Class Info
Shakespeare is Back!
To Our Nights with Shakespeare Audience
The Play may be the thing to catch the conscience of the King, but we don’t want anyone to share anything other than insights into the greatest works of English literature at NWS.
The final three in-person classes in March of The Tempest are cancelled. Please stay tuned for further updates.
We think this is the best response to the advice that we limit non-essential public gatherings. Nights with Shakespeare will return to normal classes with a new play when our current challenging situation is over.
We ask for your understanding in these uncertain times.
For some interesting reading about Shakespeare and the plague of his days, we recommend two articles, The Infectious Pestilence Did Reign: How the plague ravaged William Shakespeare’s world and inspired his work, from Romeo and Juliet to Macbeth in Slate.
https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/shakespeare-plague-influence-hot-hand-ben-cohen.html
And Broadway Is Closed. Write Poems Instead. When theaters shuttered, Shakespeare turned to poetry in The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/opinion/broadway-coronavirus.html
The Art
The illustrations used in our presentation of The Tempest are by Edmund Dulac.
A bored French law student who switched his studies to art, Edmund Dulac began his artistic career by winning prizes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
At 22 he left his home in Toulouse and moved to London’s Holland Park. Dulac arrived in London in 1904 just as dawn broke for lavish gift-book publishing in England and America.
He was commissioned to illustrate Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. And nine other books of works by the Brontë sisters. He joined the London Sketch Club making valuable professional contacts. Leicester Galleries commissioned illustrations from him. Edmund Dulac was a new, young artist of enormous potential.
After the tremendous enthusiasm that greeted Arthur Rackham’s Rip Van Winkle in 1905 and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens in 1906, Hodder & Stoughton approached Edmund Dulac for the publishing rights to his illustrations in order to produce its own series of gift books.
Thus began a remarkable run that commenced with Stories from the Arabian Nights in 1907, with fifty full-page color designs; and The Tempest in 1908, with its own forty pages of color in Dulac’s inimitable style. His annual gift books continued for another decade, though few matched these early works for their sheer abundance of imagery.
One of his most outstanding efforts in book illustration, Dulac’s The Tempest remains the most spectacular edition ever produced of Shakespeare’s strange and ever-compelling drama.
For a view of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for his 1926 Tempest edition, go here.
The Music
Jean Sibelius – Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prelude and Suites, Op. 109 (1894, 1899)
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Jean Sibelius (December 8, 1865 – September 20, 1957), was a Finnish composer and violinist of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely recognized as his country’s greatest composer and, through his music, is often credited with having helped Finland to develop a national identity during its struggle for independence from Russia.
Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music for The Tempest (1926) and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), he stopped producing major works in his last thirty years.
The Finnish 100 mark note featured his image until 2002, when the euro was adopted. Since 2011, Finland has celebrated a Flag Day on December 8, the composer’s birthday, also known as the “Day of Finnish Music”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Sibelius
Matthew Locke – Music for The Tempest, 1674
Matthew Locke, (born c. 1621–23, Exeter, Devon, Eng.—died August 1677, London), was a leading English composer for the stage in the period before Henry Purcell. He wrote part of the music for Sir William Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes (1656), which is usually considered the first English opera.
Other stage works were music for Thomas Shadwell’s Psyche (1675), for Davenant’s version of Macbeth (revised 1673), and for Shadwell’s version of The Tempest (1674). In The Tempest Locke used for the first time in English music directions such as “soft” and “louder by degrees” and included tremolos for stringed instruments.
Locke’s instrumental music, which is harmonically less daring than his vocal music, is considered among the finest of the 17th century; an example is the Little Consort of Three Parts (1656) for viols. He also wrote music for the coronation festivities of Charles II and anthems for the Chapel Royal.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-Locke
The Class
Nights With Shakespeare is generously underwritten and presented FREE to the public by R.D. Scinto, Inc., one of the state’s largest real estate developers, at his corporate Auditorium located in the Shelton Corporate Park at 3 Corporate Drive, Shelton, Connecticut.
Tuesday evenings, from 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Seating is limited and is available on a ‘first-come’ basis.
Each participant receives one FREE copy of the play. Additional copies of each play can be downloaded as PDFs from our Scripts page.
Contact Info
203.929.6300
info@nightswithshakespeare.com
For directions with Google Maps, go here.
Before class stop by the new Pranzo Caffé for a delicious meal.
Shelton Corporate Park
Shelton, CT 06484
203-929-6300