
Truth About Shakespeare, Box, Sydney, 1939
The Death of Shakespeare, Wilfred Blair, 1916
A chronicle play in prose and verse.
The Wooing of A. Hathaway, Grace Carlton, 1937
Carlton gives us an Anne who understands William’s creative genius completely and encourages him to go to London: “You are free to go. I have said so many a time.” Carlton’s Anne Hathaway is not a feminist yet but she’s confident enough to allow William his freedom and is not a deserted woman.
With Golden Quill; a cavalcade, depicting Shakespeare's life and times, E. Hamilton Gruner, Stratford-on-Avon, 1936
Clipt Wings; a drama in five acts, being an Explanation of the mystery concerning the authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare, the parentage of Francis Bacon, and the character of Shaxper. William, Robinson Leigh, New York, Thornton W Allen Co., 1930
Houseboat on the Styx, John Kendrick Bangs, 1928
The Making of an Immortal, George Moore, New York, 1927
Shakespeare's Legacy, James Matthew Barrie, Drury Lane Theatre, London, 14 April 1916
Night's dream in three acts with a prologue and an epilogue, Louise (Ayres) Garnett, 1916
Shakespeare’s End, Conal o’ Riodan, 1912
Catholic Protestant schism, Irish politics and artistic vanity are discussed in this depiction.
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, George Bernhard Shaw, 1910
Sonnets 127 to 152 are addressed to a woman commonly known as the 'Dark Lady' because her hair is said to be black and her skin 'dun'. These sonnets are explicitly sexual in character, in contrast to those written to the 'Fair Youth'. It is implied that the speaker of the sonnets and the Lady had a passionate affair, but that she was unfaithful, perhaps with the 'Fair Youth'. The poet self-deprecatingly describes himself as balding and middle-aged at the time of writing.
Shakespeare and his Love, Frank Harris, 1910
W.Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher, Richard Gurnett, 1904
Shakespeare and Company, Christopher Brooke Bradshaw, London, 1845
Shakespeare's Early Days; a drama in two acts, Charles a Sommerset, London, TH Lacy, 1829.
Shakespeare in Love, Richard Penn Smith, 1804
Harlequin's Invasion, David Garrick, Drury Lane, London, 31 December 1759
Sancho; or, The Student's Whim, Elizabeth Boyd, The Green Room, Drury Lane, London, 1739
'I know men’s hearing has limits :
kings and shop keepers alike
see the greatest worth in their own looks and doggerels
and precious thought is oft shattered on ideas already firm settled in the mind
which being petrified are invulnerable to sense
knowing that, did I over polish the substance
to fashion flattering reflections of lesser men?
There is some necessity in this
For art’s disorderly motives disquiet
the upright, the common herd and the born favoured alike
So she must equivocate three times
seem a, saint,
play the servile devil
and sugar truths lest they be spat back
ahh; I am well hid in my creations'
-1616