April 23: World Book Day

April 23 is World Book Day.  Though not as well known as Shakespeare's birthday, alas, it is celebrated throughout the world in small ways.  On this day UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property!:

"23 April: a symbolic date for world literature for on this date and in the same year of 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo. It was a natural choice for UNESCO's General Conference to pay a world-wide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone, and in particular young people, to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity.

"The idea for this celebration originated in Catalonia where on 23 April, Saint George's Day, a rose is traditionally given as a gift for each book sold. The success of the World Book and Copyright Day will depend primarily on the support received from all parties concerned (authors, publishers, teachers, librarians, public and private institutions, humanitarian NGOs and the mass media), who have been mobilized in each country by UNESCO National Commissions, UNESCO Clubs, Centres and Associations, Associated Schools and Libraries, and by all those who feel motivated to work together in this world celebration of books and authors."

The following is a message from Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of World Book Day:

Since 1996, the World Book and Copyright Day, celebrated on 23 April, has been a unique opportunity for us to reflect together on new issues relating to the book, viewed concomitantly as an industry, an art, and an essential tool in ensuring quality education for all.

The Day may be placed within the context of the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003-2012), the theme of which is "Literacy as Freedom", thus calling to mind the emancipatory effect of books. Such linkages are of the essence, especially if the book is to be a major medium for teaching men and women, as well as the most marginalized social groups, to read and write at a time when one adult in five worldwide can do neither.

The book, an instrument of knowledge and a means of sharing, must further each person's education, fulfilment and empowerment. It thus contributes to enjoyment of the universal right to education and to effective participation by each individual in social, political and cultural life.

Furthermore, having only recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we must stress that books are of no avail if we do not guarantee their free circulation. Concern over the "free flow of ideas by word and image", enshrined in UNESCO's Constitution, must be kept alive so that we can continue to promote universal access to books. As you can see, it is both our understanding of genuine quality education for all, and respect for the universality of human rights and fundamental freedom for all; that are at stake in issues relating to the book and its circulation.

On the occasion of the 14th World Book and Copyright Day, I therefore solemnly call on all countries and on UNESCO's partners and friends to join us in common reflection on the place of the book in our educational and cultural policies and on its contribution to the emergence of creative diversity that is deemed more useful than ever.

In addition to World Book Day celebrations and initiatives,  what better day to announce the availability of the World Digital Library.  "The World Digital Library makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.  The principal objectives of the WDL are to:

• Promote international and intercultural understanding;
• Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
• Provide resources for educators, scholars and general audiences;
• Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries."

Content selection in the library is not yet great, though significant even now, it will grow with time and cooperation between participating libraries and institutions.  James Billington, US Librarian of Congress, has created this YouTube video to explain US involvement in the WDL.

As Shakespeare's original editors famously said in another context, ""Reade...therefore; and againe, and againe."  What better day than World Book Day to reaffirm our commitment to world peace through world literacy.

A Gilded Age View of Richard Grant White

The following is extracted from the pages of Shakespeariana, Vol. VI, Sept. 1889, pp. 406-409.  It is part of a series run by that venerable organ on the American Editors of Shakespeare, but is more like an undisguised fan letter to the first truly original American editor Richard Grant White.  As you read I think you will agree it is more than over the top, and, by the way, completely wrong about White's influence, but its charm is attractive.  For those unfamiliar with the Collier forgeries see my entries on Collier.  Unfortunately this panegyric discusses just about everything about White EXCEPT his edition of Shakespeare, but never mind that.  We will cover it in detail soon.  For now, enjoy

    When the world, hardly more than fifty years ago, began with Cooper and Irving to read "an American book,'' we can imagine the curl of the British lip at a suggestion that an American opinion might be worth taking. Indeed, the question as to when there began to be any American opinion at all upon matters Shakespearian, might well be made a very perplexing one. Criticism is hardly to be expected unless the thing criticised is at least potentially present. Where there is no sea there are not apt to be sailors. The question as to when American criticism of Shakespeare began, would naturally depend upon the answer to a prior question, as to when Shakespeare and Shakespearian history began to be printed and read in America.

Shakespeare himself was alive, and at the very summit of production, when Captain John Smith settled in Virginia. But the Immigrant seems not to have brought a chance Quarto among his personal baggage, and the fad for collecting antiques, which a few years ago turned the old colonies into markets for city dealers, while ransacking the venerable houses and yielding richly in claw-footed furniture and blue china, seems never to have turned up to the light one of these priceless pamphlets or a broadside of the date. The first settlors of these shores brought no books except the Bible and devotional works. There were plenty of copies of Fox's Martyrs, and Baxter's Saints' Rest, and Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs, but no Shakespeares.  Such being the case, it was natural enough that the utterances of Shakespeare's first critics, Rowe, Pope, and Theobald—and the so-called criticism of Rymer, Warburton, and others, who were supposed to be critics—found no echo, a century later, over here. Passing over another century, no outermost circle of the Ireland episode reached these shores, nor did the great work of Ireland's great contemporary, Malone—the first lawyer who took poor Shakespeare out of the clutches of the Poets and Poets Laureate—find in the United States any readers or sympathizers, much less disciples. The silence that follows discovery was noisy compared to the silence of America as to the greatest name in their inherited literature.

