o
Oberon is the king of the *fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Angry with his consort Titania because she refuses to part with the changeling boy, he tells *Robin Goodfellow to fetch a magic herb with which to drug her (a herb subsequently used on Lysander and Demetrius too).
In the 19th century, Oberon was usually a singing part for a woman. In the 20th century, most often played by male actors, the attempt to make him other-worldly has moved towards giving him either fantastic costumes or very little costume at all. With the advent of electricity he was given lights in his headdress by Frank *Benson and Beerbohm *Tree (both 1900), although Benson’s use of the new technology was abandoned when the battery concealed in the actor’s wings leaked over him. Various reviewers have described the Oberons they have seen as resembling insects or birds (beetles, Michael *Benthall 1957 and Patrick Kirwan 1914; a bluebottle, Robert *Helpmann 1938; a dragonfly, Benthall 1954; a cockatoo, Paul *Scofield 1982; and an Aztec bird, George *Devine 1954). In the second half of the 20th century Oberon has become an increasingly sinister figure as critics and directors have become more alive to the play’s dark sexual undercurrents: at the same time the role has often been doubled with that of Theseus (and that of Titania with Hippolyta, doublings first recommended by Robert *Cox in the 1640s), suggesting that the fairy king is in some sense the rational Duke’s unconscious.
Anne Button
Octavia is Caesar’s sister in Antony and Cleopatra. Her marriage with Antony is arranged, 2.2.
Anne Button
octavo, the format of a book in which the printed sheet was folded in half three times, making eight leaves or sixteen pages. Although the *quarto format was standardly used for single-text printings of Shakespeare’s plays, the octavo format was employed for most early editions of the narrative poems.
Eric Rasmussen
Odashima, Yushi (b. 1930), Japanese translator. Odashima majored in English at the University of Tokyo, where he later worked as a professor of English. Together with Shoyo Tsubouchi, he is one of the two Japanese who have translated the complete canon of Shakespeare. His translations have successfully recreated the original in contemporary Japanese, and he is regarded as a great popularizer of Shakespeare.
Tetsuo Kishi
Odéon, Théâtre de l’, founded in 1780, at times dependent on the Comédie-Française. It was run between 1906 and 1914 by André *Antoine, who directed Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Romeo and Juliet. It was conceded to the Renaud-*Barrault company (and staged Bonnefoy’s adaptation of Julius Caesar in 1960), and is now Théâtre de l’Europe, originally under the direction of Giorgio *Strehler. When the *National Theatre’s productions of King Lear (directed by Deborah Warner) and Richard III (directed by *Richard Eyre) visited in 1991, they were the first Shakespeare plays to be performed with French subtitles. Since then many European productions have come, from Tocilescu’s Hamlet (1992) to Ostermeier’s Measure for Measure (2012). Some cinema actors have featured in French productions: Isabelle Huppert portrayed a coquettish Isabella in Peter Zadek’s controversial Measure for Measure (1991), and Michel Piccoli as King Lear (2007) ran a business in 1930s Chicago.
Isabelle Schwartz-Gastine
Oehlenschläger, Adam (1779–1850), Danish Romantic poet and playwright. Instrumental in introducing Shakespeare into Scandinavia, he translated A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1816) and wrote plays influenced by Shakespeare. His Amleth (1847) goes back to *Saxo and creates a happy ending for a heroic Prince.
Inga-Stina Ewbank
office book. See Master of the Revels.
Okes, Nicholas. See printing and publishing.
Okhlopkov, Nikolai (1900–67), Soviet director. His Hamlet (Moscow, 1954) was set in a massive pair of gates that looked like an iron curtain and presented Denmark as a literal prison. The play had been banned during and after the Second World War: this was the first major Hamlet in the USSR after Stalin’s death.
Dennis Kennedy
Old Athenian. See Athenian, Old.
