Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel
Encyclopedia
Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel (born January 21, 1944) is a German Professor of English, literary critic, Shakespeare scholar and writer. For the first time, she applied truly trans-disciplinary research methods to study Shakespeare’s time, life, work, portraits, religion and the ‘Dark Lady’ of his sonnets on the basis of the numerous new historical sources, visual and textual, she had discovered or newly interpreted. Evaluating the new source material with the help of numerous specialists, among them identification experts from the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BKA = CID / FBI), Professors of Medicine, physicists, 3D engineers, botanists, archivists, an archaeologist, an architect, a cultural historian, an expert on old masters, a linguist, a palaeographer, theologists, jurists and literary scholars, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was able to offer conclusive answers to many of the unresolved problems of Shakespeare’s life and literary career, viewed against the backdrop of the turbulent times he lived in.
(German Research Foundation) for two and a half years to prepare her Habilitationsschrift (post-docterate dissertation). After her habilitation at the University of Mainz in 1977, she was granted the venia legendi and the title ‘Professor’. She has been teaching English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Marburg
and Mainz
since 1977. From 1979 to 1982, she served as Consul for Cultural Affairs at the German Consulate General in Toronto. From 1984 to 1985, she was visiting professor at the University of Kassel (Germany). From 1982 to 2005 Hammerschmidt-Hummel was the long-standing senior research scholar and editor of the research project ‘The Shakespeare Illustration’, funded by the German Research Foundation (Bonn) and the National Academy
(Academy of Sciences and Literature), Mainz
. She greatly enlarged the Shakespeare Illustration Archive’s collection at the University of Mainz (since 1996 at the Mainz National Academy
) (from c. 1600 to c. 7400 illustratons) - after the founder of the archive, the eminent German Shakespeare scholar, Professor Horst Oppel, Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s former supervisor, had died in 1982. In 1946, Oppel had started collecting Shakespearian illustrations, which led to the foundation of the Shakespeare Illustration Archive.
In 1996, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was granted a one-year award with travel funding by the German Research Council, allowing her to carry out specific investigations in English churches, castles, galleries, museums and libraries with regard to the authenticity and history of several of Shakespeare’s portraits. This also enabled her to pursue more broadly conceived studies, with a view to throwing light upon the religious and cultural-historical context within which the origins and functions of these images must be seen. Her many years of research in the field of „Shakespeare in art“ resulted in a three-volume study she compiled, authored and edited. Featuring 3100 photographs of works of art to Shakespeare’s plays, it was published by Hammerschmidt-Hummel in 2003. In 2005, she donated the Archive’s unpublished collection to the Central Library of the University of Mainz where it is now accessible in digitized form under its new name: „Shakespeare-Bildarchiv Oppel - Hammerschmidt“. Hammerschmidt-Hummel is married to a retired chief executive officer in the German cement industry. They have one daughter.
(National Portrait Gallery, London
), the Flower portrait
(Royal Shakespeare Company
Collection, Stratford-upon-Avon
), the Davenant
bust (The Garrick Club, London), and the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask (Hesse State and University Library, Darmstadt
, Germany
), with the help of numerous specialists, among them identification experts from the German Federal Criminal Police Office
(BKA
= CID / FBI), medical specialists, physicists, 3D engineers, archivists and an expert on old masters. A most important precondition of all of the author’s investigations into Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits, drawings, busts, death masks etc. was the fact that these images are executed in such a true-to-life manner that today’s identification specialists can identify the persons portrayed, and medical experts are able to diagnose their illnesses and assess their progressive pathological states. By diagnosing and tracing the development of the signs of illness in Shakespeare’s face, first noticed by Hammerschmidt-Hummel, her medical experts also identified and verified the most probable cause of Shakespeare’s death. The conspicuous growth on the upper left eyelid they interpreted as Mikulicz Syndrome, an abnormality of the tear glands, in this case probably cancerous; the swelling in the nasal corner of the left eye as a fine caruncular tumour; the considerable swelling on the forehead (in conjunction with the other pathological symptoms) as systemic sarcoidosis
, i.e. an internal disease that affects the organs and takes a very protracted course, but proves fatal. The identification tests as well as the medical assessment show that the poet must have sat in person for the Chandos portrait
, the Flower portrait
and the Davenant
bust. They reveal that the death mask must have been taken from Shakespeare’s face, shortly after his death. In 2006, Hammerschmidt-Hummel presented her results on the identity, authenticity and history of the portraits investigated, including medical assessments of their visible illnesses as well as her suggestions as to their possible creators, in a book, entitled The True Face of William Shakespeare.
On the author's additional findings concerning the genuineness of the Flower portrait, restored at the Ashmolean Museum
, Oxford, in 1979, see: 'The Flower Portrait: Press Releases and Current Debate'.
In her book And the Flower Portrait of William Shakespeare is Genuine After All, published in 2010, Hammerschmidt-Hummel (in cooperation with international experts) provided additional evidence for the fact that the Flower portrait, donated to the Stratford gallery in 1895, x-rayed at the London Courtauld Institute in 1966 and restored by Nancy Stocker at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1979, was indeed the old authentic, worm-eaten portrait of Shakespeare created during his own lifetime. Furthermore, in this book she was able to prove that the Flower portrait, subjected to an x-ray examination in the laboratories of the London National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in 2005, was not the original painting but a copy. In addition, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was able to demonstrate conclusively that the Flower portrait, subjected to paint analysis in the NPG’s laboratories too was a copy. These reproductions are strikingly distinct from the original painting, and also differ from each other. The original and true-to-life Flower portrait is missing since about 1999. Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s results have been critically scrutinized, fully confirmed and further substantiated by eight experts. In her book review the American science correspondent Muriel Mirak-Weissbach wrote: “The original Flower portrait, a most precious national English relic, has disappeared and been replaced by not just one but two copies, as Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel has convincingly proved in this book.”
, created in the 1590s and kept at Hampton Court, whose subject had hitherto not been identified, served as the decisive basis of all scientific investigations carried out in conjunction with the identification process. By close cooperation with a linguistic expert, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was able to establish that the poem inscribed to the painting was the missing final sonnet of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady cycle and described what, from the poet’s point of view, was an unhappy ending of a ménage à trois. Gheeraerts’s highly pregnant and festively dressed lady thus turned out to be Shakespeare’s famous Dark Lady of the sonnet
s. The isolated and suffering poet, depicted as a ‘weeping stagg’, complains that ‘the fruit of his love’ now belongs to ‘others’. The most spectacular love affair at the Court of Elizabeth I was the one between her lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Vernon, and the third Earl of Southampton
, which began in 1595. Comparisons between Gheeraerts’s Persian Lady and an authenticated portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, in the Collection of the Duke of Buccleugh (c. 1600) Hammerschmidt-Hummel carried out with the help of a BKA
identification expert proved that Gheeraerts’s hitherto unidentified Persian Lady (= Shakespeare’s Dark Lady) was none other than Elizabeth Vernon. In August 1598, ten weeks before giving birth to her daughter Penelope, she had married the Earl of Southampton
, Shakespeare’s literary patron, friend, and also rival in love. Hammerschmidt-Hummel found several additional clues, historical and visual, that Vernon’s first-born daughter, Penelope, was not fathered by the third Earl of Southampton
, but by Shakespeare. In the Countess’s authentic portrait she discovered a hidden image of Shakespeare’s face. And Penelope’s facial features are in striking resemblance with those of William Shakespeare. The search for the „lost daughter“ will become a dominant theme in Shakespeare’s later literary work. Penelope married Baron William Spencer, an ancestor of the present ninth Earl of Spencer and his sisters, among them the late Princess Diana.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s scientific results were published in her book Das Geheimnis um Shakespeares ‘Dark Lady’: Dokumentation einer Enthüllung (The secret around Shakespeare’s ‚Dark Lady‘. Uncovering a mystery. In his expert opinion on the book the cultural historian and Panofsky scholar Professor Dieter Wuttke concluded: “The work convinces me in every detail, in all its conclusions. It represents a triumph of cultural-historically guided philology which would also have found the enthusiastic support of Aby M. Warburg or Erwin Panofsky.” The linguist Professor Klaus Faiß stated: “… it is quite certain that an indisputable advance in knowledge (Erkenntnisfortschritt) has been achieved which will cause the great bard’s biography and thus also his sonnets to appear in a new light. Scholarship will have to deal with this. It will, however, be very difficult to refute the … findings based on extensive source material and expert opinions from other specialist disciplines.” In his book review the Shakespeare scholar Professor Wilhelm Hortmann wrote:
… Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel has undertaken a … daunting task: first, to integrate into the Shakespearean corpus a known but anonymous sonnet; furthermore to locate and identify a definite historical personage as the object of a famous painting and this person as, in fact, the mysterious Dark Lady herself …; and finally to integrate her findings into the corpus of Shakespearean biographical scholarship on the subject, by bringing forward and explicating a set of hitherto misinterpreted, disregarded, overlooked or not connected items – literary, factual, documentary and pictorial – as pieces of evidence in a gradually unfolding argument that gains in conclusiveness from one step to the next. … Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel is nothing if not thorough. But her painstaking progress pays dividends. Her circumspect marshalling of the great mass of circumstantial evidence forms the solid basis for the far-reaching conclusions. … Shakespeare scholars … will now have a new incentive to re-study the many love-and-jealousy passages in Shakespeare’s works in the light of the author’s findings.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel's conclusions have been called into question by other scholars, who point out that her argument rests entirely upon the assignation of the sonnet's authorship to Shakespeare, even though she declined to use the most widely-accepted method of determining authorship: vocabulary analysis. Further, critics have noted that The Persian Lady is a wedding portrait, and it is strikingly unlikely that it would have been permitted for Shakespeare to write his Dark Lady a love sonnet through such a medium.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel has replied to these and other objections, showing that none of them were tenable.
