Lecture about Shakespeare, delivered by Anthony Burgess to students at City College, New York [Shakespeare in 1592: Playhouses, Plague and Robert Greene]

Scope and Content

Before Burgess begins his lecture, he sets out three possible assignments for his students to complete: translating 10 lines of a speech by Richard Nixon into Elizabethan style blank verse; writing one page comparing the Joan of Arc of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan with Shakespeare’s in Henry VI, Part 1; or writing one page on four lines from Henry VI, Part 1 (beginning Act 4, Scene 2 “sell every man his life as dear as mine…”). Burgess also seems surprised by his students’ unfamiliarity with particular plays. He is surprised when someone suggests Shakespeare wrote a play about Henry I [Part 1: 4:45] and when his students appear to have heard of Shaw’s play [Part 1: 7:04].

Burgess outlines that this lecture will detail the circumstances surrounding Shakespeare’s early forays into writing for the theatre in 1592, and talks briefly about these early plays.

He begins by describing the playgoing culture at the Rose Playhouse, with Shakespeare’s plays being the most popular ones performed; the times of the year when plays were performed; and the role that plague played in closing the playhouses, especially in 1592. Burgess describes the centrality of the plague to Elizabethan life and the effects this had on the general population’s psyche. He then moves on to discuss the pamphlets and death of Robert Greene, and Greene’s relationship and representations of Shakespeare as an “upstart crow”.

Burgess draws a further comparison between himself and Shakespeare throughout. He describes the producers and entrepreneurs who have profited from novels he has sold for very little [Part 1: 33:37]. When discussing Richard III, Burgess also speculates that Shakespeare would imagine characters as his friends and family if they shared names, as Burgess does as a novelist [Part 2: 6:44].

Audience questions asked near the beginning [Part 1: 4:33, Part 1: 5:24, and Part 1: 6:49] but they are inaudible.

Access Information

Open

This recording has been digitised and is accessible to researchers in mp3 format.