January
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0055 Wednesday, 30 January 2008 [1] From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 15:26:58 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy [2] From: Kirk McElhearn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 21:45:10 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy [3] From: Ron Severdia <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 13:05:22 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy [4] From: Lynn Brenner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 16:48:55 EST Subj: Re: copyright [5] From: Robert Projansky <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 16:58:11 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy [6] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 10:36:46 -0000 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 15:26:58 -0500 Subject: 19.0052 Books to Buy Comment: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy I'm very happy to hear that Joe Egert has paid for a download of my Eight Hamlets. Thanks Joe, and I hope you enjoy it! I somehow doubt that Gabriel Egan begrudges me my pittance, but if he wants to offer my book for free, I wouldn't mind. I expect the book to make some serious money, but the way things are in this world, and this profession, it seems unlikely to happen until after I'm dead. At least I can take some pleasure in contemplating that long tail. Best wishes, David Bishop [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kirk McElhearn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 21:45:10 +0100 Subject: 19.0052 Books to Buy Comment: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy >I take it, then, that Gabriel Egan neither accepts royalties >himself, nor feels that anyone else has the right to be paid >for their labour in this kind. I'm rather with Sam Johnson's >oft-quoted dictum that 'no man but a blockhead ever wrote, >except for money'. The Bradley book is in the public domain, and available from Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16966 Kirk [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ron Severdia <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 13:05:22 -0800 Subject: 19.0052 Books to Buy Comment: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy >Larry Weiss said: >Giving away or selling pirated copies of her works does >have that effect. This is a common misnomer and an oft-used blanket statement about a copyright "protecting" an author. While Bradley's work is in the public domain (and therefore should be accessible by anyone free of charge) this doesn't necessarily mean that someone can't charge for binding a copy (or digitally, for that matter) and selling it to anyone who will pay for it. That's the beauty of public domain and freedom of information. And contrary to popular belief, pirating a book can even be beneficial to the proceeds (not to mention the spreading of the ideas contained therein). A prime example is Coelho's The Alchemist, where the author himself is a proponent: http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com/ http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124/ http://en.sevenload.com/videos/bIjFXZD/DLD08-Day1-Creating-universes Maybe Dr. Wells could try something new? Ron Severdia PlayShakespeare.com [4]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lynn Brenner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 16:48:55 EST Subject: Re: copyright My heartfelt thanks to Messrs. Weiss, Lindley, and Egert for so eloquently expressing the view of someone who writes for a living! And I need hardly add, a view that William Shakespeare would unquestionably have shared. Lynn Brenner [5]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert Projansky <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 16:58:11 -0800 Subject: 19.0052 Books to Buy Comment: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy Larry Weiss says, in response to Gabriel Egan: It is an axiom of Marxism (a world view which I suspect Gabriel finds attractive and which has achieved such signal success in actual practice) that all property . . . Infuriating. Regardless of what he thinks of any opinion expressed by anybody in this forum, I think Larry Weiss should be ashamed of himself for stooping to red-baiting on SHAKSPER. Bob Projansky [6]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 10:36:46 -0000 Subject: 19.0052 Books to Buy Comment: Re: SHK 19.0052 Books to Buy Larry Weiss asks: >Would Gabriel treat a living author the same way? Would >he, for example, make a PDF file of Stanley >Wells's "Shakespeare & Co.," which bears a 2006 >copyright in Stanley's name, and make it available >on Gabriel's website to be downloaded by anyone >who wants to read the book but prefers not to pay for it? Several respondents wrote as though I had advocated such a thing, while a careful reading of my posts will show I did not. Just to be clear: no, I wouldn't deliberately undermine someone else's monograph sales by distributing large numbers of copies for free. (I might go beyond the permitted limited distribution for the purposes of teaching and research, and think we should all push those limits as hard as we can.) The only outright law-breaking I advocated was picking the digital locks on the new digitizations of the Henslowe-Alleyn papers. One would have to think the Digital Millennium Copyright Act a piece of reasoned and sensible legislation to find fault with my position there. >I would be willing to wager that Gabriel >would feel much abused if he were hired >to teach a class of undergraduates >and, after doing so, was denied his salary >on the ground that he had delivered the >same lectures the previous year, so he >had already been paid for them. The ownership of teaching materials is an interesting aspect to this topic, so I'll strain Hardy's indulgence with an anecdote that I think is germane. In my first few months as Education Lecturer at the replica Globe in south London an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) audit was done by external lawyers. (These lawyers' time was a 'gift' from their law firm, but