Oldcastle, Sir John. Known as Lord Cobham (c. 1378–1417), he was a Lollard leader (the Lollards followed John Wyclif’s heresies of scepticism originating in anticlericalism). Though acquainted with Prince Henry (later Henry V), he was condemned for treason and heresy and executed in 1417. He was venerated as a martyr by John *Foxe (1516–87) and others during Shakespeare’s lifetime. Sir John Falstaff’s name was originally Oldcastle in 1 Henry IV (as in one of Shakespeare’s sources, The Famous Victories of King Henry V), but Shakespeare changed it because of pressure from Oldcastle’s descendants the *Cobhams after the play had been performed but before the first *quarto was registered in February 1598 (see also Harvey; Russell).
Anne Button
Old-Spelling Shakespeare (1907–9). An ambitious project to issue all Shakespeare’s works in 40 volumes ‘in such a form as would have harmonized with the poet’s own orthography’ (Prospectus) was part of the plan for the Shakespeare Library, general editor Israel Gollancz. These old-spelling texts, edited initially by F. J. *Furnivall and W. G. Boswell-Stone, and from 1908 by Boswell-Stone and F. W. Clarke, included modern stage directions in brackets, collations, and brief textual notes. They were handsomely printed in a limited edition, beginning with the comedies in 1907. Only thirteen plays were issued, as the project was then halted. It was not until 1986 that another modern old-spelling edition was published, as part of the *Oxford Shakespeare.
R. A. Foakes
Old Stratford, that part of the parish of Stratford-upon-Avon which lay outside the medieval borough boundary, where Shakespeare bought 107 acres (43 ha) of land in 1602 from William and John *Combe. It was leased for farming to Thomas (d. 1611) and Lewis (d. 1627) Hiccox. The latter was to set up an inn, the Maidenhead, later the Swan and Maidenhead, in the eastern wing of the property now known as Shakespeare’s *Birthplace.
Stanley Wells
Old Vic theatre. Located in the Cut, off Waterloo Road, it is the fifth oldest standing theatre in London. Originally the Royal Coburg (built 1818), it provided broad melodrama but also hosted six appearances by Edmund *Kean (1831). It was redecorated in 1833, renamed the Royal Victoria Theatre after the future Queen, and soon became known affectionately as the ‘Old Vic’. Struggling financially, it was bought by social worker Emma Cons in 1880 and opened as a temperance music hall managed by William *Poel. In the 1900s, Cons began staging Shakespearian scenes during concert interludes. In 1914, Cons’s niece Lilian *Baylis, now controlling the theatre, mounted the first entirely Shakespearian season. The following season, Baylis put Ben *Greet in charge of production. A series of great actors such as Sybil *Thorndike, John *Gielgud, Edith *Evans, Peggy *Ashcroft, and Richard *Burton contributed to the theatre’s success. It housed the *National Theatre Company under Laurence *Olivier and later Peter *Hall from 1963 to 1976. It housed the Prospect Theatre Company (1979–81) until the company disbanded, causing the theatre to close until 1983: it later provided a London base for Peter Hall’s own company. In 1997, the building was almost sold, but in 1998 supporters established a trust to ensure that the theatre would survive. A new Old Vic Theatre Company was launched under the artistic directorship of Kevin *Spacey in 2003, for whom Trevor *Nunn directed Hamlet (2004) and Richard II (2005). Sam *Mendes’ Bridge Project used the Old Vic as its London base, performing The Winter’s Tale (2009), As You Like It (2010), The Tempest (2010), and Richard III (2011).
Bradley Ryner
Oldys, William (1696–1761), biographer and antiquarian who, with *Johnson, compiled the Harleian Miscellany. His notes form the ‘Additional Anecdotes’ in *Steevens’s 1778 edition of Shakespeare and are a source for such myths as the existence of a Stratfordian model for Falstaff, Shakespeare’s performance as Adam in As You Like It, and Shakespeare’s paternity of *Davenant.
Catherine Alexander
Oliva, Salvador (b. 1942). Catalan poet and translator of Shakespeare. His translations were first conceived to subtitle and dub the BBC Television Shakespeare series. He casts blank verse into Catalan free verse, and aims at a close poetic and dramatic rendering. Having started in the 1980s, Oliva is the most prolific of modern translators of Shakespeare into any Spanish language: he has translated all the plays, as well as the Sonnets, into Catalan, and has also rendered into Spanish four plays for Ángel-Luis *Pujante’s Spanish edition of the complete plays, as well as the collaborative plays together with the editor himself.
