Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 322. Wednesday, 11 Dec 1991.
 
 
Date:         	Mon, 09 Dec 91 18:07:01 PST
From: 		Michael Best <
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Subject:      	Shakespeare graphics--and an announcement
 
I read with interest the comment about graphics on Shakespeare, by Tad
Davis, in which he mentions the HyperCard program from Intellimation,
*Shakespeare's Life and Times*. Some members of SHAKSPER will remember
that I announced the program several months ago, and offered a demo
disk in exchange for a blank disk. [Ed. Note: See SHK 2.0136 and SHK 2.0175
in the May and June 1991 Logbooks for details -- k.s.]
 
Tad Davis was kind to mention that there is a copyright notice. There
is indeed, though the copyright is held not by the company but by the
author. I will be happy to give permission to use graphics, so long as
the usual attribution is made (the hours I've spent scanning, editing,
enhancing. . . deserve *some* recognition!), but I should warn that I
had to get copyright for some of the graphics myself--the obvious ones
like the Titus Andronicus drawing, or the sketch of the Swan, where
the copyright is held by the owners of the MSS.
 
SHAKSPERians may be interested to know that Version 2.0 of
*Shakespeare's Life and Times* will be released early in the new year.
The main improvement is a substantial file of sound resources (also
copyright, I fear), which allow samples of renaissance music (Byrd,
Weelkes, Johnson. . .) and passages from the plays read in a
reconstruction of Shakespeare's original pronunciation. There are also
several additions, notably to the section on the exploration of
specific plays.
 
For the record, here is an abbreviated version of the original
announcement. The offer of the demo disk is still good.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------
 
I have recently completed a computer program  intended to  supplement
the teaching of Shakespeare: *Shakespeare's Life and   Times*,
published by:
 
                       Intellimation,
                       PO Box 1922
                       130 Cremona Drive
                       Santa Barbara CA 93116-1922
                       phone 1-800-3INTELL)
 
It's a HyperCard (2.0) program, and runs on any Macintosh from the
Mac Plus on,  so long as it has a hard drive (the basic program takes
up about 5.2  megabytes, the sound resources 5.5 Mb).  The program is
designed to allow students to guide  themselves as they  explore the
background to ShakespeareUs life  and works. It is a supplement to
the teaching of Shakespeare,  rather than an attempt to teach his
works directly  -- although there  are many references to the plays,
there is no extensive  treatment of  the texts themselves. It is not
intended to be a critical  discussion of  Shakespeare;; it is an
introduction to what we know of his life,  the  stage his plays were
first acted on, and the various influencesQ social,  political,
intellectual, and literaryQthat lie behind the words  on the page.
 
The program consists of nine interlinked modules (stacks). There is
an  Introduction, which also serves as on-line "help," and seven
stacks dealing with  different areas: ShakespeareUs life; the
Elizabethan stage (including staging,  the acting companies, and so
on); the social background (country, city, court  live, the role of
women); the political and historical background (including a  section
on the history of the history plays); the intellectual background (the
Medieval world view, Renaissance new knowledge, religion); the
literary  background, concentrating on earlier and contemporary
drama; and there is a  reference section, with a detailed chronology,
maps, and a bibliography. Throughout there is  an attempt to use
illustrative passages not only from  Shakespeare  but from many other
contemporary sources.
 
There is one further module that looks in some detail at issues in
various well-known plays that  the program can provide historical
material on.
 
I'm especially anxious to have the program used by Shakespeare
specialists and  teachers, because I'm sure that there is a great deal
to improve -- it has  pretentions to the encyclopedic, but I'm no
encyclopedist. I can send a demo  disk if you are interested and  send
me one to copy it onto (Department of  English, University of
Victoria, Victoria B.C. V8W 3P4, Canada).
 
Michael Best