Lynne Kositsky (born 1947) is a Canadian author of poetry and young adult historical fiction. Kositsky, who was born in Montreal, Quebec and grew up in London, England, now lives in the Niagara region of Ontario. [1] As of 2010 she has published ten novels, set in such varied historical contexts as Ireland during the Great Famine of the 1840s, Nova Scotia during the early 19th century, Elizabethan London, and the Holocaust.
Her books often have in common the theme of a youthful protagonist (usually, but not always, female) surviving social disruption or ostracism in a world dominated by the mistakes of adults. Her four books in the Our Canadian Girl series issued by Penguin all focus on an African Canadian ex-slave, Rachel, who is forced to relocate with her parents to Nova Scotia after the Revolutionary War. Like many of Kositsky's other books, the Rachel series received critical acclaim. The first and fourth books of the Rachel series, in the series were both nominated for the prestigious Hackmatack Award, and A Mighty Big Imagining won a White Raven Award, given by the International Youth Library in Munich to books which "contribute to an international understanding of a culture and people."
The Thought of High Windows garnered extensive critical acclaim and won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Youth in 2006. Reviewers for Kirkus, [2] The Washington Post, [3] Hornbook Magazine, [4] The Center for Children's Books, [5] and the School Library Journal [6] all voiced critical praise for it.
Kositsky's A Question of Will (2000) deals with the Shakespearean authorship question, exploring the Oxfordian perspective, and she has since co-authored with Roger Stritmatter a series of articles for academic journals on the date, sources, and symbolism of Shakespeare's Tempest . A Question of Will was included in the Folger Shakespeare Library's "Golden Lads and Lasses" exhibit (2006). [7]
The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship contends that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. While historians and literary scholars overwhelmingly reject alternative authorship candidates, including Oxford, public interest in the Oxfordian theory continues. Since the 1920s, the Oxfordian theory has been the most popular alternative Shakespeare authorship theory.
Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is considered one of the most influential books ever published.
Kenneth Oppel is a Canadian children's writer.
Prospero's Books is a 1991 British avant-garde film adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, written and directed by Peter Greenaway. Sir John Gielgud plays Prospero, the protagonist who provides the off-screen narration and the voices to the other story characters. As noted by Peter Conrad in The New York Times on 17 November 1991, Greenaway intended the film “as an homage to the actor and to his 'mastery of illusion.' In the film, Prospero is Shakespeare, and having rehearsed the action inside his head, speaking the lines of all the other characters, he concludes the film by sitting down to write The Tempest.”
The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1796) is a Gothic novel written by the English author Ann Radcliffe. It is the last book Radcliffe published during her lifetime. The Italian has a dark, mysterious, and somber tone which fixates on the themes of love, devotion, and persecution during the time period of Holy Inquisition. The novel deals with issues prevalent at the time of the French Revolution, such as religion, aristocracy, and nationality. Radcliffe's renowned use of veiled imagery is considered to have reached its height of sophistication and complexity in The Italian; concealment and disguise are central motifs of the novel. The novel is noted for its extremely effective antagonist, Father Schedoni, who influenced the Byronic characters of Victorian literature.
Sonnet 5 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence. Sonnet 5 is linked to Sonnet 6, which continues the theme of distillation.
Sonnet 38 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the lyric subject expresses its love towards a young man.
Sonnet 48 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 63 is one of 154 sonnets published in 1609 by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence. Contrary to most of the other poems in the Fair Youth sequence, in Sonnets 63 to 68 there is no explicit addressee, and the second person pronoun is not used anywhere in sonnets 63 to 68.
Sonnet 67 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man and is a thematic continuation of Sonnet 66. In this poem, the speaker's anxiety about the social difference between him and his beloved takes the form of a criticism of courtly corruption. This sonnet was placed first in the pirated and mangled edition of 1640.
Rachel Victoria Lebowitz is a Canadian writer.
Sonnet 74 is one of 154 sonnets published by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in 1609. It is one of the Fair Youth sequence.
Sonnet 120 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that he wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, the rest of the story is set on a remote island, where Prospero, a complex and contradictory character, lives with his daughter Miranda, and his two servants: Caliban, a savage monster figure, and Ariel, an airy spirit. The play contains music and songs that evoke the spirit of enchantment on the island. It explores many themes, including magic, betrayal, revenge, and family. In Act IV, a wedding masque serves as a play-within-a-play, and contributes spectacle, allegory, and elevated language.
Roger A. Stritmatter is a Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University and the former general editor of Brief Chronicles, a delayed open access journal covering the Shakespeare authorship question from 2009 to 2016, now the Brief Chronicles Book series (2019-present). He was a founder of the modern Shakespeare Fellowship, an organization that promotes Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works of William Shakespeare. He is one of the leading modern-day advocates of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, and has been called the “first professional Oxfordian scholar”.
John Bell is a Canadian comics historian and senior archivist at Library and Archives Canada. He specializes in the history of English Canadian comic books, and has curated a number of exhibitions and websites.
According to Dr. Naseeb Shaheen, Shakespeare, in writing his plays, "seldom borrows biblical references from his sources, even when those sources contain many references." Roy Battenhouse notes that the Shakespearean tragedy "frequently echoes Bible language or paradigm, even when the play's setting is pagan." Similarly, Peter Milward notes that despite their secular appearance, Shakespeare's plays "conceal an undercurrent of religious meaning which belongs to their deepest essence." Further, Milward maintains that although Shakespeare "may have felt obliged by the circumstances of the Elizabethan stage to avoid Biblical or other religious subjects for his plays," such obligation "did not prevent him from making full use of the Bible in dramatizing his secular sources and thus infusing into them a Biblical meaning." Milward continues that, in writing his plays, Shakespeare "shows the universal relevance of the Bible both to the reality of human life 'in this harsh world' and to its ideal in the heart of God." Steven Marx suggests "a thorough familiarity with the Scriptures" is a prerequisite to understanding the Biblical references in the plays, and that the plays' references to the Bible "illuminate fresh and surprising meanings in the biblical text." Marx further notes that "it is possible that Shakespeare sometimes regarded his own role of playwright and performer as godlike, his own book as potent and capacious as 'The Book'." It is important to note, as a recent study points out “The diversity of versions reflected in Shakespeare’s writing indicates that ‘Shakespeare’s Bible’ cannot be taken for granted as unitary, since it consists of a network of different translations”
Aaron Posner is an American playwright and theatre director. He was co-founder of the Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia and was the artistic director of Two River Theater from 2006 to 2010. He has directed over 100 productions at major regional theater companies across the country. He has won six Helen Hayes Awards, two Barrymore Awards, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the John Gassner Prize, a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Bay Area Theatre Award, and an Eliot Norton Award.
Michael Witmore is a Shakespearean, scholar of rhetoric, digital humanist, and director of a library and cultural institution. In 2011, he was appointed the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., where he continues to serve.