A. Luis Pujante
Oliver is the villainous older brother of Jaques (de Bois) and Orlando in As You Like It. The parallel character in *Lodge’s Rosalynde is Saladyne, who is killed rather than undergoing a conversion.
Anne Button
Olivia, a countess in Twelfth Night, is loved by Orsino but falls in love with his servant ‘Cesario’. The parallel character in *Rich’s Apolonius and Silla is Julina.
Anne Button
Olivier, Lord (Sir Laurence) (1907–89), British stage and film actor and director. At 15 as Kate in a school version of The Taming of the Shrew this son of a high Anglican vicar attracted the praise of Dame Ellen *Terry. By 1930 he was a name in the West End and by 1939 a lauded Hollywood star. Meanwhile in 1935 in London he had performed the parts of Romeo and Mercutio in succession with the more classical John *Gielgud. Olivier’s animal magnetism and impetuous verse-speaking provoked debate. The next year he appeared as Orlando in a coy film of As You Like It. He confirmed his position as a major stage actor at the *Old Vic in 1937–8 when under Tyrone *Guthrie he played Sir Toby Belch, Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth, Iago, and Coriolanus. He divorced his first wife and married the beautiful film star Vivien *Leigh, and in 1940 they collaborated on a disastrous Romeo and Juliet on Broadway. Released from war service he adapted, directed, and starred in the imaginative, patriotic Technicolor film of Henry V (1944), which moved from a stylized opening at Shakespeare’s Globe to realistic battle scenes. In the peak years 1944–8 along with Ralph *Richardson he led the fabled Old Vic seasons in the West End. His Shakespearian roles alone displayed his versatility: Hotspur and Justice Shallow in the two parts of Henry IV, Crookback in Richard III, and King Lear. His second Shakespearian film as director and star was Hamlet (1948), shot in black and white. The Old Vic did not re-engage him and he went into management. In 1951 he appeared with Vivien Leigh in London in a Festival of Britain production of Antony and Cleopatra, repeated in New York. The third and last of his remarkable Shakespeare films was Richard III (1955): he played the hunchback King with a relish which has been much imitated. Leading the season at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955 with Vivien Leigh, he played a brooding Macbeth and (under Peter *Brook’s direction) a great and moving Titus Andronicus as well as a rather fussy *Malvolio. He returned to Stratford to give a strikingly physical performance as Coriolanus in 1959. His appearance as the comedian Archie Rice in John Osborne’s The Entertainer brought him in close touch with younger actors and directors at the *Royal Court, including the actress Joan Plowright who (following his second divorce) became his wife. When the long-delayed *National Theatre became a reality Olivier, as the leader of his profession, was the obvious candidate as first director. From 1962 to 1973 in temporary quarters at the Old Vic he built up an acting ensemble and production team drawing not on old associates like Richardson but on young directors, actors, and designers from the Royal Court, including Plowright. His Shakespearian contributions included directing the opening Hamlet with Peter O’Toole as well as a visually charming Love’s Labour’s Lost. He played an arresting, arrogant Othello in blackface (less convincing when filmed), and a 19th-century Shylock (under Jonathan *Miller’s direction) reminiscent of a Rothschild financier. By the time he reluctantly yielded his post to Peter *Hall, he had survived a series of major illnesses, and he never acted in the new National Theatre complex where the largest, open-stage auditorium is named the Olivier. No longer able to sustain a part on stage, he appeared on film and television; his King Lear was screened by Granada Television. Uniquely honoured, he garnered Oscars, honorary doctorates, and a peerage. The memorial service for Lord Olivier of Brighton OM in Westminster Abbey was televised like a royal event: his chosen epitaph, recalling his Hamlet, was ‘Goodnight, sweet Prince.’
‘Upon the King…’ Laurence Olivier as Henry V the night before Agincourt, from his film version (1944).
