Leslie Hotson
Leslie Hotson (* 1897 in Delhi , Ontario , Canada ; † November 16, 1992 ) was a Canadian literary historian. His specialties were Shakespeare and the English literary history of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Life
He was born in Delhi, Ontario (Canada) in 1897, studied and taught as a "Research Associate" at Harvard ( BA , MA , Ph. D. ) and Yale Universities, and in 1919 married Mary May Peabody. In 1929/1930 he received a Guggenheim grant for English literary history of the 16th and 17th centuries. From 1931 to 1942 he taught at Haverford College in Pennsylvania in the USA. After the Second World War he worked on a Fulbright Scholarship at Bedford College in London and was from 1954-1960 scholarship at King's College in Cambridge, England .
He is the author of numerous books dealing with the literary biographies of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and with extremely successful detective work and the discovery of detailed problems in the English literary history of the 16th and 17th centuries, among others. a. in the cellars of the UK State Archives. He solved various literary historical, in particular " Elizabethan " literary puzzles such as B. the murder of Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester , (based on Geoffrey Chaucer's Nunne’s Priest's Tale ).
His most groundbreaking discovery in 1925 was the royal investigation report ("Coroners Report") held in Latin on the course of death (May 30, 1593) and the coroner of Christopher Marlowe. This made it possible to gradually correct Marlowe's malignant character designation ("Sidny Lee: killed in a drunken fight"), which had been rumored over the centuries until today. He published his discoveries in 1925 under the title “The Death of Christopher Marlowe”. The discovery also gave a boost to the scientifically unaccepted theory of Marlowe's authorship of Shakespeare's works .
He believed to have rediscovered the identity of Mr. WH (to whom Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets) in William Hatcliffe and developed the historical form of the original Shakespeare theater. Identifying a miniature color portrait of Nicholas Hilliard from Shakespeare as a young man, he unearthed Percy Bysshe Shelley's long-lost letters written to his divorced wife Harriet and found sources for Shakespeare's father as a wool merchant. He shed light on Shakespeare's early years in Stratford-upon-Avon and identified the murderer of Henry Porter († 1599), a little-known Elizabethan playwright. Leslie Hotson herself never doubted Shakespeare's authorship.
Works
- George Jolly (1923) Actor-Manager: New Light on the Restoration Stage , 1923
- Colfox vs Chauntecleer 1924 PMLA XXXIX
- The Death of Christopher Marlowe 1925
- The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage 1929,
- Shakespeare versus Shallow 1931 (Reprint 2003 ISBN 0766142485 )
- The Adventure of a Single Rapier 1931
- I, William Shakespeare,
- Leslie Hotson, 'Marigold of the Poets' 1938
- Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated and other essays , 1949 Oxford University Press
- The First Night of Twelfth Night
- Leslie Hotson, 'Anthony Munday's Birth-Date' , (1959),
- Shakespeare's Wooden O , 1959
- Mr WH , 1964,
- Shakespeare's Motley ISBN 0838310257 (1970)
- Shakespeare by Hilliard , ISBN 0520033132 (1977)
Web links
source
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hotson, Leslie |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian literary historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Delhi , Ontario , Canada |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 16, 1992 |