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petronius

(26,581 posts)
Thu Apr 24, 2014, 04:08 PM Apr 2014

The battle to build Shakespeare’s Globe

This week marks the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth. Yet the way we remember history’s most renowned playwright might have been very different had it not been for a formidable foe.

In November 1596 a woman named Elizabeth Russell declared war on Shakespeare and his theatrical troupe, in the process nearly destroying the dramatist’s career. Russell rarely features in accounts of Shakespeare’s life, yet her actions determined how we think of him today: as the Shakespeare of the Globe Theatre.

In the National Archives in Kew there is a bundle of curious papers, identified by the prosaic reference number SP 12/260. The documents include two petitions to Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy Council. The first is headed by Lady Russell and records her endeavour to block the opening of a spectacular new theatre which Shakespeare was about to occupy less than a two-minute walk south of her home in Blackfriars, London. This unassuming manuscript discloses a scarcely believable act of betrayal, for among its 31 signatories are Shakespeare’s publisher, Richard Field, and his patron, George Carey, the Lord Hunsdon.

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Lady Russell’s robust personality matched her breeding. One contemporary described her as being “more than womanlike”, after witnessing her physically assaulting a nobleman in a court of law. She sparked numerous acts of rioting, violent affray, kidnapping, breaking-and-entering, illegal imprisonment and armed combat. For Russell warfare was a way of life. “A Lady of my place,” she had insisted, should scorn to be “contemptuously trodden on and overbraved by my malicious inferiors and adversaries.” Shakespeare would discover, to his cost, how true this was.

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a0acf326-c4a3-11e3-b2fb-00144feabdc0.html
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The battle to build Shakespeare’s Globe (Original Post) petronius Apr 2014 OP
Interesting and fun. n/t Benton D Struckcheon Apr 2014 #1
As much as I knew already about Shakespeare, Aristus Apr 2014 #2
Holy shit! Lord Carey is a distant relative. HooptieWagon Apr 2014 #3
 

HooptieWagon

(17,064 posts)
3. Holy shit! Lord Carey is a distant relative.
Thu Apr 24, 2014, 07:01 PM
Apr 2014

I didn't know he was a Shakspeare patron. Carey is same as Cary... originally spelled de Kari. Karry also used. Another well-known Cary was the husband of Mary Boleyn, Ann's older sister.

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