Matthew Steggle | Lightnews

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you so much for sharing this!!

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 7d

Yes, I think so too - lots of early allusions and imitations.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 15d

Number 27 made me laugh. It may not have made a novel but it is now a highly successful piece of microfiction.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 18d

For older Brits, that it devalues their own old degrees, for sure. Also that grades do create a social hierarchy, but the wrong one - their constant complaint is that degree results don’t just reproduce a level results (in which posher kids have always had an edge) and are hence meaningless.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 18d

Yes indeed! And it’s a mysterious one! The title looks like it should be “gettable” - someone someday is going to work out exactly what it was about - but no-one has yet. lostplays.folger.edu/Spanish_Maze...

Spanish Maze, The - Lost Plays Database

lostplays.folger.edu

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 18d

Chapter 6 is a bit iffy, but the rest of this collection is really very good.

The Arden Shakespeare @ardenpublisher.bsky.social · 18d

*Available open access*

'Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England' (ed. Tiffany Stern) brings together 15 scholars to analyse & theorise the documents, lost and found, that produced a play at the time.

Read online this #OAWeek https://bit.ly/4qqB1qc

The Arden Shakespeare @ardenpublisher.bsky.social · 18d

*Available open access*

'Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England' (ed. Tiffany Stern) brings together 15 scholars to analyse & theorise the documents, lost and found, that produced a play at the time.

Read online this #OAWeek https://bit.ly/4qqB1qc

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 26d

Go, and return an old Franciscan frier?

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 26d

Special mention for Matt Woodcock’s book on Fairy in The Faerie Queene, with its sublime subtitle, Renaissance Elf-Fashioning.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Sep 25

Wow! That work sounds amazing! Will check out the paper you mention.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Sep 24

Not a scooby! But there’s a book in the BL that’s of interest to me that presents the same problem. Is there a non-invasive way of getting at these if one were really minded? Can one x-ray them or similar?

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Sep 9

Fabulous new discoveries from @kscheil.bsky.social!

That Shakespeare Life @thatshakespeare.bsky.social · Sep 9

Did you know Anne Hathaway’s epitaph is the only one in the Shakespeare family plot written on a brass plaque? Everyone else—Shakespeare, his daughter, and son-in-law—has stone slabs. We explore what that might mean on this week’s episode. www.cassidycash.com/ep386

That Shakespeare Life @thatshakespeare.bsky.social · Sep 9

Did you know Anne Hathaway’s epitaph is the only one in the Shakespeare family plot written on a brass plaque? Everyone else—Shakespeare, his daughter, and son-in-law—has stone slabs. We explore what that might mean on this week’s episode. www.cassidycash.com/ep386

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Aug 23

Just seen this - a find with all sorts of elegant implications for Nashe. Bravo, Joseph Black. Lovely to see TN, who projects an air of brilliant improv, rechecking sources and writing corrections in his neatest handwriting.

www.folger.edu/blogs/collat...

Thomas Nashe's Almond for a Parrat (1590), corrected by the author | Folger Shakespeare Library

Folger Shakespeare Library is the world's largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world. Shakespeare belongs to you. His world is vast. Come explore. Jo...

www.folger.edu

Helen Smith @wordsmith.bsky.social · Aug 15

A plethora of new ODNB entries on early modern women stationers! Entries from Heidi Craig, Andrea Silva, Kirk Melnikoff, @mgyarn.bsky.social, Andreas P. Bassett, @tarallyons.bsky.social and @georginaemw.bsky.social, me, and of course from @valeriewayne.bsky.social who cooked up the whole cluster.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Aug 6

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

With customary precision and elegance (how does he make it look so bloody easy?) Charles Nicholl writes about Mrs Shakspaire for the New York Review of Books.

Who Is Mrs. Shakspaire? What Is She? | Charles Nicholl

On a summer’s day in 1978, Frederick Charles Morgan was at work as usual in the ancient library of Hereford Cathedral. He was a hundred years old but

www.nybooks.com

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

But I love even more the image of him in a frock coat, sat on the sideines at the Royal Toxophilite Society, turning the pages of this book while arrows hiss and thwack into the targets.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

I love that this thing, after thirty years, can suddenly take you somewhere completely unexpected, to the worlds of Charles Dickens and Buffalo Bill. It’s great that you can read some of Zouch Troughton’s writing and hear some of his voice.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

What’s more – this obit explains precisely why Haines gave him the book that’s now on my shelf.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

The key is another obituary from 1889, this one from The Archer’s Register:

Fred T. Follett, ed., The Archer’s Register for 1889-1890 (London: Horace Cox, 1890), 78.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

But then – double plot twist – the obituary is wrong. Gosse says he didn’t know Zouch at all, only his work, but has seen a death notice for him. Actually the notice was for Zouch’s grandfather, also called Zouch. I am more relieved by this than I should be.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

But then after some hours of getting to know my new friend Zouch, I found an obituary, written by Edmund Gosse, which indicated that he had actually been dead for ten years at the point this inscription was written. www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

The academy

www.google.co.uk

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

He collected Renaissance art; he was even, briefly, a correspondent of Dickens (!) dickensletters.com/letters/rich....

The Charles Dickens Letters Project

An online resource that publishes, free of charge, all the new, unpublished correspondence of Charles Dickens that comes to light. Browse the letters of one of the most famous authors in history to le...

dickensletters.com

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

Google will quickly tell you a lot about a Zouch Troughton. He wrote a blank-verse tragedy, Nina Sforza (1841), acted by Helena Faucit (!), well regarded in print and on stage, and staged in 1893 by Buffalo Bill (!) as a vehicle for his girlfriend (It bombed that time).

Source: https://archive.org/details/BP_TRHM_0004; see also https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Nina_Sforza/sh0OAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22richard+zouch+troughton%22&pg=PP5&printsec=frontcover; also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Katherine_Clemmons

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

A. R. Haines’s name is a bit too common – suggestions welcome. But who on earth is Zouch Troughton? And why did Haines think he would be interested in Roger Ascham’s treatise about archery?

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

Thirty years and many house moves on, you find it again and start to wonder - who are these people who have been on the front endpapers all this time?

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 31

I bought this book about 1992, probably from the 50p box of some charity bookshop. It was long before you could read anything you wanted on a phone, and I was trying to build up a library of Renaissance texts, one spectacularly dog-eared book at a time. It was very Jude the Obscure. (1/11)

Cover of Arber's edition of Ascham's Toxophilus (1868)

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 30

I see that picture of the cathedral is quite persuasive… and my morning has been brightened by looking at Drayton's fabulous image of Herefordshire to see what a "yarringle" even looks like.

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 30

Which looks a bit like the picture - you hold the narrow top in your hand, and then there’s an expanding cone of wool below it
- Our artist has drawn one, but it has looked really confusing and they’ve tried to turn it into a pillar

Pic from https://spinoffmagazine.com/about-drop-spindle-spinning/

Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · Jul 30

Hi Andrew! A crazy guess for your files:
- Norwich and Norfolk most famous at this date for woollen thread and cloth
- Emblematised in, for instance, Brome’s The English Moor by the drop spindle

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