Shakespeare conference to be held at UB
Drama of the Bard considered to be "smoking gun" that reveals cultural advances

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

The drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is actually a "smoking gun" that reveals major developments in Western culture-developments we now take for granted, according to many notable Shakespearean scholars, including Barbara Bono, professor and chair of the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences.

These developments, says Bono, include the early modern movement from monarchy to more democratic forms of government, the emergence of a sphere of public agency for women and the yoking of mercantilism and the media.

They will provide the principle themes for "Playing at Will," a one-day conference, directed by Bono, on the cultural contexts of the playwright and his work.

The conference will take place from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. tomorrow in 120 Clemens Hall on the North Campus. All events will be free of charge and open to the public.

Through papers presented by some of the country's most distinguished Shakespearean scholars, the conference will focus on such issues as how Shakespeare illuminates how "good" women were "regulated" in his era and how the cultural production of women can be explored by looking at the playwright's consideration of such things as linens.

The keynote speaker at the conference will be Jean Howard, one of the most distinguished Shakespearean scholars in the United States. Howard is president of the Shakespeare Association of America and professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

In addition to her extensive publications on the stage and social struggle in early modern drama and Shakespeare's histories from a feminist point of view, Howard is a co-editor of "The Norton Shakespeare" and a sought-after speaker at major national and international conferences. She will speak at 3 p.m. from her new book manuscript on "The Geographies of Early Modern Drama."

The conference will feature a post-conference performance of "Chimes at Midnight" by the university's Department of Theatre and Dance in the Black Box Theatre in the Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

The play, adapted from Shakespeare's "Henry IV" and "Henry V," will take place at 4:30 p.m. under the direction of Maria Horne, assistant professor of theater and dance, and will star noted actor Saul Elkin, professor of theatre and dance and founder and director of Shakespeare in Delaware Park.

The conference is sponsored by the Department of English and the Butler Chair. The performance is offered courtesy of the Department of Theatre and Dance and its International Artistic and Cultural Exchange Program, the College of Arts and Sciences, the UB Center for the Arts, and Shakespeare in Delaware Park.