Category: theatre
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Another P & P Play
Hello everyone! As I mentioned last month, I went to Nashville to visit my daughter and see yet another stage adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I arrived on February 14th and my husband had arranged for flowers and ice cream cake to be waiting for me. It was a wonderful extended weekend. We went to…
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Another P&P Play
I apologize for this brief post, but life has turned a bit crazy recently and my blog completely slipped my mind until the alarm went off on my phone shortly after I received a text from my daughter. Since they happened so close together and both had to do with Jane Austen, I figured it…
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Did Austen Speak Posh?
In our last blog, we heard how Shakespeare’s English much more resembled the accents of the provinces than the “proper” English favored today by actors and newscasters, the latter being an accent called “Received Pronunciation” or “RP.” Jane Austen had knowledge of and appreciation for Shakespeare. There are parallels between her social comedies and his, Willoughby reads…
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‘To Bay or Not to Bay’: Did Shakespeare Talk Country?
When I was in college, the drama department at the University of Arkansas wanted to do a bang-up job on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Over the summer, they sent the actor playing the lead role off to study proper enunciation. He returned with an impeccable rendition, but no one anticipated the disconnect for the audience caused by…
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News Update
Hello and welcome to March! I have some bad news and some good news this month. I do not have an excerpt for you from An Interrupted Proposal, but I have just finished my last class for a few months and will be focusing on getting that book finished, edited, and ready for publication. Instead,…
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A Night at the Theatre
Hello, hello, hello! I hope everyone had a beautiful weekend and I am so pleased to help you start your week. This weekend was a whirlwind for me as I had three overlapping events (one that I just had to skip completely in order to make it through the others) and homework that was due…
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Private Theatricals During the Regency, a Guest Post from Ann Hawthorne
Ann Hawthorne loves her research and this piece on private theatricals, we learn something of how the Austen family might have put on productions of their own. We usually associate private theatricals with half-baked, somewhat childish business, but in the Georgian and Regency era, it was taken extremely seriously. The great and the (sometimes less-than-)…
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Cover Reveal for Austen’s Creative Development
I’m pleased to announce today the cover reveal for my new book on Jane Austen’s creative process and her development as a writer. The nonfiction book, Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction: Six Novels in a “Style Entirely New,” can also be pre-ordered now from Jane Austen Books. It will be available in…