Michael Jamieson
‘O mistress mine’, sung by Feste in Twelfth Night 2.3.38. Much debate has taken place over whether the popular tune of the same title arranged by Thomas *Morley in The First Book of Consort Lessons (1599) is the right one for the lyrics; if it is, then the song probably pre-dates the play and the words therefore may not be Shakespeare’s. The title is found as an opening to other early English songs.
The song was set by many late 19th- and early 20th-century composers, including Coleridge-Taylor, Dankworth, Finzi, Korngold, MacCunn, Parry, Quilter, Stanford, Sullivan, Warlock, and *Vaughan Williams.
Jeremy Barlow
‘On Ben Jonson’. According to an anecdote in the papers of Nicholas Burgh (c.1650) in the Bodleian Library, Shakespeare and *Jonson, ‘being merry at a tavern, Master Jonson having begun this for his epitaph: “Here lies Ben Jonson, | That was once one”, he gives it to Master Shakespeare to make up, who presently writes: “Who while he lived was a slow thing, | And now, being dead, is nothing.” ’ In another version, found among the papers of Thomas Plume in Maldon, Essex, Jonson wrote, ‘Here lies Ben Jonson, | Who was once one’, whereupon ‘Shakespeare took the pen from him, and made this:
Here lies Benjamin—
With short hair upon his chin—
Who while he lived was a slow thing,
And now he’s dead is no thing.’
Stanley Wells
O’Neill, Eliza (1791–1872), an actress who had already made her name (as Volumnia, Constance, and Juliet) in her native *Ireland before her sensational Covent Garden debut as Juliet in 1814. Greatly admired (not least by Talma) and regarded as a successor to Mrs *Siddons, Eliza O’Neill’s career ended with her marriage in 1819.
Richard Foulkes
onomatopoeia, the use of words that seem to imitate the sounds they refer to:
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears.
(The Tempest 3.2.135–6)
Chris Baldick
Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park. Often regarded as a tourist attraction, this playing area on the greensward of a royal park has afforded pleasure to many (some seeing their first play by Shakespeare) as well as giving young players like Ralph Fiennes their first work. The champion of such pastoral playing was Ben *Greet, a founding father in 1932–3; its longest serving exemplar was the stentorian Robert *Atkins who frequently directed and acted in the park, 1933–61. Stars like Gladys Cooper and Anna Neagle were happy to don Rosalind’s doublet and hose for a short summer season; admired regulars included Leslie French as Ariel and Puck. The repertoire has never been restricted to Shakespeare’s pastoral comedies. In 1975 a more permanent theatre with up-to-date technology was constructed, further modernized in 1999–2000. Under David Conville and Ian Talbot production values became more sophisticated than was possible within Atkins’s limited budget.
Michael Jamieson
opera. No literary figure has inspired so many operas as Shakespeare, with nearly 300 operas to date (and many failed attempts) based wholly or in part on his works, including two on The Rape of Lucrece and one on Venus and Adonis. Admittedly, of these 300 only *Verdi’s masterpieces Otello and Falstaff currently rank in the top 50 most frequently performed operas, though there are good recordings of several of the other Shakespearian operas, which are periodically revived. The most often set plays are (in order): The Tempest (the play requiring the most music), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (arguably the most musical play in terms of its poetry), Hamlet (always the most popular of the plays), Twelfth Night, and Romeo and Juliet. The plays which have not yet received operatic treatment are: Titus Andronicus, the Henry VI plays, King John, and Richard II. Although Shakespearian operas have been composed all over Europe, the Americas, and in the Far East, this brief survey will concentrate on the better-known, mainstream Western compositions.
Because of the very different nature, and demands, of opera compared with legitimate drama, Shakespeare’s plays cannot be turned into opera simply by setting all the words to music. (The one attempt to do so, John Barkworth’s Romeo and Juliet, performed in Middlesbrough in 1916 and London in 1920 and 1926, was not a success.) Instead, much pruning and tightening up of both text and plot is required: in effect an opera libretto is a type of translation. Abroad, librettos often underwent a kind of double transformation, being prepared from foreign-language translations (not always of the highest standard) and even adaptations of the plays. More often than not, Shakespearian operas have also reflected the prevailing dramatic and operatic tastes of the time. Thus, these operas, while clearly relating to Shakespeare’s works on one level, are often at many different removes from their sources. This is particularly vividly demonstrated in the English operas.
