Pete, thank you for bringin up the messy quarto — it’s actually one of my favourite things about this play, and somehow I feel like the hot mess of its 1662 printing matches the wackiness of the play’s contents. I also like the confusion it creates around asides, and that Aurelius speech you’ve quoted is a great example. What’s everyone hearing?…[Read more]

Was anyone else reminded of Love’s Labour’s Lost? Sort of a comparison by inversion–since obviously Artesia succeeds more quickly at getting a Welcome and makes the opposite bargain of LLL’s Princess–but the beginning of the scene sets up an agreement of lords that immediately meets the (feminine) agent of its undoing.

I’m also curious about…[Read more]

Hi folks! Latecomer hopping in to the Birth of Merlin party. I’m Sawyer (they/them/theirs or he/him/his). I’m finishing up my last dissertation year at UC Davis where I work on early modern drama, performance studies, and queer/trans studies. My research has mostly been on contemporary Shakespeare performance and how institutions negotiate making…[Read more]

In relation to David’s point about Artesia being like Tamora, I’d also compare Estrild from Locrine. Edwin’s ‘She was woo’d afore she came, sure’ is a great cynical line, and I love these set-ups where everyone onstage apart from one person (who is the most powerful) can see exactly what’s going on.

Picking up on Anna’s comment about Aurelius…[Read more]

[For interest, I’m reading this in the 1908 Shakespeare Apocrypha; will be interested to see if any of C.F. Tucker Brooke’s editorial idiosyncrasies show themselves, though he’s usually pretty diplomatic.]

One thing I appreciate is how straightforward the opening is. The deference to Constantia’s wishes; the banter about ‘He is a man, I hope.’ /…[Read more]

Thanks for that important context, Dave — I was trying to figure out the best space to highlight the suspicious attribution on the title-page!

Really glad so many of you are as intrigued by Artesia and her epic entrance as I am. It feels like we get a lot more women and kinds of women in these first two scenes than in most plays I can think of?…[Read more]

Hi everyone. Wanted to open by saying that I’m already enjoying reading this play one act at a time and really considering what is presented in each one. Not sure I’ve ever done that.

First thing I wanted to say is how much I got out of reading the dramatis personae, particularly the intriguing role of the ‘little antic spirit’ and also the cha…[Read more]

It was interesting to read Act One, because when I read this play before I was mostly interested in the Clown, so I tended to skim-read the serious bits. But they’re actually fun! Artesia is a great role; she’s reminding me of Tamora in Titus Andronicus.

Modesta is interesting. She makes me think of the other holy virgins who reject marriage in…[Read more]

Hi folks,

another latecomer. I’m Ollie, based at the Uni of York. I try to work on travelling players, early modern theatres & architecture, 20/21st performance of non-Shakespeare, in between teaching everything from Directing to Design and Production and Approaches to EM Drama.

Recently I’ve been running a project with my colleague Mike Cordner…[Read more]

Hi all,

Latecomer, sorry, but very excited by this group! I’m Pete (he/him), I’m based in Nottingham, and I research the contemporary and historical performance and text of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

I wrote a PhD and a book on the so-called Shakespeare Apocrypha, in which The Birth of Merlin only tangentially featured as it as a real…[Read more]

I’ve never read this, and so am finding it great fun (and surprisingly rare) to read an EM play without knowing in advance what is going to happen.

I love that Modestia is given a soliloquy, and a deeply philosophical reason, to desire a spiritual path for herself, in preference to marriage.

That is one hell of an entrance Artesia gets, and I…[Read more]

I’ll have some comments on Act 1 soon, but, before we start, can I get some practical stuff out of the way? This play was originally called The Child hath Found his Father and was written in 1622 for Prince Charles’s Men, who were then performing at the Curtain in Shoreditch.

I’m making a special point of saying this because the information was…[Read more]

Welcome all! This is shaping up to be a great crew 🙂

Just a quick update to say that Charlene has very kindly created a clean PDF copy of the transcription text, so that it’s MUCH easier to read. She’s a star! You can now find that under ‘Files’ above.

Looking forward to diving into Act 1 next week!

Hi All!

Thank you, Nora, for setting this up.

I’m Kim (he/him/his). I’m on a fixed-term lectureship at Cardiff. I’ve bored Nora with this before, but Birth of Merlin is a big play for me. Before getting into academia I’d read it in an old book of Shakespeare apocrypha. I was blown away by the weirdness, the extraordinary ideas (for someone…[Read more]

All the better… genre, magic AND dragons 🙂

Ooh Susanne, if you like genre, you’re going to have a LOT of fun with this play! XD

Hi everyone, I’m Susanne – another first-time reader of the play.

I specialise in (early modern) law and literature, and have a particular interest in genre (how do early modern genre politics/evolving genres influence the depiction of legal conflicts on the stage?), revenge, and non-Shakespearean drama. Oh, and pirates! Because the German…[Read more]

Hi everyone, I’m Duncan, and I’m currently in the final(ish) year of a PhD in Education and Applied Linguistics, doing a case study on teaching Shakespeare workshops at a Chinese university using ethnomethodology (the other EM I’m interested in). It was a surprise to find myself in the social sciences, as for many years I taught film studies,…[Read more]