Based on her scientific book Das Geheimnis um Shakespeares ‘Dark Lady’, Hammerschmidt-Hummel wrote the stage play Shakespeares Geliebte. Die wahre Geschichte (Shakespeare’s mistress. The true story). The play was premièred at Dramatische Bühne Frankfurt (Main) on 23 April 2010 and staged by Thorsten Morawietz. Shakespeare was played by Julian König, his dark lady by Sarah Kortmann.
. The study throws light on a much neglected scenario: the new legal position created by Elizabeth I’s anti-Catholic legislation and its devastating consequences for her Catholic subjects. The English Catholics in Shakespeare’s time had to endure draconian punishment. On the basis of numerous new sources, or ones newly made accessible, it is demonstrated that Shakespeare was born into a Catholic environment, that his parents and relatives, teachers and friends, his first employer and his literary patron were all adherents of the old faith. The author presents many indications and clues that - just like hundreds of young English Catholics, educated at the new Catholic English College at Douai/Rheims (established in 1568) to avoid the compulsory Oath of Supremacy
at Oxford and Cambridge - Shakespeare, too, would have acquired a sound education in the humanities (Lower Studies) on the Continent, including a basic training as a writer for the stage. According to Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s new sources, the dramatist also played a significant role in the Catholic underground and - during the so-called „lost years“ (1585–92) - visited Rome several times, using pseudonyms referring to his hometown Stratford-upon-Avon. In addition, Hammerschmidt-Hummel presents circumstantial as well as hard evidence for her assumption that Shakespeare, after having concluded his brilliant literary career in London, made a remarkable contribution to the survival of the old religion. By purchasing the eastern gatehouse on the site of the former monastery in Blackfriars in London in 1613, the playwright acquired a building that had already been used by the Catholic underground for decades to provide shelter for persecuted priests and help to escape to the Continent. In an appendix chapter of the book Hammerschmidt-Hummel presents new evidence for the exact (hitherto unknown) location of Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Theatre
.
In a further appendix chapter the author reports about her discovery of certain pseudonyms Shakespeare must have used in Pilgrim book No. 282, kept at the Venerable English College (Collegium Anglicum) in Rome. In his review of Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare the Swiss science correspondent Hans-Viktor von Sury wrote:
[Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s] evidence is based on an unbelievably densely woven network of countless facts, documents, hypotheses and combinations. How she puts them together to an entirely consistent image is no less exciting than Shakespeare’s double life. What Hammerschmidt-Hummel demonstrates is lateral thinking par excellence.
The Heidelberg Emeritus Professor and Shakespeare scholar Kurt Otten finished his book review by saying:
As an historian the author was a student of Karl Christ, a Professor of ancient history in Marburg who was known for his independent judgement, precise observations and his matching of historical context with thorough cultural insight. I share his jugdement on Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s book: ‘In view of the sources you present, one could hardly come to different conclusions.’
, the closest friend of his patron and friend, the Earl of Southampton
, who also became the poet’s rival in love. Essex stood for a more tolerant religious policy. The downfall, rebellion and execution of Essex are the most momentous events in the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign and can also be considered as the most incisive influences in the life of Shakespeare as a writer. Hamlet
, Hammerschmidt-Hummel suggests (taking up some of the views the British Shakespeare scholar John Dover Wilson expressed in the 1930s) may be understood as a memorial to Shakespeare’s dead political hero. In addition, she presents new historical reasons for the fact that, in Hamlet
, Catholic
thought and ritual are depicted more openly and brazenly than before. However, she makes it quite clear that Shakespeare’s works can in no way be „reduced“ to a Catholic factional view. The author’s new biographical approach reveals that Shakespeare as a Catholic was living in most dangerous religious and political times and, therefore, had to keep his religious beliefs hidden at all times. Nearly half of his plays remained unpublished during his lifetime - most likely, Hammerschmidt-Hummel explains, because of their potentially explosive content. Only with the background of Shakespeare’s secret Catholicism in mind, can we, Hammerschmidt-Hummel argues, identify his political stance, and make sense of his sudden and abrupt switch from creating comedies to writing tragedies and problem plays. It is the complex inter-relationship of new (written and visual) source material, assessed with the help of numerous specialists, of contemporary history, biographical details, and literary production which finally led to new and unexpected insights into Shakespeare’s life, times and work. In his book review Kurt Otten wrote:
Hitherto we could assume that principal new discoveries about William Shakespeare’s life were hardly to be expected. However, the present biography cross-links the older source material with important new findings so convincingly that it leads to an absolutely new interpretation of Shakespeare’s life against the background of the moral and religious constraints of his time. … [Hammerschmidt-Hummel] has managed a great success.
Shakespeare scholars and lovers of his dramatic works around the world are now able to study the visualizations of scenes and figures from the dramatist’s works, as well as the historical actors playing Shakespearian parts, on a comparative basis. Volume one contains the Prefaces of the Board of Directors (Professors Rudolf Böhm, Horst W. Drescher and Paul Goetsch) as well as that of the Chairman of the Commission of the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature, Werner Habicht, who was Oppel’s successor as a member of the academy. In her general outline, Hammerschmidt-Hummel provides the reader with her scholarly aims and methods, addressing not only the role of the author and editor in the development of the project, but also its inevitable limits. In her introduction she offers a comprehensive survey of the history and function of artists’ work to Shakespeare’s plays from 1594 to 2000. „Die Shakespeare-Illustration," one of the reviewers wrote, „is a great work and a rare achievement of intelligence and devotion to Shakespeare in the sculptured landscape garden of German academe. Each illustration selected by the author bears witness to an important and probably undying moment in Shakespeare’s plays. ... The author’s comments are always succinct, constructive and well-balanced.“
The English theatre scholar Professor Michael Patterson concluded his review of Die Shakespeare-Illustration (1594-2000) by saying: “Yet again German scholarship has made a hugely significant contribution to Shakespeare.”
According to the 2005 Deed of Donation between the Central Library of the University of Mainz, the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature and Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel the yet unpublished part of the Shakespeare Illustration Archive was donated to the Central Library of Mainz University. This collection was digitized and processed into a multiply linked-up internet version. Taking into account the Declaration and Letter of Intent of the founder’s widow and legal successor, the new digital archive bears the name ‘Shakespeare-Bildarchiv Oppel-Hammerschmidt’. On 17 November 2008 the internet version was presented to the public. A report was broadcast by the German TV programme “Tagesthemen” [ARD] on the same day http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video409284_res-.html. For legal reasons the internet version could not so far be put online. Presently access is only possible from a terminal at the Mainz University Central Library http://www.ub.uni-mainz.de/6295.php. An anthology of the speeches and lectures given on the occasion of the public presentation of the new digital archive was electronically published by ArchiMed - Archiv Mainzer elektronischer Dokumente http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2011/2817/.
"Die Importgüter der Handelsstadt London als Sprach- und Bildbereich des elisabethanischen Dramas". Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s „new methodolical approach and its extraordinary and fruitful results“, a literary scholar and art expert wrote, „also affects North European art history and will be instrumental to overcome the splitting-up of the humanities and social sciences.“
Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s central concern is the sudden availability of a great many exotic import commodities in London between 1550 and 1630 and the impact these made on the English life-style, language and dramatic literature of the period. Methodologically she attempts an inter-disciplinary approach, embracing economic and social history, linguistics, and literary criticism. In Part I Hammerschmidt-Hummel offers a close scrutiny of the unique role played by London as an important European trading centre and also examines the history of discovery, the establishment of trading companies, and the changes apparent in English life-styles in areas such as food and drink, costume, cosmetics, furniture, and the like. Extensive research material on the socio-economic and cultural background of the period is thus provided to illustrate how the sudden upsurge in English maritime activity and overseas trade led to an unprecedented exchange of commodities and to the influx into London of vast quantities of new consumer goods (luxury articles and foods, exotic plants, and even living creatures) which significantly altered English taste and habits. Hammerschmidt-Hummel shows that the names and denotations of the new luxury goods contained in the import commodities index furnishes evidence of an enlargement of vocabulary so extensive as to constitute part of the linguistic revolution of the time.