a cynic would see this as a Trojan horse: the audit found that 'Why yes, you DO have a range of IPR problems, and our firm can help you solve them'.) It was suggested to me by the lawyers that all the materials (lectures, articles, books) I generated while employed by the Globe would, because I was its employee, belong to the Globe. I pointed out that if this were true, it must by the same token be true that all the lectures I wrote at my previous institution belonged to that institution and could not in fairness be given to students at the Globe. Hence I would need a few months relief from lecturing to write a fresh set of lectures for the Globe. At this point my employer asked the lawyers not to pursue this point. The ownership of ideas generated by people who work for educational institutions is a vexed and unresolved question. Universities rightly think it iniquitous that they pay academics to generate knowledge that is then given (virtually for free) to publishers and thereafter sold back at great cost to the university library. In the digital economy I have been sketching in these posts, universities themselves would retain in their Institutional Repositories the knowledge their staff generated. It is no surprise that publishers are very worried indeed about Institutional Repositories. >There is no principled difference between that and >publishing unauthorized copies of a book containing >the same lectures. I haven't proposed such a thing. I'd like academics to think beyond the book as a medium, despite the pressure to confine oneself to that medium. The main pressure arises from the means by which professional advancement is regulated. >It is an axiom of Marxism (a world view which >I suspect Gabriel finds attractive . . . What gave me away? >. . . all property is the fruit of labour. Actually, the claim of Marx (and his predecessors) is that all 'value' (not 'property') is generated by labour. In Marxism, 'property' is a notion arising in particular circumstances of production and varies remarkably across times and places. (One might see the story of Cain and Abel as the proto-typical conflict between the arable farmer, for whom land is property, and the pastoralist for whom that notion is absurd. For a simpler illustration of the same point, I ask students to imagine the privatization of the atmosphere and consider whether they could ever accept the idea that the air can be owned.) >. . . intellectual property, which is a >direct capitalization of labour. Surely SHAKSPER, the exertion of so much intellectual labour by so many people for 18 years, disproves this assertion. Where's the capitalization? >To infringe a writer's copyright is to deprive him >of compensation for the sweat of his brow; >it is theft of his labour. I advocated breaking the digital locks that are proposed for the Henslowe-Alleyn papers digitization. Those doing the digitization of the papers will claim that although the primary materials are not their intellectual property, they are imbuing these materials with fresh copyrightable value by digitizing them. This absurd argument is the reason that libraries feel entitled to put on their microfilm images the words 'Not for reproduction' even when the image is of a 400-year old book. Spurious authority used to be given to this claim by the sheer cost of making microfilms: it just felt like those who had invested so much in the copying machines ought thereby to acquire some rights. Now that copying technology is very cheap, those who once claimed such spurious rights (acquired by copying) have had to perform an embarrassing volte-face and insist that merely copying something doesn't make it yours. David Lindley writes: >I take it, then, that Gabriel Egan neither >accepts royalties himself, nor feels that >anyone else has the right to be paid for >their labour in this kind. Royalties are not payment for labour, as indeed their etymology betrays: the notion derives from royal prerogatives and land-use rights. Surprisingly, the OED's first example is as late as 1857. For the sake of achieving agreement, I'd happily leave out of the argument that I'm making for Open Access all those writers for whom royalty payments are a substantial proportion of their income and confine myself to those writers who are primarily employed by the state as educators and researchers. I can't see why David thinks that the ideas I have advocated require me to forgo the very small royalties I currently receive: I have not spoken against the paying of royalties. That said, I would happily forgo all of mine as the price for being able to get Open Access to all the research materials that are currently in private ownership despite being funded by public money. Joe Egert wrote: >I recently downloaded David Bishop's >new EIGHT HAMLETS for the exorbitant price of one dollar (the paper >version was priced much higher). Having read Eagan, I'm now inclined to >demand a full refund of this unconscionable >exaction. Perhaps Gabriel might download >the full text onto his site and offer it free to >the rest of us. I'm sure David won't object. I'm afraid I don't understand Joe's point and cannot respond. Gabriel Egan _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0054 Wednesday, 30 January 2008 [1] From: Martine Van Elk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 10:32:03 -0800 Subt: Re: littered under Mercury [2] From: Stephanie Kydd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 13:10:58 -0800 (PST) Subt: SHK 19.0049 Littered Under Mercury [3] From: John W. Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 23:13:17 -0500 Subt: Re: SHK 19.0049 Littered Under Mercury [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martine Van Elk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 10:32:03 -0800 Subject: Re: littered under Mercury Hi Steve, Autolycus says: "My father named me Autolycus, who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" (4.3.24-26). The pronoun "who" refers to Autolycus, the mythological figure. Autolycus, the character in the play, is a regular human being, but also "littered under" Mercury. Where the mythological Autolycus was actually fathered by Mercury, the figure Autolycus in the play was born under the star of Mercury--both described as "littered under." The character in the play is not literally saying his father is Mercury, but talking astrology. The Norton Shakespeare says in a footnote for littered under: "Fathered by Mercury; born when the planet Mercury was in the ascendant." Hope this helps, Martine van Elk [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephanie Kydd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 13:10:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: Littered Under Mercury Comment: SHK 19.0049 Littered Under Mercury In F1, these lines from WT run as follows: My Trafficke is sheetes: when the Kite builds, looke to lesser Linnen. My Father nam'd me Autolicus, who be- ing (as I am) lytter'd vnder Mercurie, was likewise a snapper-vp of vnconsidered trifles: In the F1 text, "as I am" is clearly parenthetical; "was likewise" refers to Autolicus' father. The line seems pretty straigtforward: both Autolicus and his father were "lytter'd vnder Mercurie." The suggestive sexual context (Trafficke, sheetes, Kite, Linnen, snapper-vp, trifles) suggests that "Mercurie" has nothing to do with the god or the astrological sign and everything to do with "Mercurie" as a treatment for venereal disease. - Stephanie Kydd [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: John W. Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 23:13:17 -0500 Subject: 19.0049 Littered Under Mercury Comment: Re: SHK 19.0049 Littered Under Mercury Stephen Merriam Foley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > >I am wondering about the lines in A Winter's Tale 4.2 when >Autolycus reproduces his naming. "My father called me Autolycus" >This seems clear enough, if suspiciously indirect, and parallel >to the naming of the false Autolycus (Some call him Autolycus). >But then the next pronoun is "someone who was" which should >be Autolycus himself (nearest noun) but who is clearly (tense of >verb "was") the father and not the son. So "littered under Mercury" >presents a puzzle. Since the father IS Mercury. Autolycus and his >half-brother twin were the result of two inseminations, one by >Hermes and one by Apollo. So what I am wondering is how >Mercury is littered under Mercury. Where have I gone wrong? It is not generally taken that Autolycus of Bohemia is the classical figure, literally engendered by Mercury. The connection is more symbolic: Mercury is, among other things, the god of thieves. _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0053 Wednesday, 30 January 2008 From: Jack Lynch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 21:39:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: WS & GWB Dear folks, In a few weeks, I'll be addressing a lay audience-not at all scholarly-and they've asked me to talk about the political uses of Shakespeare. In the academy, we're accustomed to reading "political" broadly, but this audience is thinking specifically about modern party politics-and, since it's an American audience, American references will inevitably dominate. I'll be grateful if members of SHAKSPER can direct me to any particularly juicy examples that will play well before a non-specialist audience. There's no shortage of material-LexisNexis turns up more than a thousand hits for "George W. Bush and Shakespeare"-so what I'm looking for is particularly striking examples that will work in this kind of setting. It helps if the plays are familiar to modern nonacademic audiences. The obvious place to start is comparisons between the current president and Shakespearean characters, episodes, and quotations, though references to recent US presidents or other high-profile politicos, any of the current presidential candidates, or perhaps Tony Blair would fill the bill. In my quick survey of some of those LexisNexis hits, two topics come up again and again-both, oddly, to the same character, though they're deployed to different ends. The first came in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, when Bush's supporters likened him to the dissolute Prince Hal, now elevated to a newly serious Henry V. (One commentator-a one-time speechwriter for Reagan and Bush I-was on NPR on 21 September 2001, declaring "In last night's speech, we saw the President go from a callow Prince Hal to a mature Henry the Fourth." Give or take, I guess.) The second is to compare GWB to Henry V not in his impressive accession to political maturity, but as an invader of dubious moral authority. As the New York Daily News put it in May 2003, "This year's Shakespeare in Central Park production is about the leader of a country who diverts the people's attention away from the dubious way he came to power by invading another country. President George W. Bush? No, Henry V." They're the two leitmotifs; other examples do show up. Nicholas Kristof wrote a widely quoted essay in the New York Times in September 2004; it goes through any number of comparisons, some obvious, some forced. Shakespeare would have taught Bush about the inevitability of intelligence failures, since Othello believes Iago's lies; "Mr. Bush emulates Coriolanus, a well-meaning Roman general and aristocrat whose war against barbarians leads to an early victory but who then proves so inflexible and intemperate that tragedy befalls him and his people." That kind of thing. I also note without comment that LexisNexis turns up more than 300 articles under "Hillary Clinton and Lady Macbeth." (Cherie Blair doesn't fair much better.) For this talk I'm not interested in whether the comparisons are apt, or whether the politics are left- or right-leaning, only in the fact that the comparisons are being made. Any takers? _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0052 Monday, 28 January 2008 [1] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Jan 2008 02:58:24 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0046 Books to Buy [2] From: David Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Jan 2008 21:47:18 -0000 Subj: RE: SHK 19.0046 Books to Buy [3] From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 11:02:13 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 