-EVIDENCE FOR THE AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE-NEVILLE IN DOUBLE FALSHOOD:
THE 'LOST' PLAY OF CARDENIOby JohnCasson with BrendaJames
-A NEW INTERPRETATION OF EPIGRAM 77 BY BENJONSONby JohnCasson
-THE TANGLED WORLD OF ELIZABETHAN ESPIONAGE: HENRYNEVILLE AND CHARLESPAGET, DOUBLE AGENTby BrendaJames
-SHAKESPEARE-NEVILLE, FORESTS, ISLANDS AND FOLKLOREby BrendaJames
-SHAKESPEARE, NEVILLE AND THE IRON MEN OF THE THEATRE by Brenda James (Addresses the question of the patronage problem surrounding William Shakespeare and examines the connections between Henry Neville and the Theatre, together with investigating the financial background of other Theatrical entrepreneurs of the time.)
SECTION 2 – [Essays and Commentaries by Brenda James]
- 1.WINWOOD'S MEMORIALS OF STATE
- INTRODUCTION TO, and articles on WINWOOD'S MEMORIALS OF STATE, (Winwood's Memorials was produced by Edmund Sawyer in 1724. It is a collection of diplomatic and other letters of the 16th and 17th centuries.)
- Patronage - Sawyer and Walpole
- 2.General Introduction to a Selection of Extracts from relevant letters which were not included in Winwood's Memorials.
- 3. Part One of TRANSCRIPTIONS OF NEVILLE'S LETTERS AND DISPATCHES, from Winwood's Memorials
It has often been said that no one who had visited Bohemia would ever have written The Winter’s Tale with its well-known reference to the coast of that country. Our received knowledge nowadays is that Bohemia was the old name for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and that it was and is a land-locked area. However, there was a time when the kingdom of Bohemia stretched as far as the shores of the Adriatic. What’s more, the documented life of the King of Bohemia who reigned during this expansion of his empire ran a course strangely parallel to that of Polixenes, the Bohemian King in Shakespeare’s play.
Ottakar II (the Bohemian King in question) reigned over Bohemia from 1230 – 1278. These were troubled years for the Holy Roman Empire, and Ottakar took advantage of this to forward the expansion of his own kingdom. After conquering the then large country of Hungary, his empire encompassed the Adriatic, so that Bohemia at last had a coast. But the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph Habsburg, decided to fight back. After half a lifetime of struggling between the two, however, Wenceslaus (Ottakar’s son) was betrothed to Rudolph I’s daughter. If Ottakar is reflected in the character of Polixenes (King of Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale), then Rudolph may well be represented by Leontes, the lion-hearted king of Sicily, who spends a half a lifetime misjudging the King of Bohemia but then finally allows his daughter to marry Polixenes’ son.
Research proves that the empire of Bohemia once stretched to the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Significantly, the then King of the expanded Bohemia shares various experiences with the fictional Polixenes, King of Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale.
