With a US audience of tens of millions in its TV release at the same time it was released in American theaters, Laurence Olivier’s film “Richard III” (1955) has left a lasting, sometimes hilarious, legacy in pop culture, from Peter Sellers’s lofty and amusing reading of the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” in Olivier’s style to modern-day TV villains who speak directly to the camera and win us to their side.
Black actor J.A. Arneaux starred as the title character in the Astor Place Company’s production of Richard III and published his own 19th-century edition.
This is an excerpt from Yale professor Joseph Roach’s talk for the Shakespeare Anniversary Lecture Series at the Folger Shakespeare Library in October 2016. Listen to the full recording on SoundCloud. The most humble or even abject items of material culture—take stage properties, for instance—can speak eloquently about history, if we will only listen carefully… Continue Reading »
As curators of Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity we both began our work in the archives with established interests in the connections between literary greatness and consumer culture. Janine has written about the marketing tactics and packaging of the earliest English novels as well as about modern book jackets, while… Continue Reading »
As you’ve seen on this blog already, the next Folger exhibition, Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity (August 6 to November 6), will be a fascinating look at the posthumous celebrities of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. In a blog post last month, the exhibition curators joined us to discuss Kate… Continue Reading »
