Blake made easy

Some news...I have written a 'Blake made easy' book. It is short, simple and very practical. It is about 100 pages long and its title is

SHAKESPEARE'S HEIR: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE FOUR ZOAS EXPLAINED

It is published by The William Blake Press; Cambridge; 2009.

At this moment its printing is delayed.... unavoidable glitches ....but the book can be ordered and will be delivered in 8 weeks or so. In the meantime I have put it on this web-site.

In this book is:

1. A reconstruction of the Second Blackfriars Theatre. My first principle is to work from the actual architecture and that allows...... second

2. A reconstruction of Elizabethan and Jacobean staging... at present this is lost or hidden... which is why Shakespeare usually fails to make visual sense. Placing Shakespeare and Blake in the same narrative dramatic tradition, using like dramatic conventions, thereby allows Blake's dramatic narrative to be outlined clearly, and, so, locates Blake in mainstream dramatic narrative thought and thus

3. I apply Shakespeare's conventions to Blake's The Four Zoas which consequently falls easily into coherence and unity. This allows Shakespeare's narrative drama to help reveal Blake's dramatic narrative and myths.

In so far as current consensus opinions are concerned there are three sets of fresh knowledge and fresh scholarly conclusions in all three books.

It is short and simple and very practical, and at the end of this, namely,

SHAKESPEARE'S HEIR: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE FOUR ZOAS EXPLAINED,

There are three fresh sets of creative vision:

1. an accurate re-construction of Shakespeare's the Second Blackfriars Theatre (bought 1596, 1608 first opening as playhouse) : this is probably the most accurate reconstruction of this contemporary theatre available and settles many architectural mysteries. This serves as a spiritual crucible for the multi-spacial and prescient conventions of time and space.

2. the stagecraft of Shakespeare's plays:
this resolves the issues of staging, exits and entries, props and the controlled staging of time and space in Shakespeare's contemporary theatre with no Act or Scene division and no Intervals. We examine the hidden conventions of dramatic narrative.

3. the dramatic mythology of The Four Zoas:
By examining the like conventions of time and space in a multi-linear dramatic narrative, Blake's epic is opened up into a powerful dramatic continuum and the hidden conventions of its mythic drama and logic revealed. This allows Blake's mythology to unfold in clear causal process.

In addition to this book, on the site is the first full-scale line-by-line analysis of The Four Zoas with all additions, deletions and emendments and the stages of the manuscript's growth and, in context, its completion: namely:

WILLIAM BLAKE'S THE FOUR ZOAS EXPLAINED

Further, also on the site is the first full-scale line-by-line analysis of Blake's Jerusalem: namely,

WILLIAM BLAKE'S JERUSALEM EXPLAINED.



ALL THREE CLEARLY AND SIMPLY HELP EXPLAIN BLAKE'S MYTHOLOGY.