    But, just about fifty years after the Ireland forgeries, came the Collier frauds, and to the surprise of scholars, up from this side sprang, all at once, without preparation, the Malone for Mr. Collier's Ireland, the critic who was to smash their pretensions as Bentley had smashed the Letters of Philaris— basing, on pure internal evidence, conclusions of fact which every other character of evidence, circumstantial, physical, and material, was to confirm and establish beyond gainsay.

    When Mr. Collier produced his "Perkins Folio," and its "new reading's" agitated all Letters, a l'instant a lithe, clean limbed American warrior, stepped firmly into the field, and took that whole field for his province. And out of that war of pamphlets and pamphleteers, it was to Richard Grant White, the American, that the honor belonged of demonstrating, finally, that William Shakespeare and the Perkins "readings" were not contemporary. Armed cap-a-pie, with a perfect equipment at every point, nerved to a great effort, with a presumption against him as a combatant at all, from an unexpected quarter of the universe, Mr. White knew whereof he wrote. First of all, a grammarian and a comparative philologist, an attempt to deceive him by a piece of Victorian, palmed off as a piece of Elizabethan, English appeared to be about as hopeless an effort as would be an effort to satisfy a comparative anatomist like Huxley with a Barnum mermaid or a New Haven sea-serpent of lath and canvas. The records, easily extant, bear witness to the reception accorded to "Shakespeare's Scholar" (under which title Mr. White collected his magazine contributions upon "Perkins Folio" matters), and how speedily the name of the book transferred itself to its author. Its great merit, its absolute exhaustiveness, its minute accuracy, and its shrewd postulates of fact and of logic were immediately conceded. As a rule, mere windfall approbation of a book is of as little value as an estimate drawn from its preface, or its binding, or from personal acquaintance with its author, in divers and sundry suburban newspapers. But, in this case, the first approval of "Shakespeare's Scholar" became its deliberate valuation. And even when, finally, Sir Francis Madden, an expert in chirography, and Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, a chemist, went to work with the Perkins Folio itself before them—the one with his microscope and the other with his acids—they found the marginalia of that notorious copy of the second Folio as of the exact dates to which Mr. White, without an inspection but from philological testimony alone, had referred them.

    The controversy is dead. If Mr. White's book is dead, too, it is because it closed the work it was written to perform. Time, the fulness of learning, discovery, and the constantly bettering consensus of scholars, (which new elements in solution and induction are constantly accruing), have verified every single one of Mr. White's prophesies, and established the worthlessness of every single one of the "readings" he rejected. This is the highest praise at any time. But at the threshold of the Shakespearian criticism of a continent, it is an achievement in the empire of literature. Since then American scholarship has made great strides. But, just as three centuries of English letters since Shakespeare has not brought English speech back to where he left it in himself, so American Shakespearian criticism has not, to date, done more—and it is difficult to see how it could do more—than Mr. White, at its very threshold accomplished.

    About Mr. White's only infirmity was a certain difficulty of temper, which is not altogether an unknown quantity in this Preserve. But, however often this infirmity was allowed to find its way into his first drafts and occasional contributions to his subject matter, it was rarely suffered to appear in their collected and revised forms.

    Mr. White's place as a Shakespearian commentator is secure. The value of his work is held to be of the highest. And it is exceedingly doubtful if an annotated edition of the great dramas has appeared since the first Grant White edition, or will hereafter appear, in which Mr. White's contributions, notes, or memoranda have not or will not have a representation.

William Byrd

We are often amazed today that men like Thomas Tallis and his student, William Byrd, whose lives spanned the religious ferment among the great Tudor rulers, could have developed such religious pragmatism when it came to their profession, writing music for the liturgy of the Church of England and the Catholic Mass.  In doing so, they were undoubtedly reflecting the religious ambiguity of their times, when too open a politically incorrect belief could be fatal, but when no public belief was equally unacceptable.  And then, after all, it was their professional business to provide music for religious ceremony, Protestant or Catholic.  It seems often the talent and inventiveness trumped nonconforming personal belief with creative artists.
If you look up William Byrd in an encyclopedia his birth date will often be succeeded by a question mark.  It is, indeed, indefinite.  It is just possible he was born as early as 1534, but more likely in 1543, depending upon whether the Wylliam Byrd who became a chorister in Westminster Abbey in 1543 is the composer, or simply another lost William Byrd.  His birth place is usually given as Lincoln, since he has strong Lincoln associations later in life, but if the Westminster chorister and Byrd are the same, London is a more likely birth place.  In any event, there is no doubt he died in 1623, aged at least 80.
It is a near certainty that Byrd sang in the Chapel Royal during the reign of Mary I under Thomas Tallis.  In his mid-twenties he is found as organist and choirmaster of Lincoln Cathedral.  He was named a gentleman of the Chapel Royal under Elizabeth, in 1572 and worked there as organist, singer and composer for many subsequent years.  He published a collection of motets with Tallis before Tallis' death, and composed Ye Sacred Muses as an elegy to the departed Tallis.
In spite of Byrd's employment writing for the Protestant Church of England under Elizabeth, he seems to have harbored strong personal Catholic sympathies, and wrote a good deal of music for the Mass in his later years, apparently celebrating Mass secretly with his co-religionists.  Even though Byrd composed and openly published Catholic music he was not molested by the state, though some of those in possession of his printed music certainly were.  He composed prolifically throughout his very long life, and after Orlando Gibbons, is often considered the greatest of Elizabethan-Jacobean composers.