(Michael Sommers’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/24; via Pam Green.)
Shakespeare in love? How about Shakespeare in a jam?
That is the scenario in “Equivocation,” a dark, thoughtful comedy by Bill Cain that is currently enjoying its Garden State premiere at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey in Madison.
It is 1606, and Shakespeare — here called Shag; short for Shagspeare — has been commissioned by King James I to dramatize the “true history” of The Gunpowder Plot, an actual episode that saw a band of Catholic nobles conspire in 1605 to blow up the English Parliament and kill King James.
Just before the massacre was set to occur, an anonymous letter tipped off the authorities to kegs of gunpowder hidden in a cellar. The perpetrators were soon seized, tortured, tried and executed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/nyregion/when-shakespeare-is-the-subject-not-the-scribe.html
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