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Scroll.in
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
How to live through the end of the world: Read William Shakespeare's play ‘Cymbeline'
Written in 1611, Shakespeare's Cymbeline is a raw mess – full of feeling and as messy as life. The 18th-century man of letters, Samuel Johnson decried the play as a work of 'unresisting imbecility', a hotch-potch of incongruities. It's true that it's hard to even know what kind of play Cymbeline is. The First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, presents it as the last of his tragedies. But it's also, all at once, a history play, a pastoral, a fairytale, a pantomime and a tragicomedy. Set in ancient Britain at the time of the birth of Christ, Cymbeline stitches together three plots. In one, Posthumus (the banished husband of Innogen, King Cymbeline's daughter) accepts a wager with Iachimo that the sleazy Italian will not be able to seduce his wife. In the second, after 20 years, King Cymbeline's abducted sons (and Innogen's brothers) are restored to him. And in the third, refusing to pay tribute to the emperor, tiny Britain picks a fight with the majesty of imperial Rome. In the age of anxiety What makes Cymbeline such a potent play for our own age of anxiety is how Shakespeare weaves a tale about the collapse of everything known, as connections dissolve, and lays out how we may discover ourselves anew in the radically altered world. Written late in his career, in Cymbeline, Shakespeare rips up all the ways he's been doing things and suddenly starts afresh. Here, some few years before his retirement, he foregoes the complex psychology of his great tragedies and opts for archetypes of fairytale and romance. But in striking out for this new artistic territory, he also turns to himself as his own best source. Like an ageing rock band contracted for one last farewell tour, in Cymbeline, Shakespeare's back playing the hits. Like King Lea r, Cymbeline is set in ancient Britain. Sneering Iachimo is Iago's ghost and Posthumus, a dollar-store Othello. Innogen is Shakespeare's last cross-dressing heroine, passing as a boy, a faded echo of witty Rosalind of As You Like It and sad Viola of Twelfth Night. There's fun in Rosalind and Viola's changed identities, but Innogen puts on boy's clothes to escape. Her father condemns her as disobedient for marrying Posthumus, and instead pushes her towards her step-brother, the fatuous bully Cloten. Innogen's time as a boy is joyless, as she learns that her beloved Posthumus wants her killed. She's a new person now, not Innogen, but 'Fidele'. Unmoored, adrift, she unwittingly finds her brothers, falls ill and mistakenly consumes a drug that puts her into a sleep so deep she appears to be dead. She wakes from this seeming death beside a headless body that she takes to be her murdered husband, but is in fact the villainous Cloten. Desperate with grief, she touches the flowers that have been strewn on the corpse, and smears herself with his blood. It's as stark a scene as Shakespeare ever wrote in its unstable unity of tender beauty and suffering. Innogen sighs: 'These flowers are like the pleasures of the world, This bloody man, the care on't,' and in that conjunction sums up the extremities of life and of this play. When a Roman soldier finds her, she tells him: 'I am nothing; or if not, Nothing to be were better.' Dying to live Politically, too, things are disintegrating. The play multiplies broken bonds, unpaid debts and contracts denied – including both the marriage contract, and the debt of tribute owed to Rome by Britain. Following Innogen's passage through suffering and figurative death, Posthumus undergoes the same process. He has already earned his name by outliving his parents. Reduced, like Innogen, to all but nothing, believed to be dead, but actually in prison, Posthumus receives a vision of his dead family and of forgiving Jove, the divine father of the Roman Gods. Love and social unity have died, but in this mystical scene, the possibility returns of renewal. Both Innogen and Posthumus must 'die' to live. Off stage, in distant Bethlehem, a nativity takes place that signals the death of the old Rome – but also the regeneration of all things. And so the story commits itself to the reconciliation achieved in wonder. This is a play where the word 'miracle' becomes a verb, just as Innogen and Posthumus, and old, foolish King Cymbeline himself come to understand how even the most distressed life may open to bliss. 'The gods do mean to strike me to death with mortal joy,' declares an amazed Cymbeline, as the play offers us a vision of that astonishing unity of suffering and redemption. We may doubt that such wonder could exist for us today. But Shakespeare's full look at the worst enables us too to imagine the sense of hopeful possibility found in his brilliant conclusion. It is a wonderful play.
CNN
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Rare set of first editions of Shakespeare's plays could fetch $6 million at auction
A set of the first four editions of William Shakespeare's collected works is expected to sell for up to £4.5 million ($6 million) at auction next month. Sotheby's auction house announced the sale on Wednesday, Shakespeare's 461st birthday. It said the May 23 sale will be the first time since 1989 that a set of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Folios has been offered at auction as a single lot. The auction house estimated the sale price at between £3.5 million and £4.5 million. After Shakespeare's death in 1616, his plays were collected into a single volume by his friends John Heminges and Henry Condell, actors and shareholders in the playwright's troupe, the King's Men. The First Folio — fully titled 'Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies' — contained 36 plays, of which half were published there for the first time. Without the book, scholars say, plays including 'Macbeth,' 'The Tempest' and 'Twelfth Night' might have been lost. Sotheby's called the volume 'without question the most significant publication in the history of English literature.' Related article World's oldest Hebrew Bible sells for a record-breaking $38.1 million About 750 copies were printed in 1623, of which about 230 are known to survive. All but a few are in museums, universities or libraries. One of the few First Folios in private hands sold for $9.9 million at an auction in 2020. The First Folio proved successful enough that an updated edition, the Second Folio, was published in 1632, a third in 1663 and a fourth in 1685. Although the First Folio is regarded as the most valuable, the third is the rarest, with 182 copies known to survive. It is believed the third book's rarity is because some of the stock was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The Third Folio included seven additional plays, but only one — 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre' — is believed to be by Shakespeare.
