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A Lover's Complaint : Shakespeare No More?
http://www.slate.com/id/2193477
I was wondering if this would happen, for real, in my adult lifetime. Ron Rosenbaum reports that the Royal Shakespeare Company has made the decision to drop the long poem A Lover's Complaint from The Complete Works, and to add the relatively recent discovery, To the Queen.
Now, granted, it's not Macbeth or Cardenio. But still, think about what this means - redefining what's understood to be "Shakespearean". I'm not quite sure what I find more intriguing, pointing to one work formerly thought to be Shakespeare and saying "Nope, not Shakespeare", or a formerly unknown work and saying "That is."
2 comments:
I think you should read the RSC Complete Works editor's response to Rosenbaum's article. The bottom line -- it is in, but there was a physical page limit on the volume.
I like the RSC editor's term: dubia. There must be room for grey areas, and some will look more grey to one person than another. I side entirely with Rosenbaum having always found "A Lover's Complaint" embarrassingly bad. The only thing I would add to his commentary is that I find the meter very un-Shakespearean. The meter also damns "To the Queen" and, no matter what shivers it gave to the audience, I find it hard to believe it was penned by Shakespeare. I give it the palest shade of grey.
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