Kimberley motley biography of william shakespeare

It’s almost as unlikely you’ll live your life without encountering numerous themes, basic storylines, famous characters, famous lines, etc. from Shakespeare as it would be to be similarly unfamiliar with the Bible. Shakespeare is ubiquitous in the culture. Heck, even the 2000 Year Old Man speaks of his involvement with Shakespeare (noting that he himself invested in the only play of Shakespeare’s that is no longer known—Queen Isabella and Murray—and that Shakespeare was absolutely not a great writer at all: his penmanship was terrible).

So certainly in that minimal sense I’m familiar with the works of Shakespeare. But beyond that, for someone of my age, my level of education, having read the number of books I have in my life, etc., I would probably rank (or prior to reading this book would have ranked) in the bottom 10% in terms of the extent to which Shakespeare’s work has been a part of my life.

I have never seen one of Shakespeare’s plays performed. I’m almost sure I have never seen a movie or TV version of one of Shakespeare’s plays.

As far as reading his plays, when I was, I think, 17 or 18, I read a book of three Shakespeare plays called Three Comedies, which contained A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It. That’s it. Nothing before or since.

And I could tell you nothing about those plays from my reading back then. Not just because so many years have passed, but because I was not able to make heads or tails of them, due primarily to the poetic writing style, as I have almost zero ability to understand poetry.

I wasn’t forced to read that book for school (as it happens, I have never had anything by Shakespeare assigned in any class I’ve ever taken—high school, college, or any level—which I’m sure is highly unusual), but as I recall I did force myself to read it because I felt like reading Shakespeare is something that anyone who considers himself the least bit intelligent or educated is supposed to do. But I g

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    Yes, there is certainly no land on the whole earth in which Shakespeare and the Bible are held in such high esteem as in this same America, so much criticized for its love of money; should one enter a blockhouse situated in the far west, and should the dweller there exhibit very definitely evidences of backwoods life, yet has he nearly always furnished a small room in which to spend his few leisure hours, in which the Bible and in most cases a cheap edition of the works of the poet Shakespeare are nearly always found. (Knortz 47)1

    1An echo of Tocqueville’s own staging of Shakespeare on the frontier –“there is hardly a pioneer’s hut that does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember that I read the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin” (55)–, this observation made in 1882 by German scholar Karl Knortz in Shakespeare in Amerika, encapsulates some of the questions both integral to the ever-growing field of Shakespeare’s reception in the United States and representative of this issue of Transatlantica. The fact that this comment should have been made by a German scholar in the 19th century indicates that the field was virtually born outside of the United States via the publication in Berlin of Knortz’s study of Shakespearean criticism in the US. As Alfred Van Rensselaer Westfall pointed out in 1939, the only studies on the subject he was able to trace were either written by Europeans or published in Europe, generally under the title “Shakespeare in America” (10). It is only fitting then that a French journal of American studies should publish this issue on American Shakespeare. Besides, despite pioneering work2 on “American Shakespeare” in France, the field still needs to find its place among French Shakespeareans. Therefore, though this issue is not directed only and primarily towards the French academic readership, its perhaps pretentious yet modest wish is to play a part in the emergence of the field.

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    • Celebrating Black History Month

    This October we have been celebrating Black History Month. Colleagues from across the Law Centre have chosen their most inspiring Black Heroes from a variety of different time periods and backgrounds. Some are well-known, some are less well-known, all are important.  

    Kimberley Motley is an international human rights and civil rights attorney from Wisconsin. She was the first foreign lawyer to practise in Afghanistan, and has been involved in many high-profile cases. One such case involved two children who had been taken illegally to Afghanistan by their father and had been missing for two and a half years. With the support of the Western Australian Family Court and Legal Aid, Ms Motley was able to get the support of Afghan authorities to find and retrieve the children. 

    “The laws are ours, and no matter what your ethnicity, nationality, gender or race, they belong to us.”

    Kimberley Motley

    Akala is a prominent rapper, poet, author and motivational speaker. Artistic Director of the Hip-Hop Shakespeare company, he is a BAFTA and MOBO award-winning hip-hop artist. He is the author of the book Natives, a part biography, and part polemic on race and class, which aims to find a way to liberate of all humanity from oppression and exploitation.  

    Mary Seacole, a nurse during the Crimean War, did not have formal British nursing qualifications or training, but relied on her skill and experience as a healer and a doctress from Jamaica. Her application to help with nursing in the Crimean War was refused by the War Office, so she travelled independently and set up her own hotel where she tended to the battlefield wounded. Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, is one of the earliest autobiographies of a mixed-race woman. She is often cited as an example of hidden black history; her story having been overshadowed by that of Florenc

    One of the most enjoyable aspects of my work as a rare book librarian is being a bridge-builder between books and people. What I particularly enjoy is witnessing the joy others derive from exploring our books, and I once referred myself to a customer as a facilitator of joy.

    Back in pre-pandemic times, I had the opportunity to do some picture research for my colleagues Adam and Emma, who searched for illustrations in early printed books. Inspired by 19th-century scrapbooks, my colleagues put together an assortment of images they found in rare books from the 16th and 17th centuries and created their miscellany titled A ShakespeareMotley.

    Seeing the delight in my colleagues’ eyes as they viewed the early printed books that I had got out for them was the best part of the project. It certainly made me feel the facilitator of joy that I strive to be. Witnessing my colleagues’ engagement with the books also enabled me to see the books and their illustrations in a new light, and I went on a journey of discovery as I delved into our rare book collection.

    I chose books from topics such as religion, medicine, natural history, works that Shakespeare would have known and read, and domestic manuals. I selected favourites but also rare books I had never got out for a reader before. To list all books would make an impossibly long blog, so I chose to focus on nine books, which are unique for various reasons.

    A travel diary of the teenaged aristocrat Thomas Coryat published in 1611 chronicles his adventures, observations of local history and the curious and quirky. My favourite illustration shows Coryat standing on an enormous barrel filled with Rhinish wine; its size dwarfs the young traveller. Richly illustrated the full title is Coryat’s crudities: hastily gobbled up in five months travel. His travelogue is an account of his journey he undertook in 1608 through various European countries. Coryat not only entertained with his tales of adventure, but he also int