APRIL 2024 MAGAZINE

Robin Lindley interviews  UW History Professor Vicente Rafael on his new book The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (Duke University Press).

All modern poets are likely to have been inspired to write poetry by reading “Shakespeare’s” verse. If such poets have been following news about “Shakespearean” attribution, they should have a few questions that cloud this inspiration. Were these “greatest” poems of all time (given the 4 billion “Shakespeare” books in circulation) actually written by an actor without a formal education? Are the hushed arguments regarding plagiarism in Passionate Pilgrim indicating that the most beloved poet stole his work from others? The linguistic, structural, biographical and other types of analysis in my British Renaissance Re-Attribution and Modernization series (BRRAM) answers these questions correctly with a purely fact-based approach for the first time. 

Connell’s portrayal of Mrs. Bridge is a grim reminder that true evil, is banal, seemingly mundane, and often so steeped in good manners that evil actions are rarely identified as evil at all.