• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Bob Monkhouse"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Ophelia's Hamlet's True Love So It Seems"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.2450  Wednesday, 31 December 2003

From:           Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date:           Tuesday, 30 Dec 2003 13:43:02 -0000
Subject: 14.2445 "Pericles manuscript"?
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2445 "Pericles manuscript"?

 >> I imagine it might have been a holiday prank...i.e., someone sending out
 >> a false news item and seeing how far it got. Either that or the
 >> notorious New York Times fiction-journalist Jayson Blair got a new job
 >> and a new pseudonym, Vijay Dutt.

The Sun Newspaper in England apparently printed their own version of the
story, and it was available on their website (and is currently still
there at http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003591412,00.html).  I'm
not sure whether they originated it.  Perhaps they copied it from the
Indian Newspaper.  I put a link to the story up on the British
Shakespeare Association website, but said that it was "Rather
suspicious..." and that I could not find the auction on EBay (where the
highest bid for an item seemed to be in tens of thousands of dollars,
not millions of pounds).  Looking back the comment, quoted in the
Sunday, "Five million is unbelievable" from the supposed owner of the
text was probably a cheeky dig at those who would swallow the story.

Doing a brief search of the web, I see that a First Folio was apparently
being sold at Christies in 2000 with an estimate of £180,000 - £250,000,
so the £5 million price is presumably just ridiculous for any
Shakespeare text, let alone for a few pages of the Third Folio (the only
Shakespeare text that seems to have been  rare as a result of many
burning in a warehouse during the Fire of London - it included Pericles
after the second impression, but was not a majorly significant edition
of Pericles), especially when these are supposedly sold without the
benefit of expert analysis or inspection by prospective purchasers, over
the Internet.

It just goes to show.  It is not only the Internet that is fallible.
Unless both the Sun and Hindustan Times sites were entirely faked, and I
can't guarantee that they weren't as I never visited either site before
as far as I remember and cannot guarantee that they are official sites
rather than hoaxes, then the journalists of the print publications were
either dishonest or more likely duped.  I don't know whether the "Daily
Mail" (supposedly the source for the Hindustan Times) printed this story
at all, or whether that too was part of the deception.

Thomas Larque.
"Shakespeare and His Critics"       "British Shakespeare Association"
http://shakespearean.org.uk           http://britishshakespeare.ws

_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>

DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.

• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Bob Monkhouse"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Ophelia's Hamlet's True Love So It Seems"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]