The earliest Shakespearian operas are the so-called semi-operas, or dramatic operas, composed in England during the Restoration, namely: Macbeth (*Davenant’s adaptation, 1664, with music first by Matthew Locke and later by John Eccles and then Richard Leveridge), The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island (Davenant and *Dryden, 1667, set by various composers including Locke, Pelham Humfrey, John Banister, and Giovanni Battista Draghi, and later by John Weldon), and *The Fairy Queen (1692, with music by Henry Purcell, adapted from A Midsummer Night’s Dream). For centuries the English were uncomfortable with all-sung operas in English. These Shakespearian Restoration dramatic operas, with plots and language heavily altered from their originals, contained vocal and instrumental music and spoken dialogue, but had a particular emphasis on the use of splendid scenery, costumes, and stage machines. Essentially, English opera at the time was a multi-sense experience, appealing as much to the eye as to the ear. Also, in contrast to continental opera, none of the principal characters had singing roles. Naturally, such spectacles were very expensive to produce, and they became less frequent in the 18th century.
As Italian opera became more popular in England at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th, so there developed a strong anti-Italian opera sentiment. This feeling expressed itself in the one-act mock-opera Pyramus and Thisbe (1716), a work derived from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and set to music by Richard Leveridge. This text was revised and set to music by John Frederick Lampe in 1745. Like its predecessor, Lampe’s work ridiculed Italian operatic convention and called for an alternative English form of musical entertainment. Although both these pieces enjoyed moderate popularity on the stage, the most effective attack on Italian opera during this period was John Gay’s parody The Beggar’s Opera (1728), which used ballad tunes rather than more sophisticated newly composed music. The Beggar’s Opera spawned a large number of other ballad operas, of which the only Shakespearian one was James Worsdale’s two-act ballad farce *A Cure for a Scold (1735), based on The Taming of the Shrew.
Despite this discomfort with all-sung English opera, several attempts were made in the 18th century to create all-sung English Shakespearian operas. In 1755 John Christopher Smith composed The *Fairies, a three-act all-sung opera in Handelian style with a libretto (by *Garrick) based on the first four acts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; the following year he set The Tempest in similar fashion. Both operas were supplemented with lyrics from other authors, such as Milton and Dryden, and The Tempest included material from the Restoration adaptation of the play. Although successful enough at the time, neither opera was performed for more than one season, probably because of the difficulty in engaging singers of sufficient merit. Seventeen years later, in 1773, at Garrick’s prompting Captain Edward Thompson adapted Love’s Labour’s Lost (the one Shakespeare play that was never performed in the Restoration and 18th century) as an opera. Thompson’s text is very close to Shakespeare’s, but was not quite completed, perhaps because of a major falling out with Garrick, and none of it was ever set to music. Finally, there appears to have been an operatic version of The Tempest at Covent Garden theatre in December 1776. Reduced to three acts on account of all the extra music, this was still principally a spoken drama with lots of music rather than a true opera.
At Covent Garden theatre in the early 19th century Frederick *Reynolds prepared texts for a number of Shakespearian ‘operas’ of this type, continuing the tradition of freely adding lyrics from other authors or from other plays, with the music often arranged from or composed by a number of composers. Similar treatment was given to The Merry Wives of Windsor (1824) at Drury Lane theatre, with music principally by Charles Edward Horn. This period, however, also witnessed an ‘authentic’, Rossini-influenced opera in Michael Balfe’s two-act opera buffa Falstaff (Her Majesty’s theatre, London, 19 July 1838).