She also delineates the impact which the denotations and connotations of exotic imports had on Elizabethan drama and sheds light on dominant themes, situations, and attitudes to life as reflected in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, among them: the gentry question, the importance of social standing, the role of money, marriage, prevailing views on luxury, extravagance, on beauty, love and sexuality. According to Hammerschmidt-Hummel, luxury import commodities, for instance, not only have a demonstrable relevance to certain scenes, but also serve a variety of other functions. The author discusses at length the astonishing role they played in Shakespeare’s imagery and investigates categories such as conventional imagery, punning, techniques of description and characterization, psychological motivation, evaluation and judgement, experience and introspection as well as symbolic sublimation. As a result, it is established that exotic imports had indeed an enormous impact on Shakespeare’s metaphors, and it is shown how this awareness offers fruitful new insights in some instances into our understanding of the plays.
In an appendix chapter, which includes eight illustrations, Hammerschmidt-Hummel extends the investigation to the field of painting. Just as there is evidence that the new import commodities made an immense literary impact quite apart from their use in real life, there is also proof that they asserted their dominance in Dutch still-life painting. Consequently, there is every reason to assume, as Hammerschmidt-Hummel suggested for the first time, that overseas luxury goods were largely responsible for the creation of this new genre.
http://www.rlb.de/Inhaltsverzeichnis/14705638.pdf.
http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.cst.ebooks.datasheet&id=20810
http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video409284_res-.html.
http://www.faz.net/artikel/C30405/das-grosse-shakespeare-memory-30309303.html
Education, academic career and employment
Hammerschmidt-Hummel studied English and American Literature, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History as well as Political Science at the University of Marburg from 1967 to 1972. In 1970, she became a member of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German National Merit Foundation). She received her PhD in English Literature at the University of Marburg (Germany) in 1972. In 1974, she was awarded a scholarship by the Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is an important German research funding organization and the largest such organization in Europe.-Function:...
(German Research Foundation) for two and a half years to prepare her Habilitationsschrift (post-docterate dissertation). After her habilitation at the University of Mainz in 1977, she was granted the venia legendi and the title ‘Professor’. She has been teaching English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Marburg
Marburg
Marburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...
and Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
since 1977. From 1979 to 1982, she served as Consul for Cultural Affairs at the German Consulate General in Toronto. From 1984 to 1985, she was visiting professor at the University of Kassel (Germany). From 1982 to 2005 Hammerschmidt-Hummel was the long-standing senior research scholar and editor of the research project ‘The Shakespeare Illustration’, funded by the German Research Foundation (Bonn) and the National Academy
National academy
A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, most frequently in the sciences but also the humanities. Typically the country's learned societies in...
(Academy of Sciences and Literature), Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
. She greatly enlarged the Shakespeare Illustration Archive’s collection at the University of Mainz (since 1996 at the Mainz National Academy
National academy
A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, most frequently in the sciences but also the humanities. Typically the country's learned societies in...
) (from c. 1600 to c. 7400 illustratons) - after the founder of the archive, the eminent German Shakespeare scholar, Professor Horst Oppel, Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s former supervisor, had died in 1982. In 1946, Oppel had started collecting Shakespearian illustrations, which led to the foundation of the Shakespeare Illustration Archive.
In 1996, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was granted a one-year award with travel funding by the German Research Council, allowing her to carry out specific investigations in English churches, castles, galleries, museums and libraries with regard to the authenticity and history of several of Shakespeare’s portraits. This also enabled her to pursue more broadly conceived studies, with a view to throwing light upon the religious and cultural-historical context within which the origins and functions of these images must be seen. Her many years of research in the field of „Shakespeare in art“ resulted in a three-volume study she compiled, authored and edited. Featuring 3100 photographs of works of art to Shakespeare’s plays, it was published by Hammerschmidt-Hummel in 2003. In 2005, she donated the Archive’s unpublished collection to the Central Library of the University of Mainz where it is now accessible in digitized form under its new name: „Shakespeare-Bildarchiv Oppel - Hammerschmidt“. Hammerschmidt-Hummel is married to a retired chief executive officer in the German cement industry. They have one daughter.
Authenticating the Chandos portrait, the Flower portrait, the Davenant bust and the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask
Between 1995 and 2005, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was able to prove the identity, authenticity and lifelikeness of four images of William Shakespeare, i.e. the Chandos portraitChandos portrait
The "Chandos" portrait is one of the most famous of the portraits that may depict William Shakespeare . Believed to have been painted from life between 1600 and 1610, it may have served as the basis for the engraved portrait of Shakespeare used in the First Folio in 1623. It is named after James...
(National Portrait Gallery, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
), the Flower portrait
Flower portrait
The Flower portrait is a name of one of the painted Portraits of William Shakespeare. A 2005 investigation of the portrait led to the conclusion that it was painted in the 19th century....
(Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
Collection, Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...
), the Davenant
Davenant
Davenant is a surname, and may refer to:* Charles Davenant, English economist, son of William Davenant* Ralph Davenant, English clergyman* William Davenant, English poetDavenant may also refer to:...
bust (The Garrick Club, London), and the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask (Hesse State and University Library, Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
), with the help of numerous specialists, among them identification experts from the German Federal Criminal Police Office
Federal Criminal Police Office
Federal Criminal Police Office, or Bundeskriminalamt , can refer to:*Federal Criminal Police Office *Federal Criminal Police Office...
(BKA
BKA
BKA or B.K.A. may refer to:*A below-knee amputation*Betsy's Kindergarten Adventures, a children's television show on PBS*Bundeskriminalamt, the German Federal Criminal Police Office*Bundeskanzleramt, the Austrian chancellor's office...
= CID / FBI), medical specialists, physicists, 3D engineers, archivists and an expert on old masters. A most important precondition of all of the author’s investigations into Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits, drawings, busts, death masks etc. was the fact that these images are executed in such a true-to-life manner that today’s identification specialists can identify the persons portrayed, and medical experts are able to diagnose their illnesses and assess their progressive pathological states. By diagnosing and tracing the development of the signs of illness in Shakespeare’s face, first noticed by Hammerschmidt-Hummel, her medical experts also identified and verified the most probable cause of Shakespeare’s death. The conspicuous growth on the upper left eyelid they interpreted as Mikulicz Syndrome, an abnormality of the tear glands, in this case probably cancerous; the swelling in the nasal corner of the left eye as a fine caruncular tumour; the considerable swelling on the forehead (in conjunction with the other pathological symptoms) as systemic sarcoidosis
Sarcoidosis
Sarcoidosis , also called sarcoid, Besnier-Boeck disease or Besnier-Boeck-Schaumann disease, is a disease in which abnormal collections of chronic inflammatory cells form as nodules in multiple organs. The cause of sarcoidosis is unknown...
, i.e. an internal disease that affects the organs and takes a very protracted course, but proves fatal. The identification tests as well as the medical assessment show that the poet must have sat in person for the Chandos portrait
Chandos portrait
The "Chandos" portrait is one of the most famous of the portraits that may depict William Shakespeare . Believed to have been painted from life between 1600 and 1610, it may have served as the basis for the engraved portrait of Shakespeare used in the First Folio in 1623. It is named after James...
, the Flower portrait
Flower portrait
The Flower portrait is a name of one of the painted Portraits of William Shakespeare. A 2005 investigation of the portrait led to the conclusion that it was painted in the 19th century....
and the Davenant
Davenant
Davenant is a surname, and may refer to:* Charles Davenant, English economist, son of William Davenant* Ralph Davenant, English clergyman* William Davenant, English poetDavenant may also refer to:...
bust. They reveal that the death mask must have been taken from Shakespeare’s face, shortly after his death. In 2006, Hammerschmidt-Hummel presented her results on the identity, authenticity and history of the portraits investigated, including medical assessments of their visible illnesses as well as her suggestions as to their possible creators, in a book, entitled The True Face of William Shakespeare.
On the author's additional findings concerning the genuineness of the Flower portrait, restored at the Ashmolean Museum
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
, Oxford, in 1979, see: 'The Flower Portrait: Press Releases and Current Debate'.
In her book And the Flower Portrait of William Shakespeare is Genuine After All, published in 2010, Hammerschmidt-Hummel (in cooperation with international experts) provided additional evidence for the fact that the Flower portrait, donated to the Stratford gallery in 1895, x-rayed at the London Courtauld Institute in 1966 and restored by Nancy Stocker at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1979, was indeed the old authentic, worm-eaten portrait of Shakespeare created during his own lifetime. Furthermore, in this book she was able to prove that the Flower portrait, subjected to an x-ray examination in the laboratories of the London National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in 2005, was not the original painting but a copy. In addition, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was able to demonstrate conclusively that the Flower portrait, subjected to paint analysis in the NPG’s laboratories too was a copy. These reproductions are strikingly distinct from the original painting, and also differ from each other. The original and true-to-life Flower portrait is missing since about 1999. Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s results have been critically scrutinized, fully confirmed and further substantiated by eight experts. In her book review the American science correspondent Muriel Mirak-Weissbach wrote: “The original Flower portrait, a most precious national English relic, has disappeared and been replaced by not just one but two copies, as Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel has convincingly proved in this book.”
