"Long Day's Journey Into Denmark" -- a talk in New York on Jan. 20

On Monday, Jan. 20 (Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in the U.S.), I'll be giving a talk after the Acting Company's production of Hamlet at the Pearl Theatre in New York City. 

The play begins at 7 p.m., and the talk (approx. 25 minutes) will be after the performance. A question and answer period will follow.  

It's titled "Long Day's Journey Into Denmark: Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford and the Radical Autobiography of Hamlet."

Tickets can be ordered here. 

Cast info here. About the company: 

The Acting Company was founded by theater and film legend John Houseman along with current Producer Margot Harley, Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, David Ogden Stiers and a dozen other graduates of the first class of Juilliard’s Drama Division.  Now in its 41st Season, it has won a TONY for Excellence in Theater while touring to 48 states and 10 foreign countries – performing, engaging students and building new audiences for the theater.  In addition to Mr. Kline and Ms. LuPone, Rainn Wilson, Jesse L. Martin, Jeffrey Wright, Frances Conroy, Harriet Harris, Hamish Linklater, David Schramm and Keith David all began their careers with The Acting Company along with 300 others who have carved out careers in the theater, TV and film.

A fan letter to ... The Courtier

Below, a guest post by author John Lowry Lamb about Baldassare Castiglione's The Courtier.  

The first English translation of Castiglione's  The Courtier was published in 1561. Thomas Hoby's English translation (from its original Italian) is often used to this day and can be found in its entirety on Google Books. Then eleven years later, England saw its first translation of this courtly etiquette book into the lingua franca of the court, Latin. It is this 1572 Latin edition of The Courtier that Edward de Vere became involved with.

Think of The Courtier as a sort of answer to Machiavelli's The Prince – an austere, dark treatise on how to succeed in politics. The book offers Castiglione's comments on a similar subject matter presenting an alternate, more altruistic approach to court behavior. There can be little doubt that Edward de Vere was responsible for the publication, as he himself composed the introduction to the translation by a man named Bartholomew Clerke. While most Elizabethan writers/patrons crafted brief introductions of a few sentences, Edward de Vere wrote lengthy, gorgeously written piece which honors not only Castiglione but Clerke, too.