Other genuine operas followed in the 20th century. A sense of nationalism, combined with a rediscovery of folk music, inspired Gustav *Holst to use traditional 17th-century English dance music in his one-act opera At the Boar’s Head (1924), based on scenes from the Henry IV plays. Also caught up in this movement was Ralph *Vaughan Williams, whose four-act opera Sir John in Love (1924–8), derived from The Merry Wives of Windsor, also employs English folk songs as part of its musical language. Of more recent operas, those by Benjamin *Britten have proved of international significance. Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is particularly notable for having a libretto that is very close to Shakespeare’s original (though reduced in length to about half). Thomas Adès’s The Tempest, successfully produced at Covent Garden in 2004, has a libretto by Meredith Oakes which paraphrases and condenses Shakespeare’s text.
As Shakespeare’s works became known abroad, so their potential for operatic transformation quickly became apparent. However, since Shakespeare’s plays are not entirely original in their source material, it is not always easy to determine to what extent an opera in a foreign language can truly be said to be derived from Shakespeare rather than from sources in common. For example, Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Giovanni Pariati wrote a Hamlet libretto, Ambleto, that was set to music by Francesco Gasparini (Venice, 1706), Domenico Scarlatti (Rome, 1715), and Giuseppe Carcani (Venice, 1742). Their source was Saxo *Grammaticus’ Historia Danica, which also lies behind Shakespeare’s play. Many other Hamlet, Caesar, and Coriolanus operas are likewise not directly derived from Shakespeare’s works.
The earliest Italian operas generally accepted as Shakespearian were, in fact, first produced outside Italy. Francesco Maria Veracini’s Rosalinda (1744), based on As You Like It, Ferdinando Bertoni’s Il duca d’Atene (1780), derived from The Taming of the Shrew, and Pietro Carlo Guglielmi’s Romeo e Giulietta (1810) were all first performed in London. Stephen Storace’s Gli equivoci (1786), the only operatic version of The Comedy of Errors before the 20th century and one of the finest early Shakespearian operas, has the unusual distinction of being an Italian opera composed by an Englishman and premièred in Vienna, with an Italian libretto (by *Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte) based on a French translation of the play. (Storace reused much of the material from Gli equivoci in his London operas No Song, no Supper, 1790, and especially The Pirates, 1792.) Other Italian operas from this time include Gaetano Andreozzi’s Amleto (Padua, 1792), Luigi Caruso’s La tempesta (Naples, 1799) and Falstaff; ossia, Le tre burle (Vienna, 1799) by Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), a prolific Italian opera composer who lived and worked mostly in Vienna.
Although not the most popular subject matter (when turning to British literature in search of plots, Italian librettists often went first to Sir Walter *Scott), Shakespeare’s plays continued to attract operas by Italian composers in the 19th century, including one by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), the most important Italian composer of the first half of the 19th century. Otello; ossia, Il moro di Venezia, which includes some music from Rossini’s earlier works, was first performed in Naples in 1816. For its revival in Rome, 1819, it was given a happy ending. Giovanni Pacini’s La gioventù di Enrico V (Rome, 1820) and Salvario Mercadante’s opera of the same title (Milan, 1834) are unusual for being based on episodes in the two Henry IV plays. But Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Venice, 1830), for long considered one of the finest Shakespearian operas of this period, proves on closer analysis of the text not in fact to be derived from Shakespeare at all but from his Italian sources.
The second half of the 19th century in Italy is dominated by Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpieces Otello (Milan, 1887) and Falstaff (Milan, 1893), preceded by the stirring Macbeth (Florence, 1847). Arrigo Boito, Verdi’s librettist for his last two operas, prepared his first Shakespearian libretto for Franco Faccio’s Amleto (Genoa, 1865), a work, however, of finer literary than musical merit. In the 20th century more notable Italian Shakespearian operas include Gian Francesco Malipiero’s, Antonio e Cleopatra (Florence, 1938), Giulio Cesare (Genoa, 1936), and Romeo e Giulietta (the second act of Mondi celesti e infernali, 1950) and Ottorino Respighi’s Lucrezia (Milan, 1937). More recent operas include the unperformed All’s Well That Ends Well/Giglietta di Narbona (1955–8), and the prize-winning The Merchant of Venice/Il mercante di Venezia (Milan, 1961), both by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968).