Identifying Shakespeare’s Dark Lady
Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s novel visual and textual source material, brought to light during a decade of research in England and on the Continent, unexpectedly led to the discovery of the identity of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady. The famous Elizabethan painting The Persian Lady by Marcus Gheeraerts the YoungerMarcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, created in the 1590s and kept at Hampton Court, whose subject had hitherto not been identified, served as the decisive basis of all scientific investigations carried out in conjunction with the identification process. By close cooperation with a linguistic expert, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was able to establish that the poem inscribed to the painting was the missing final sonnet of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady cycle and described what, from the poet’s point of view, was an unhappy ending of a ménage à trois. Gheeraerts’s highly pregnant and festively dressed lady thus turned out to be Shakespeare’s famous Dark Lady of the sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s. The isolated and suffering poet, depicted as a ‘weeping stagg’, complains that ‘the fruit of his love’ now belongs to ‘others’. The most spectacular love affair at the Court of Elizabeth I was the one between her lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Vernon, and the third Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton was a title that was created three times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1537 in favour of the courtier William Fitzwilliam. He was childless and the title became extinct on his death in 1542. The second creation came in 1547 in favour of the politician...
, which began in 1595. Comparisons between Gheeraerts’s Persian Lady and an authenticated portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, in the Collection of the Duke of Buccleugh (c. 1600) Hammerschmidt-Hummel carried out with the help of a BKA
BKA
BKA or B.K.A. may refer to:*A below-knee amputation*Betsy's Kindergarten Adventures, a children's television show on PBS*Bundeskriminalamt, the German Federal Criminal Police Office*Bundeskanzleramt, the Austrian chancellor's office...
identification expert proved that Gheeraerts’s hitherto unidentified Persian Lady (= Shakespeare’s Dark Lady) was none other than Elizabeth Vernon. In August 1598, ten weeks before giving birth to her daughter Penelope, she had married the Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton was a title that was created three times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1537 in favour of the courtier William Fitzwilliam. He was childless and the title became extinct on his death in 1542. The second creation came in 1547 in favour of the politician...
, Shakespeare’s literary patron, friend, and also rival in love. Hammerschmidt-Hummel found several additional clues, historical and visual, that Vernon’s first-born daughter, Penelope, was not fathered by the third Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton was a title that was created three times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1537 in favour of the courtier William Fitzwilliam. He was childless and the title became extinct on his death in 1542. The second creation came in 1547 in favour of the politician...
, but by Shakespeare. In the Countess’s authentic portrait she discovered a hidden image of Shakespeare’s face. And Penelope’s facial features are in striking resemblance with those of William Shakespeare. The search for the „lost daughter“ will become a dominant theme in Shakespeare’s later literary work. Penelope married Baron William Spencer, an ancestor of the present ninth Earl of Spencer and his sisters, among them the late Princess Diana.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s scientific results were published in her book Das Geheimnis um Shakespeares ‘Dark Lady’: Dokumentation einer Enthüllung (The secret around Shakespeare’s ‚Dark Lady‘. Uncovering a mystery. In his expert opinion on the book the cultural historian and Panofsky scholar Professor Dieter Wuttke concluded: “The work convinces me in every detail, in all its conclusions. It represents a triumph of cultural-historically guided philology which would also have found the enthusiastic support of Aby M. Warburg or Erwin Panofsky.” The linguist Professor Klaus Faiß stated: “… it is quite certain that an indisputable advance in knowledge (Erkenntnisfortschritt) has been achieved which will cause the great bard’s biography and thus also his sonnets to appear in a new light. Scholarship will have to deal with this. It will, however, be very difficult to refute the … findings based on extensive source material and expert opinions from other specialist disciplines.” In his book review the Shakespeare scholar Professor Wilhelm Hortmann wrote:
… Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel has undertaken a … daunting task: first, to integrate into the Shakespearean corpus a known but anonymous sonnet; furthermore to locate and identify a definite historical personage as the object of a famous painting and this person as, in fact, the mysterious Dark Lady herself …; and finally to integrate her findings into the corpus of Shakespearean biographical scholarship on the subject, by bringing forward and explicating a set of hitherto misinterpreted, disregarded, overlooked or not connected items – literary, factual, documentary and pictorial – as pieces of evidence in a gradually unfolding argument that gains in conclusiveness from one step to the next. … Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel is nothing if not thorough. But her painstaking progress pays dividends. Her circumspect marshalling of the great mass of circumstantial evidence forms the solid basis for the far-reaching conclusions. … Shakespeare scholars … will now have a new incentive to re-study the many love-and-jealousy passages in Shakespeare’s works in the light of the author’s findings.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel's conclusions have been called into question by other scholars, who point out that her argument rests entirely upon the assignation of the sonnet's authorship to Shakespeare, even though she declined to use the most widely-accepted method of determining authorship: vocabulary analysis. Further, critics have noted that The Persian Lady is a wedding portrait, and it is strikingly unlikely that it would have been permitted for Shakespeare to write his Dark Lady a love sonnet through such a medium.
In a good detective story, the solution to the mystery is only satis fac tory if it is not just in line with all the expert testimonies, but also psychological ly plausible. Also in this respect Hammerschmidt-Hummel's theory cannot really unlock the secret of the Dark Lady. Would Shake speare really have written an extra sonnet for her, after all that had happened, as part of a project in which he cooperated with the painter to produce this portrait? Would it have been in the Dark Lady's own interest to allow her former lover to hide all sorts of innuendoes in her portrait (and her wedding portrait at that, according to Hammerschmidt-Hummel), while her reputation was apparently already in question? Would she have allowed another portrait to be painted, some years later, in which (as Hammerschmidt-Hummel claims) the folds of her right sleeve form a face resembling Shakespeare's? What would her already jealous husband have made of all this? Before we can be persuaded to accept all this, more solid evidence would have to be produced; until such time, Hammerschmidt-Hummel's theory about the portrait of The Persian Lady deserves a place next to Oscar Wilde's story The Picture of Mr. W.H., as an attractive idea that should be judged on its artistic merit rather than on its historical veracity.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel has replied to these and other objections, showing that none of them were tenable.
Based on her scientific book Das Geheimnis um Shakespeares ‘Dark Lady’, Hammerschmidt-Hummel wrote the stage play Shakespeares Geliebte. Die wahre Geschichte (Shakespeare’s mistress. The true story). The play was premièred at Dramatische Bühne Frankfurt (Main) on 23 April 2010 and staged by Thorsten Morawietz. Shakespeare was played by Julian König, his dark lady by Sarah Kortmann.
Presenting proof for Shakespeare’s secret Catholicism
In her book, Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare (2001), which is based on new external evidence, documentary and circumstantial, Hammerschmidt-Hummel was able to prove the dramatist’s secret CatholicismCatholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
. The study throws light on a much neglected scenario: the new legal position created by Elizabeth I’s anti-Catholic legislation and its devastating consequences for her Catholic subjects. The English Catholics in Shakespeare’s time had to endure draconian punishment. On the basis of numerous new sources, or ones newly made accessible, it is demonstrated that Shakespeare was born into a Catholic environment, that his parents and relatives, teachers and friends, his first employer and his literary patron were all adherents of the old faith. The author presents many indications and clues that - just like hundreds of young English Catholics, educated at the new Catholic English College at Douai/Rheims (established in 1568) to avoid the compulsory Oath of Supremacy
Oath of Supremacy
The Oath of Supremacy, originally imposed by King Henry VIII of England through the Act of Supremacy 1534, but repealed by his daughter, Queen Mary I of England and reinstated under Mary's sister, Queen Elizabeth I of England under the Act of Supremacy 1559, provided for any person taking public or...
at Oxford and Cambridge - Shakespeare, too, would have acquired a sound education in the humanities (Lower Studies) on the Continent, including a basic training as a writer for the stage. According to Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s new sources, the dramatist also played a significant role in the Catholic underground and - during the so-called „lost years“ (1585–92) - visited Rome several times, using pseudonyms referring to his hometown Stratford-upon-Avon. In addition, Hammerschmidt-Hummel presents circumstantial as well as hard evidence for her assumption that Shakespeare, after having concluded his brilliant literary career in London, made a remarkable contribution to the survival of the old religion. By purchasing the eastern gatehouse on the site of the former monastery in Blackfriars in London in 1613, the playwright acquired a building that had already been used by the Catholic underground for decades to provide shelter for persecuted priests and help to escape to the Continent. In an appendix chapter of the book Hammerschmidt-Hummel presents new evidence for the exact (hitherto unknown) location of Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...
.
In a further appendix chapter the author reports about her discovery of certain pseudonyms Shakespeare must have used in Pilgrim book No. 282, kept at the Venerable English College (Collegium Anglicum) in Rome. In his review of Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare the Swiss science correspondent Hans-Viktor von Sury wrote:
[Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s] evidence is based on an unbelievably densely woven network of countless facts, documents, hypotheses and combinations. How she puts them together to an entirely consistent image is no less exciting than Shakespeare’s double life. What Hammerschmidt-Hummel demonstrates is lateral thinking par excellence.
The Heidelberg Emeritus Professor and Shakespeare scholar Kurt Otten finished his book review by saying:
As an historian the author was a student of Karl Christ, a Professor of ancient history in Marburg who was known for his independent judgement, precise observations and his matching of historical context with thorough cultural insight. I share his jugdement on Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s book: ‘In view of the sources you present, one could hardly come to different conclusions.’