19.0046 Books to Buy [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Jan 2008 02:58:24 -0500 Subject: 19.0046 Books to Buy Comment: Re: SHK 19.0046 Books to Buy Gabriel Egan >see[s] no need for legal barriers to simple copying of words >so long as the meanings and attributions are not distorted >thereby. In giving away copies of A. C. Bradley's _Shakespearean >Tragedy_ on [his] website [he does] not misrepresent Bradley >nor take credit for what he wrote, and that's important. No doubt, and many authors are annoyed when their words are misrepresented; but the sensible ones recognize that a certain amount of that sort of thing goes with the territory. Misstating an author's ideas hardly injures her in a material sense or reduces her standard of living. Giving away or selling pirated copies of her works does have that effect. Of course, making a copy of Bradley's "Shakespearean Tragedy" available for free is a reasonably safe bet, as that book is almost certainly in the public domain. Bradley's lectures were first published in 1904 and Bradley died in 1935 (and is beyond caring about his words being misrepresented). Would Gabriel treat a living author the same way? Would he, for example, make a PDF file of Stanley Wells's "Shakespeare & Co.," which bears a 2006 copyright in Stanley's name, and make it available on Gabriel's website to be downloaded by anyone who wants to read the book but prefers not to pay for it? I would be willing to wager that Gabriel would feel much abused if he were hired to teach a class of undergraduates and, after doing so, was denied his salary on the ground that he had delivered the same lectures the previous year, so he had already been paid for them. There is no principled difference between that and publishing unauthorized copies of a book containing the same lectures. It is an axiom of Marxism (a world view which I suspect Gabriel finds attractive and which has achieved such signal success in actual practice) that all property is the fruit of labour. Whether that is true of land, machinery, money, etc., is a point to be mooted elsewhere; but that notion is uniquely true of intellectual property, which is a direct capitalization of labour. To infringe a writer's copyright is to deprive him of compensation for the sweat of his brow; it is theft of his labour. [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Jan 2008 21:47:18 -0000 Subject: 19.0046 Books to Buy Comment: RE: SHK 19.0046 Books to Buy I take it, then, that Gabriel Egan neither accepts royalties himself, nor feels that anyone else has the right to be paid for their labour in this kind. I'm rather with Sam Johnson's oft-quoted dictum that 'no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money'. David Lindley [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 11:02:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: 19.0046 Books to Buy Comment: Re: SHK 19.0046 Books to Buy Gabriel Egan explains: >I see no need for legal barriers to simple copying of words so long as >the meanings and attributions are not distorted thereby. In giving away >copies of A. C. Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_ on my website I do not >misrepresent Bradley nor take credit for what he wrote, and that's >important. > >The medium by which Bradley's words are conveyed is unimportant. Our >copyright laws exist to support the businesses of those who have, until >recently, controlled the medium by which most mass dissemination took >place: printing on paper. Printing is no longer the best medium for mass >dissemination of words, and those laws are an impediment to knowledge. > >The claim that copyright law protects writers is untrue. I want to be >able to copy anybody's words for the purpose of reading and engaging >with them, and I am happy for anybody to copy my words for the same >purposes. The only "foul use" is misrepresentation, and the best tool to >prevent it is open debate. JE: I recently downloaded David Bishop's new EIGHT HAMLETS for the exorbitant price of one dollar (the paper version was priced much higher). Having read Eagan, I'm now inclined to demand a full refund of this unconscionable exaction. Perhaps Gabriel might download the full text onto his site and offer it free to the rest of us. I'm sure David won't object. Or would he? Joe Egert _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0051 Monday, 28 January 2008 [1] From: Greg Hanthorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 26 Jan 2008 20:21:08 EST Subj: SHK 19.0037 Richard III Novel? [2] From: Margaret Hargrave <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Jan 2008 14:34:51 +1100 Subj: Richard III novel? [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Greg Hanthorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 26 Jan 2008 20:21:08 EST Subject: Richard III Novel? Comment: SHK 19.0037 Richard III Novel? Larry Weiss writes in response to the request "Richard III Novel": >It's not a novel, but the BBC series "House of Cards" is a clear >parallel, in many respects a deliberate one. There were two more sets of >programs in this series, the second of which has Lear parallels and the >final one Macbeth. In fact, "House of Cards," "To Play the King," and "The Final Cut" (the three elements of the exceptional BBC Frances Urquhart series) were all novels first (with the same titles) written by Michael Dobbs. Paperback editions were published by Harper-Collins Publisher in 1995. Greg HanthornThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. _ [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Margaret Hargrave <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Jan 2008 14:34:51 +1100 Subject: Richard III novel? As a retired English teacher from Sydney, I can report that I and various other teachers of senior high school English, have teamed study of _Macbeth_ with _House of Cards_. The parallel is striking. Teaching material on this text combination has been published by the English Teachers' Association of NSW. Michael Dobbs wrote the novel(s) from which the acclaimed TV series was derived. Cheers, Margaret Hargrave _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.