Japan Today
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Set of Shakespeare folios to be sold in rare London auction
A First Folio edition of William Shakespeares' plays (1623), considered one of the most important books in English literature A set of four Shakespeare folios estimated to be worth more than £3.5 million ($4.7 million) will go on sale in London next month, auction house Sotheby's said Wednesday. The First Folio, published in 1623, was the first collection of William Shakespeare's plays and is considered one of the most important books in English literature. Without it, up to half of the writer's plays would likely have been lost, including "Macbeth", "Twelfth Night" and "Julius Caesar". Around 235 of the 750 copies believed to have been published during this initial printing have survived. A new print run in 1632 gave rise to the Second Folio, which contained amendments to the initial folio, while the Third Folio containing seven additional plays appeared in 1664. The third is the rarest of the folios, with many copies believed to have been lost in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The sequence was completed with the Fourth Folio in 1685. Generations of bibliophiles have dreamed of owning a full set, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve with fewer copies in private hands. The last time all four were offered as a single lot was in New York in 1989. The set to be sold by Sotheby's on May 23, with an estimate of £3.5 to £4.5 million, was brought together in 2016. "The folios were large, expensive, and prestigious publications that embodied a claim that Shakespeare, a professional writer in the commercial theatre (rather than a poet writing for an elite), had created a legacy that deserved to be passed down the ages," Sotheby's said. "The vast majority of all four Folios are to be found in institutions and this is a rare opportunity to acquire a complete set," it added. The First Folio was published about seven years after Shakespeare's death and contains thirty-six plays, eighteen of them printed for the first time. Famous diarist Samuel Pepys bought a Folio in 1664 and King Charles I read and annotated a copy of the Second Folio while imprisoned in the 1640s. © 2025 AFP
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Shakespeare's collected works hit auction block with $6 million estimate
William Shakespeare's First Folio was published in 1623 and includes "Hamlet" and "Macbeth." (Credit: Getty Images) For the first time since 1989, all four of William Shakespeare's Folios will be offered at auction in a single lot. Sotheby's plans to sell the first four editions of William Shakespeare's collected works next month, carrying a high estimate of around $6 million, the auction house announced Wednesday, which would have been Shakespeare's 461st birthday. Advertisement The First Folio, published in 1623 after Shakespeare's death, is among the most significant books ever produced, containing 36 of Shakespeare's plays, including 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet,' 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Around 750 copies of the First Folio were printed, with around 230 believed to survive today, according to Folio400, a publication celebrating the work's 400th anniversary in 2023. Of those 235, most are in public institutions such as the British Library and New York Public Library. Very few copies described as 'complete,' with all of its original leaves present, remain extant, with one selling for nearly $10 million in 2020. The three Folios that followed are updated editions of the First Folio, containing revised language and clarifications. Advertisement Due to the Great Fire of London, the Third Folio is actually the rarest of the bunch, with an estimated 182 surviving today, according to the Shakespeare Census. Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.
Chicago Tribune
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
A set of first editions of Shakespeare's plays could fetch $6 million at auction
LONDON — A set of the first four editions of William Shakespeare's collected works is expected to sell for up to 4.5 million pounds ($6 million) at auction next month. Sotheby's auction house announced the sale on Wednesday, Shakespeare's 461st birthday. It said the May 23 sale will be the first time since 1989 that a set of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Folios has been offered at auction as a single lot. The auction house estimated the sale price at between 3.5 million and 4.5 million pounds. After Shakespeare's death in 1616, his plays were collected into a single volume by his friends John Heminges and Henry Condell, actors and shareholders in the playwright's troupe, the King's Men. The First Folio — fully titled 'Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies' — contained 36 plays, of which half were published there for the first time. Without the book, scholars say, plays including 'Macbeth,' 'The Tempest' and 'Twelfth Night' might have been lost. Sotheby's called the volume 'without question the most significant publication in the history of English literature.' About 750 copies were printed in 1623, of which about 230 are known to survive. All but a few are in museums, universities or libraries. One of the few First Folios in private hands sold for $9.9 million at an auction in 2020. The First Folio proved successful enough that an updated edition, the Second Folio, was published in 1632, a third in 1663 and a fourth in 1685. Although the First Folio is regarded as the most valuable, the third is the rarest, with 182 copies known to survive. It is believed the third book's rarity is because some of the stock was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The Third Folio included seven additional plays, but only one – 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre' – is believed to be by Shakespeare.