Outlining a completely new image of Shakespeare as a man and writer
In 2007, Hammerschmidt-Hummel published an enlarged and revised English edition of her comprehensive, richly illustrated Shakespeare biography, which is based on additional new (hitherto neglected) historical sources, textual and visual, and also on the documentary and circumstantial evidence presented in the author’s earlier books. This book, entitled The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, offers conclusive answers to many of the unresolved problems of Shakespeare’s life and literary career, viewed against the turbulent historical, religious and political times he lived in. By applying cross-disciplinary research methods and by evaluating the novel (written and visual) historical sources in close co-operation with numerous specialists from various disciplines, the author was able to outline a completely new image of Shakespeare. The most essential key to the understanding of Shakespeare’s life, most of which was hitherto shrouded in mystery, and also of his literary work, proved to be the poet’s faith, as all parts of the book are able to demonstrate. In Shakespeare’s day, religion was central to the life of every individual. As a successful playwright in London, Shakespeare placed his hopes in the politically powerful Earl of EssexEarl of Essex
Earl of Essex is a title that has been held by several families and individuals. The earldom was first created in the 12th century for Geoffrey II de Mandeville . Upon the death of the third earl in 1189, the title became dormant or extinct...
, the closest friend of his patron and friend, the Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton
Earl of Southampton was a title that was created three times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1537 in favour of the courtier William Fitzwilliam. He was childless and the title became extinct on his death in 1542. The second creation came in 1547 in favour of the politician...
, who also became the poet’s rival in love. Essex stood for a more tolerant religious policy. The downfall, rebellion and execution of Essex are the most momentous events in the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign and can also be considered as the most incisive influences in the life of Shakespeare as a writer. Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, Hammerschmidt-Hummel suggests (taking up some of the views the British Shakespeare scholar John Dover Wilson expressed in the 1930s) may be understood as a memorial to Shakespeare’s dead political hero. In addition, she presents new historical reasons for the fact that, in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
thought and ritual are depicted more openly and brazenly than before. However, she makes it quite clear that Shakespeare’s works can in no way be „reduced“ to a Catholic factional view. The author’s new biographical approach reveals that Shakespeare as a Catholic was living in most dangerous religious and political times and, therefore, had to keep his religious beliefs hidden at all times. Nearly half of his plays remained unpublished during his lifetime - most likely, Hammerschmidt-Hummel explains, because of their potentially explosive content. Only with the background of Shakespeare’s secret Catholicism in mind, can we, Hammerschmidt-Hummel argues, identify his political stance, and make sense of his sudden and abrupt switch from creating comedies to writing tragedies and problem plays. It is the complex inter-relationship of new (written and visual) source material, assessed with the help of numerous specialists, of contemporary history, biographical details, and literary production which finally led to new and unexpected insights into Shakespeare’s life, times and work. In his book review Kurt Otten wrote:
Hitherto we could assume that principal new discoveries about William Shakespeare’s life were hardly to be expected. However, the present biography cross-links the older source material with important new findings so convincingly that it leads to an absolutely new interpretation of Shakespeare’s life against the background of the moral and religious constraints of his time. … [Hammerschmidt-Hummel] has managed a great success.
Shakespearean illustrations from 1594 to 2000
Professor Horst Oppel (1913–1982), a member of the Academy of Science and Literature at Mainz, had founded the Shakespeare Illustration Archive under difficult circumstances - immediately after the second world war at the then re-opened University of Mainz. Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s three-volume work, Die Shakespeare-Illustration (1594-2000), the first ot its kind, is dedicated to the memory of Horst Oppel and demonstrates the huge impact Shakespeare’s plays exerted on the visual arts from the beginning to the present.Shakespeare scholars and lovers of his dramatic works around the world are now able to study the visualizations of scenes and figures from the dramatist’s works, as well as the historical actors playing Shakespearian parts, on a comparative basis. Volume one contains the Prefaces of the Board of Directors (Professors Rudolf Böhm, Horst W. Drescher and Paul Goetsch) as well as that of the Chairman of the Commission of the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature, Werner Habicht, who was Oppel’s successor as a member of the academy. In her general outline, Hammerschmidt-Hummel provides the reader with her scholarly aims and methods, addressing not only the role of the author and editor in the development of the project, but also its inevitable limits. In her introduction she offers a comprehensive survey of the history and function of artists’ work to Shakespeare’s plays from 1594 to 2000. „Die Shakespeare-Illustration," one of the reviewers wrote, „is a great work and a rare achievement of intelligence and devotion to Shakespeare in the sculptured landscape garden of German academe. Each illustration selected by the author bears witness to an important and probably undying moment in Shakespeare’s plays. ... The author’s comments are always succinct, constructive and well-balanced.“
The English theatre scholar Professor Michael Patterson concluded his review of Die Shakespeare-Illustration (1594-2000) by saying: “Yet again German scholarship has made a hugely significant contribution to Shakespeare.”
According to the 2005 Deed of Donation between the Central Library of the University of Mainz, the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature and Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel the yet unpublished part of the Shakespeare Illustration Archive was donated to the Central Library of Mainz University. This collection was digitized and processed into a multiply linked-up internet version. Taking into account the Declaration and Letter of Intent of the founder’s widow and legal successor, the new digital archive bears the name ‘Shakespeare-Bildarchiv Oppel-Hammerschmidt’. On 17 November 2008 the internet version was presented to the public. A report was broadcast by the German TV programme “Tagesthemen” [ARD] on the same day http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video409284_res-.html. For legal reasons the internet version could not so far be put online. Presently access is only possible from a terminal at the Mainz University Central Library http://www.ub.uni-mainz.de/6295.php. An anthology of the speeches and lectures given on the occasion of the public presentation of the new digital archive was electronically published by ArchiMed - Archiv Mainzer elektronischer Dokumente http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2011/2817/.
The New Imports of London and Their Impact on the Life-Style, Language, and Literature of Elizabethan England
The results of Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s investigations into the new imports of London in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and their impact on the life-style, language and literature of Elizabethan and Jacobean England are presented in her „stimulating, informative and fundamental work“,"Die Importgüter der Handelsstadt London als Sprach- und Bildbereich des elisabethanischen Dramas". Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s „new methodolical approach and its extraordinary and fruitful results“, a literary scholar and art expert wrote, „also affects North European art history and will be instrumental to overcome the splitting-up of the humanities and social sciences.“
Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s central concern is the sudden availability of a great many exotic import commodities in London between 1550 and 1630 and the impact these made on the English life-style, language and dramatic literature of the period. Methodologically she attempts an inter-disciplinary approach, embracing economic and social history, linguistics, and literary criticism. In Part I Hammerschmidt-Hummel offers a close scrutiny of the unique role played by London as an important European trading centre and also examines the history of discovery, the establishment of trading companies, and the changes apparent in English life-styles in areas such as food and drink, costume, cosmetics, furniture, and the like. Extensive research material on the socio-economic and cultural background of the period is thus provided to illustrate how the sudden upsurge in English maritime activity and overseas trade led to an unprecedented exchange of commodities and to the influx into London of vast quantities of new consumer goods (luxury articles and foods, exotic plants, and even living creatures) which significantly altered English taste and habits. Hammerschmidt-Hummel shows that the names and denotations of the new luxury goods contained in the import commodities index furnishes evidence of an enlargement of vocabulary so extensive as to constitute part of the linguistic revolution of the time.
She also delineates the impact which the denotations and connotations of exotic imports had on Elizabethan drama and sheds light on dominant themes, situations, and attitudes to life as reflected in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, among them: the gentry question, the importance of social standing, the role of money, marriage, prevailing views on luxury, extravagance, on beauty, love and sexuality. According to Hammerschmidt-Hummel, luxury import commodities, for instance, not only have a demonstrable relevance to certain scenes, but also serve a variety of other functions. The author discusses at length the astonishing role they played in Shakespeare’s imagery and investigates categories such as conventional imagery, punning, techniques of description and characterization, psychological motivation, evaluation and judgement, experience and introspection as well as symbolic sublimation. As a result, it is established that exotic imports had indeed an enormous impact on Shakespeare’s metaphors, and it is shown how this awareness offers fruitful new insights in some instances into our understanding of the plays.
In an appendix chapter, which includes eight illustrations, Hammerschmidt-Hummel extends the investigation to the field of painting. Just as there is evidence that the new import commodities made an immense literary impact quite apart from their use in real life, there is also proof that they asserted their dominance in Dutch still-life painting. Consequently, there is every reason to assume, as Hammerschmidt-Hummel suggested for the first time, that overseas luxury goods were largely responsible for the creation of this new genre.
Exhibitions
- „Shakespeare und seine Zeit“ mit 100 Exponaten. Ausstellung im Festspielhaus in RecklinghausenRecklinghausenRecklinghausen is the northernmost city in the Ruhr-Area and the capital of the Recklinghausen district. It borders the rural Münsterland and is characterized by large fields and farms in the north and industry in the south...
anläßlich der „RuhrfestspieleRuhrfestspieleRuhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is one of the oldest Theatre festivals in Europe. Founded after World war II, the festival is an event for the Ruhr district....
2006“ - vom 1. Mai bis zum 11. Juni 2006 [„Shakespeare and his time“, 100 exhibits, „Ruhr Festival 2006“, Festival Hall Recklinghausen, from 1 May to 11 June 2006]. - „Illustrationen zu Shakespeares Sommernachtstraum“ mit 170 Exponaten. Ausstellung in der Technischen Universität Berlin anläßlich des Internationalen Shakespeare-Kongresses „Images of Shakespeare“ - vom 1. bis zum 4. April 1986. [„Illustrations to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream“, 170 exhibits, International Shakespeare Congress, Technical University of Berlin, from 1 to 4 April 1986].
- Ausstellung zur Erinnerung an Horst Oppel: „Illustrationen zu Shakespeares Sommernachtstraum“ mit 170 Exponaten. Marburger Schauspiel, Marburg, vom 19. April bis 13. Mai 1984 [Exhibition in memory of Horst Oppel: „Illustrations to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream“, 170 exhibits, Marburger Schauspiel, Marburg, from 19 April to 13 May 1984].
Select list of publications
Hammerschmidt-Hummel has published widely in scholarly periodicals and national newspapers and has written many books. Her publications include:Books
- Das neue digitale ‘Shakespeare-Bildarchiv Oppel-Hammerschmidt’ an der Universitätsbibliothek Mainz: Reden und Beiträge anlässlich seiner öffentlichen Vorstellung am 17. November 2008 an der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität. Ed. by Andreas Anderhub and Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel (Das Archiv Mainzer elektronischer Dokumente. ArchiMeD, 2011) - http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2011/2817/
- And the Flower Portrait of William Shakespeare is Genuine After All. Latest Investigations Again Prove its Authenticity / Und das Flower-Porträt von William Shakespeare ist doch echt. Neueste Untersuchungen beweisen erneut seine Authentizität (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2010), c. 70 Illus.
- Shakespeares Geliebte. Die wahre Geschichte (Shakespeare’s Mistress. The True Story) Ein Bühnenstück in 35 Bildern (Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2010).
- Das ‘Shakespeare-Bildarchiv Oppel-Hammerschmidt’ an der Universitätsbibliothek Mainz - Web-Version: Annette Holzapfel-Pschorn (Mainz: Universitätsbibliothek, 2008), ca. 3500 Abb. –http://www.ub.uni-mainz.de/6295.php
- The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, 1564-1616. London: Chaucer Press, 2007, 195 illus. [Summary in: English and American Studies in German. Summaries of Theses and Monographs. A Supplement to AngliaAnglia (journal)Anglia, subtitled Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie is an German journal on English Linguistics. It was started in 1878. There are about three issues a year.-History:...
, Tübingen, 2007]. - The True Face of William Shakespeare: The Poet’s Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of His Life. London: Chaucer Press, 2006, 116 illus. [Summary in: English and American Studies in German. Summaries of Theses and Monographs. A Supplement to Anglia, Tübingen, 2007].
- Die authentischen Gesichtszüge William Shakespeares: Die Totenmaske des Dichters und Bildnisse aus drei Lebensabschnitten. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2006, 116 illus. [Published also as The True Face of William Shakespeare: The Poet’s Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of His Life. London. Chaucer Press, 2006].
- William Shakespeare. Seine Zeit - Sein Leben - Sein Werk. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern Verlag, 2003, c. 250 illus. [Published also as The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 London. Chaucer Press, 2007].
- Die Shakespeare-Illustration (1594-2000). Bildkünstlerische Darstellungen zu den Dramen William Shakespeares: Katalog, Geschichte, Funktion und Deutung. Mit Künstlerlexikon, klassifizierter Bibliographie und Registern (Shakespearian illustrations, 1594 to 2000: The work of artists on Shakespeare’s plays - Catalogue, history, function and interpretation, including a dictionary of artists, a classified bibliography and indexes) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2003), 3 Vols., more than 3000 illus.
- Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare: Dichter und Rebell im katholischen Untergrund. Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Herder, 2001, 16 illus. [The Hidden Life of William Shakespeare: Poet and Rebel in the Catholic Underground].
- Das Geheimnis um Shakespeares ‘Dark Lady’: Dokumentation einer Enthüllung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft und Primus Verlag, 1999, 18 illus. [The Secret Surrounding Shakespeare’s Dark Lady: Uncovering a Mystery].
- Die Traumtheorien des 20. Jahrhunderts und die Träume der Figuren Shakespeares. Mit einem Abriß philosophischer und literarischer Traumauffassungen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1992 [Summary: 20th-Century Dream Theories and the Dreams of Shakespeare’s Characters. With a Survey of Philosophical and Literary Dream Concepts from Ancient Times to the Present, in: English and American Studies in German. Summaries of Theses and Monographs. A Supplement to Anglia, Tübingen, 1993, pp. 68 – 70].
- Annette oder Die Landschaft unseres inneren Lebens. edition fischer (Frankfurt am Main: R. G. Fischer Verlag, 1992), 6 Illus.
- Die Shakespeare-Illustrationen des Frankfurter Malers Victor Müller im Städelschen Kunstinstitut: Unbekannte Zeichnungen und Entwürfe zu Shakespeares Dramen. Abhandlung der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur zu Mainz. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1990, 27 illus. [Shakespearian Illustrations by the Frankfurt painter Victor Müller in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut (Frankfurt): Unknown drawings and sketches to the Plays of Shakespeare].
- Nineteenth-Century Germany. A Symposium. Ed. by Modris Eksteins and Hildegard Hammerschmidt. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1983, 7 illus.
- Die Importgüter der Handelsstadt London als Sprach- und Bildbereich des elisabethanischen Dramas. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1979, 9 illus. [Summary: The Import Commodities of the City of London and their Impact on the Life-Style, Language, and Dramatic Literature of Elizabethan England, in: English and American Studies in German. Summaries of Theses and Monographs. A Supplement to Anglia, Tübingen, 1981, pp. 36– 37].
- Das historische Drama in England (1956–1971): Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungstendenzen. Studien zur Anglistik. WiesbadenWiesbadenWiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
/ Frankfurt am Main: Humanitas Verlag, 1972. [Summary: The Historical Drama in England (1956–1971). Its Form and Developmental Tendencies, in: English and American Studies in German. Summaries of Theses and Monographs. A Supplement to Anglia, Tübingen, 1973, pp. 113 – 115].
Articles
- “The Tragedy of Macbeth: A History Play with a Message for Shakespeare’s Contemporaries?”, William Shakespeare, Macbeth. With Contemporary Criticism. Ed. by Joseph Pearce. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), pp. 161-180.
- “Richard Burbage and William Shakespeare in the Roles of ‘Tamora’ and ‘Titus’ in Henry Peacham’s 1594 Stage Drawing of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Anglistik: An International Journal of English Studies 20.2 (September 2009), pp. 101-118.
- „Wer war William Shakespeare?“ [Who was William Shakespeare?), Programmheft - Der Sturm. Ballett von Jörg Mannes in 2 Akten nach William Shakespeare. Bayerisches Staatsballett im Nationaltheater München (2007), pp. 28–37.
- „Shakespeare in der bildenden Kunst des 18. Jahrhunderts.“ Shakespeare im 18. Jahrhundert. Ed. Roger Paulin. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2007, pp. 65–90.
- „William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Life and Literary Career in Troubled Times.“ Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics (2006), 6:255-305.
- „Katholische Minderheitenkultur in England im 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhundert mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von William Shakespeare (1564-1616).“ Religion und Kultur im Europa des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Peter Claus Hartmann unter Mitarbeit von Annette Reese. Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Bruxelles/New York/Wien: Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 73–108.
http://www.rlb.de/Inhaltsverzeichnis/14705638.pdf.
- „The Phoenix and the Turtle: Notate zur Entstehung des Werks und zur Entschlüsselung seiner Figuren als historische Persönlichkeiten.“ Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes (2003), 14.2:71-84.
- „Goethe and Shakespeare. Goethe’s Visit at the Art Collection of Franz Ludwig von Kesselstatt in Mainz.“ Symbolism. An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics (2002), 2:3-16.
- „What did Shakespeare Look Like? Authentic Portraits and the Death Mask. Methods and Results of the Tests of Authenticity.“ Symbolism. An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics (2000), 1:41-79.
- „Herrscherbildnisse Karls I. von England von Anthonis van Dyck: Herrscherkritik, Demontage und politische Schmähung?“ Basileus und Tyrann: Herrscherbilder und Bilder von Herrschaft in der Englischen Renaissance. Hg. Uwe Baumann (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Bern/Bruxelles/New York/Wien, 1999), pp. 181 – 210, 7 illus. [Greatly enlarged version, based on additional facts, of the article in Anglistik, Sept. 1997].
http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.cst.ebooks.datasheet&id=20810
- „Hat Frans Hals Shakespeares 'Hamlet' illustriert?“ (Did Frans Hals illustrate Shakespeare's Hamlet?) Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes (September 1999), pp. 97 – 118, 7 illus.
- „Das Shakespeare-Bild und Bilder Shakespeares am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts,“ Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes (March 1998), pp. 117 – 130, 3 illus..
- „Shakespeares Totenmaske und die Shakespeare-Bildnisse 'Chandos' und 'Flower'. Zusätzliche Echtheitsnachweise auf der Grundlage eines neuen Fundes,“ Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes (March, 1998), pp. 101 – 115, 12 illus..
- „Herrscherbildnisse Karls I. von England von Anthonis van Dyck: Herrscherkritik, Demontage und politische Schmähung?“ Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten (September 1997), pp. 117 – 131, 6 illus..
- „Neuer Beweis für die Echtheit des Flower-Porträts und der Darmstädter Shakespeare-Totenmaske. Ein übereinstimmendes Krankheitssymptom im linken Stirnbereich von Gemälde und Gipsabguss“, Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten (September 1996), pp. 115 – 136, 7 illus..
- „Ist die Darmstädter Shakespeare-Totenmaske echt?“ Shakespeare Jahrbuch 132 (1996), pp. 58 – 74, 6 illus.. [leicht gekürzter Vortrag, gehalten auf der Pressekonferenz der Stadt Darmstadt am 22.06.1995]
- „Neue Erkenntnisse über die Physiognomie William Shakespeares“, Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten (March 1996), pp. 119 – 122, 3 illus..
- „Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and its Role in Promoting English History Painting“, The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery. Ed. Walter Pape and Frederick Burwick in Collaboration with the German Shakespeare Society (Bottrop, 1996), pp. 33 – 44, 4 Illustrations.
- „The Painters of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery“, The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery. Ed. Walter Pape and Frederick Burwick in Collaboration with the German Shakespeare Society (Bottrop, 1996), pp. 187 – 201.
- „Shakespeare und die Maler des 20. Jahrhunderts: Formen des Dialogs von Text und Bild anhand ausgewählter Beispiele“, Text und Bild im Dialog. Hg. Klaus Dirscherl (Passau, 1993), pp. 293 – 316, 5 illus..
- „Johann Heinrich Füsslis Illustrationen zu Shakespeares Macbeth unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Kunsttheorie.“ Anglistentag 1984 Passau. Vorträge. Hg. Manfred Pfister (Giessen, 1985), pp. 261 – 277, 6 illus..
- „Johann Heinrich Füsslis Illustrationen zu Shakespeares 'Macbeth' unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Kunsttheorie“, arcadia. Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft (1985), pp. 225 – 238, 6 illus..
- „Images of Canada in Advertising“, Journal of Canadian Studies (Winter 1983/84), pp. 154 – 171.
- „Aspekte der Selbstdarstellung Kanadas. Beobachtungen zur Sprache und Motivik der kanadischen Werbung.“ Anglistentag 1981. Vorträge. Hg. J. Hasler. Trierer Studien zur Literatur 7 (Frankfurt a. M./Bern, 1983), pp. 281 – 300.
- „Nineteenth-Century Germany: Aspects of Contemporary Cultural Criticism“, in: Nineteenth-Century Germany. A Symposium. Eds. Modris Ekteins and Hildegard Hammerschmidt (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1983), x - xxii.
- „The role of the guardians in T. S. Eliot's Cocktail Party“, Modern Drama (1981), pp. 54 – 66.
- „Frühphasen der englischen Handels- und Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit und ihre linguistischen, literarischen und bildkünstlerischen Implikationen“, Anglistentag 1980 Giessen. Tagungsbeiträge und Berichte im Auftrag des Vorstandes. Hg. Herbert Grabes (Grossen-Linden, 1981), pp. 397 – 417, 6 illus..
- „Die dramatische Funktion der communis opinio in Shakespeares Julius Caesar“, Anglia (1978), pp. 371 – 386.
- „Louis MacNeice, Persons from Porlock“, Englische Hörspiele. Hg. Horst Priessnitz (Düsseldorf, 1977), pp. 228 – 241.
- „John Arden und Margaretta D'Arcy, 'The Island of the Mighty'„, Das englische Drama der Gegenwart. Hg. Horst Oppel (Berlin, 1976), pp. 239 – 257.
List of TV programmes
- Stuart Clarke, „Death Masks. The Faces that Changed History“, HISTORY (broadcast in Great Britain on 13 September 2010) [Among them the Darmstadt Shakespeare Death Mask together with a presentation of Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s proofs of authenticity]
- Video recording of the premiere of the play Shakespeares Geliebte. Die wahre Geschichte (Shakespeare’s Mistress. The True Story) at the Dramatische Bühne Frankfurt on 23. April 2010. Director: Thorsten Morawietz, William Shakespeare: Julian König, Shakespeares ‚Dark Lady‘ (Elizabeth Vernon, later Countess of Southampton): Sarah Kortmann.
- Henriette Seyfferth, „Forschungsabenteuer Shakespeare“, „Landesart“, SWR (31 January 2009).
- Tom Buhrow (Presenter), „Weltkultur online. Shakespeare in der onlineWelt angekommen“. Ein Film von Benjamin Cors und Stefan Dietz, ARD – Die Tagesthemen (ausgestrahlt am 17. November 2008) - Tagesschau_Shakespeare-Bildarchiv_081117 –
http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video409284_res-.html.
- Markus Philipp im Gespräch mit Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel und Kurt Otten, „Die Totenmaske eines Dichters - wer war William Shakespare wirklich?“, „Das Thema“, rheinmaintv (24 April 2006). [On the book Die authentischen Gesichtszüge William Shakespeares [The True Face of William Shakespeare] - Detailed presentation of the results of the investigations into the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask, the Davenant bust and the ‘Chandos’ and ‘Flower’ portraits of Shakespeare].
- Ivonne Büttner, „William Shakespeare. Buchvorstellung im Magistratssaal der Stadt Darmstadt am 22. Februar 2006“, Prometheus - Das Wissenschaftsfernsehen für Baden-Württemberg (23 February 2006) [On the presentation of the book Die authentischen Gesichtszüge William Shakespeares (The True Face of William Shakespeare) at a press conference at the City Hall of Darmstadt].
- Mara Braun, ”Shakespeare-Forschung”, CAMPUS TV (University of Mainz) (January, 2003). [On the new evidence presented in The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, 1564-1616].
- Henriette Seyfferth, ”LandesArt”, SWR (8 April 2001) [On Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare (The hidden life of William Shakespeare)]
- Natalie Derbort, „Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare“, ”Hessenschau”, HESSISCHER RUNDFUNK (25 March 2001) [On Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare (The hidden life of William Shakespeare)]
- „Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare“, “Kulturzeit”, 3SAT3sat3sat is the name of a public, advertising-free, television network in Central Europe. The programming is in German and is broadcast primarily within Germany, Austria and Switzerland .3sat was established for cultural...
(21 March 2001). - Nina Ruge, „Leute heute“, ZDFZDFZweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
(23 September 1999). (On the results presented in the book Das Geheimnis um Shakespeare’s Dark Lady). - Helmut Herkenroth, „Das Geheimnis um Shakespeare’s Dark Lady“, ”Hessenschau”, HESSISCHER RUNDFUNK (9 September 1999). [On the presentation of the book Das Geheimnis um Shakespeare’s Dark Lady at a press conference in the City Hall of Darmstadt -Introduction: Peter Benz, Mayor]
- Otto Wynen, „Über die Echtheitsnachweise für die Darmstädter Shakespeare-Totenmaske und die Shakespeare-Porträts ‘Chandos’ und ‘Flower’“, ”Boulevard Deutschland”, Deutsche WelleDeutsche WelleDeutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
TV (23 April 1997). - Denise Vance, „On the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask and the Shakespeare portraits ‘Chandos’ und ‘Flower’“, Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
INTERNATIONAL (13 May 1996). - Frank Partridge, ”Reuters Reports”, Sky NewsSky NewsSky News is a 24-hour British and international satellite television news broadcaster with an emphasis on UK and international news stories.The service places emphasis on rolling news, including the latest breaking news. Sky News also hosts localised versions of the channel in Australia and in New...
(09.05.1996) [Update on ”Reuters Reports”, 7 March 1996). - Michael Wirbitzky, ”Mittwochsforum“ [Talkshow], SÜDWEST 3 [SWR] (17 April 1996) (On the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask and its history).
- Thomas Michel, ”Kultur Südwest”, SÜDWEST 3 [SWR] (11 April 1996). (On the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask and the ‘Chandos’ and ‘Flower’ portraits of Shakespeare].
- Christian Hoch, ”Die Sonde” [Scientific magazine], SÜDWEST 3 [SWR] (17 March 1996) [Detailed presentation of the results of the investigations into the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask and the ‘Chandos’ and ‘Flower’ portraits of Shakespeare].
- Colleen Connaugton, ”Reuters Reports”, Sky NewsSky NewsSky News is a 24-hour British and international satellite television news broadcaster with an emphasis on UK and international news stories.The service places emphasis on rolling news, including the latest breaking news. Sky News also hosts localised versions of the channel in Australia and in New...
(7 March 1996) [Presentation of the results of the investigations into the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask and the ‘Chandos’ and ‘Flower’ portraits of Shakespeare]. - Andrew Thompson, ”Tomorrow’s World”, BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
(15 December 1995) [Detailed presentation of the results of the investigations into the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask and the ‘Chandos’ and ‘Flower’ portraits of Shakespeare]. - Franz Fitzke, ”Länder-Journal”, ZDFZDFZweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
(6 December 1995) [Brief presentation of the results of the investigations into the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask and the ‘Chandos’ and ‘Flower’ portraits of Shakespeare].
Select list of interviews
- „Ten minutes with ... Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel“, Family History Monthly 151 (Christmas 2007), p. 12.
- „Jüngste Erkenntnisse über das Flower-Porträt William Shakespeares“, „Kultur heute“, DeutschlandfunkDeutschlandfunkDeutschlandfunk is a German public broadcasting radio station, broadcasting national news and current affairs.-History:Broadcasting in the Federal Republic of Germany is reserved under the Basic Law to the states. This means that all public broadcasting is regionalised...
KölnKOLNKOLN, digital channel 10, is the CBS affiliate in Lincoln, Nebraska. It operates a satellite station, KGIN, on digital channel 11 in Grand Island. KGIN repeats all KOLN programming, but airs separate commercials...
(28 October 2007) (Interviewer: Doris Schäfer-Noske). - „Die authentischen Gesichtszüge William Shakespeares“, „Journal aus Rheinland-Pfalz“, SWR2
(SüdwestrundfunkSüdwestrundfunkThe Südwestrundfunk is a public broadcasting company for the southwest of Germany, specifically the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The company has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is an...
) (8 August 2006) (Interviewer: Marie-Christine Werner). - „Was hat die moderne Radiologie mit dem Renaissance-Dichter William Shakespeare zu tun?“, „Doppelkopf“, HR2 (Hessischer RundfunkHessischer RundfunkHessischer Rundfunk is the public broadcaster for the German state of Hesse. The main offices of HR are in Frankfurt am Main. HR is a member of the ARD.- Studios :...
) (28 April 2006). (Interviewer: Brigitta M. Mazanec). - „Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel - Interview“, „Today“, BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
RADIO 4 (23 February 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4742716.stm. - „Kriminalbeamte und Wissenschaftler beweisen Authentizität einer Shakespeare-Büste. Gespräch mit der Shakespeare-Forscherin Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel von der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz“, „Kulturradio am Vormittag - Wissen, RBB (18 October 2005) (Interviewer: Ev Schmidt).
- „Die Darmstädter Totenmasken“, „Mikado“, HR2 (22 November 2004) (Interviewer: Leonie Berger).
- „Queen Elizabeth in Deutschland“, „Der Tag“, HR2 (1 November 2004) (Interviewer: Andrea Gerk - „Zum Majestätsbegriff bei Shakespeare“ - „On Shakespeare’s concept of ‘majesty’“).
- „’Shakespeare und kein Ende’ - Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummels Shakespeare-Biographie und ihre Bücher zur Shakespeare-Illustration (1594-2000)“, „Literatur im Land“, SWR2 (23 August 2003) (Interviewer: Stefan Ringel).
- „’Die Religion ist der Schlüssel zu seinem Leben und Werk’. Wissenschaftlerin zu ihrer These vom Katholiken Shakespeare“, Katholische Nachrichtenagentur (KNA) 52. (1 July 2003) (Interviewer: Monika Lissok).
- „William Shakespeare - War er Katholik oder nicht?“, „Aktenzeichen“, Vatican RadioVatican RadioVatican Radio is the official broadcasting service of the Vatican.Set up in 1931 by Guglielmo Marconi, today its programs are offered in 47 languages, and are sent out on short wave , medium wave, FM, satellite and the Internet. The Jesuit Order has been charged with the management of Vatican...
(21 July 2002) (Aldo Parmeggiani). - „Zur Entschlüsselung von Shakespeares Klagegedicht ‘Phönix und Taube’“, SWR2 (22 May 2002) (Interviewer: Marie-Christine Werner).
- „Hofpoet oder Rebell - Wer war William Shakespeare? Neue Forschungen outen den Dramatiker als heimlichen Katholiken“, „Forum“ SWR2 (5 September 2001) (Moderator: Rochus Groß).
- „William Shakespeare. Dichter und Rebell aus dem katholischen Untergrund. Ein Gespräch mit Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel“, Ibykus. Zeitschrift für Poesie, Wissenschaft und Staatskunst (4. Quartal 2001), pp. 44–51 (Interviewer: Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, Elisabeth Böttiger.
- „Die verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare“, „Logo“, Norddeutscher RundfunkNorddeutscher RundfunkNorddeutscher Rundfunk is a public radio and television broadcaster, based in Hamburg. In addition to the city-state of Hamburg, NDR transmits for the German states of Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein...
(6 April 2001) (Interviewer: Jürgen Horsch). - „Shakespeare - Die verborgene Existenz“, Dom Radio (Köln) (1 April 2001) (Interviewer: Stefan Quilitz).
External links
- ARCHIV MAINZER ELEKTRONISCHER DOKUMENTE (ArchiMed) - http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2011/2817/.
- THE SHAKESPEARE ILLUSTRATION ARCHIV OPPEL-HAMMERSCHMIDT – http://www.ub.uni-mainz.de/6295.php
- GEO - http://www.geo.de/GEO/technik/5104.html
- GEO.de - http://www.geo.de/GEO/kultur/geschichte/5071.html
- DAMALS - http://www.damals.de/de/8/Neueste-Ergebnisse-auf-dem-Gebiet-der-Shakespeare-Forschung.html?aid=190145&cp=2&action=showDetails
- DARK LADY - http://www.suite101.de/content/shakespeare-in-love-raetsel-der-dark-lady-sonette-gelueftet-a76632
- DIE WELT - http://www.welt.de/print-wams/article611091/Shakespeares_heimliche_Reisen_nach_Rom.html
- CONNOTATIONS - http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/connotations/ham-hu1223
- THEATRE RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL -http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2188440
- FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG –
http://www.faz.net/artikel/C30405/das-grosse-shakespeare-memory-30309303.html
- PHILIPP VON ZABERN –
- http://www.zabern.de/buch/William_Shakespeare/1550 –
- http://www.zabern.de/beitrag/Sein_oder_Nicht_Sein/18638
- http://www.zabern.de/beitrag/Shakespeare_in_Love/18617
- http://www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de/pressemitteilungen/05112007pressrelease_the%20life%20and%20times%20.pdf
- http://www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de/pressemitteilungen/Press%20Release%20-%20University%20of%20Mainz%20-%2024%20October%202007%20-%20English%20_2_.pdf
- http://zope.verwaltung.uni-mainz.de/presse/mitteilung/2005/2005_10_14_shakespeare/down/a_phil_brit_shakespeare_engl.rtf
- http://www.uni-mainz.de/eng/13084.php
- http://www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de/pressemitteilungen/sanders/a.htm
- http://www.uni-mainz.de/eng/12884.php
- http://www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de/pressemitteilungen/251007pressrelease%20-%20flower%20portrait.pdf
- THE DAILY TELEGRAPH http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511251/Lump-above-eye-that-killed-Shakespeare.html
- THE INDEPENDENT - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/is-this-bust-the-true-face-of-shakespeare-467462.html
- THE SCOTSMAN - http://news.scotsman.com/science/Is-this-the-true-face.2753214.jp
- BBC - NEWS - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4742716.stm
- NEW SCIENTIST - - http://www.robedwards.com/1995/10/was-shakespeare.html
- DIE DRAMATISCHE BÜHNE - http://www.diedramatischebuehne.de/repertoire/157-shakespeares-geliebte
- PURPLE MOTES. A JOURNAL OF WHIMSY AND HOPE - http://purplemotes.net/2010/09/19/a-shakespearean-portrait-after-the-internet-reformation
- SCIENZZ - http://www.scienzz.de/ticker/art5860.html
- DIE WELT - http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article597769/Angst_vor_der_Zerstoerung_eines_Mythos.html
- HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT - http://www.abendblatt.de/kultur-live/article787827/Der-endgueltig-echte-wahre-Shakespeare.html
- FOCUS - http://www.focus.de/kultur/buecher/literaturwissenschaft-lady-di-und-der-dichter_aid_181116.html
- FOCUS - http://www.focus.de/kultur/buecher/literaturwissenschaft-das-bka-fahndet-nach-shakespeare_aid_154921.html
- DER SPIEGEL - http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/a-123525.html
- HESSISCHER RUNDFUNK - HR - http://www.hr-online.de/website/rubriken/kultur/index.jsp?rubrik=5986&key=standard_document_42339073
- TAGESSCHAU - ARD - http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video409284_res-.html
- RADIO VATIKAN AKTENZEICHEN - http://www.radiovaticana.org/ted/Articolo.asp?c=521625
- AUTHOR’S HOMEPAGE - http://www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de
- http://www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de/