Although Italy produced arguably the finest Shakespearian operas, Shakespeare has been more frequently set by German composers. The Tempest in particular was a great favourite of late 18th- and early 19th-century Romantics, while Twelfth Night and The Winter’s Tale also attracted a number of settings. Even Richard Wagner (1813–83) was tempted by Shakespeare. His opera Das Liebesverbot; oder, Die Novize von Palermo, based, rather unusually, on Measure for Measure, was, however, a failure and was performed just once in his lifetime, at Magdeburg on 29 March 1836. The only German Shakespearian opera to obtain any enduring popularity is Otto *Nicolai’s Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor (Berlin, 1849). More recent German operas include Aribert Reimann’s Lear (Munich, 1978) and Hans Gerfor’s Der Park (Wiesbaden, 1992), a ‘psychological interpretation’ of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In France Shakespeare’s works have also had an important influence on the operatic world, though, in complete contrast to Germany, for example, there are no French operas on The Tempest. Instead, on the whole, the French have been more attracted to the tragedies. Nevertheless, the earliest French Shakespearian opera appears to be Papavoine’s Le Vieux Coquet; ou, Les Deux Amies (Paris, 1761), based on The Merry Wives of Windsor. Romeo and Juliet, however, was the subject of operas by Nicolas-Marie Dalayrac (Paris, 1792), Daniel Steibelt (Paris, 1793, one of the most successful early Shakespearian operas) and, in 1867, a fine work by Charles François Gounod (1818–93) with much sumptuous music. Macbeth caught the attention of two composers early in the 19th century: Hippolyte-André-Baptiste Chelard (Paris, 1827) and Louis Alexandre Piccinni (Paris, 1829). Of greater artistry and success, however, were Hector *Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict (1860–2) and a musically rich setting of Hamlet (1868) by Ambroise Thomas (1811–96), containing some of his most splendid music (and a happy ending). Thomas’s other Shakespeare opera is Le Songe d’une nuit d’été (Paris, 1850) which rather than being the setting of A Midsummer Night’s Dream its title suggests is a biographical fantasy about Shakespeare himself. The writer (a yearning tenor) is redeemed from his corrupting association with Falstaff (here a real-life gamekeeper) by the inspiring intervention of Queen Elizabeth, who poses in diguise as Shakespeare’s muse and stirs his soul with some magnificent coloratura arias. An operatic Henry VIII (Paris, 1883) by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), however, is based not on Shakespeare but on Calderón’s play La cisma in Inglaterra. Ernest Bloch’s opera Macbeth (Paris, 1910) was originally written in French but was translated into Italian and into English and, after revivals in a number of European towns, received its first major American performance at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960. Bloch (1880–1959) was Swiss, not French, and assumed American nationality in 1924.
With the exception of M. Cooney’s Hamlet (New York, 1870), all the many North American Shakespearian operas were composed as recently as the 20th century (although Harry Rowe Shelley’s Romeo and Juliet dates from as early as 1901). The USA has been particularly important for the development of lighter Shakespearian operatic forms, such as *musicals and rock operas. However, there have also been more serious works, such as Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra (New York, 1966). Barber (1910–81) was commissioned to compose this opera to celebrate the reopening of the New York Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center. Unfortunately the production (by *Zeffirelli) was a disaster, and the most expensive flop in the Metropolitan Opera’s history.
Irena Cholij, rev. Stanley Wells
Ophelia, Polonius’ daughter and Laertes’ sister, is warned away by them from Hamlet, who has been wooing her. Polonius orders her to speak to Hamlet while he and the King spy on them in the ‘nunnery scene’ (Hamlet 3.1) and she also appears in 3.2. In 4.5, now insane, she is brought before the King and Queen. Gertrude describes her death by drowning, 4.7, and there is a confrontation between Laertes and Hamlet at her burial, 5.1.
On one level Ophelia’s madness is easily explicable: her father forces her to betray Hamlet and he has apparently gone mad, rejected her, and killed her father. However, none of the characters links her madness with these events explicitly, and her part is lightly sketched, leaving it tempting to fill in the gaps. Laurence *Olivier is by no means alone, for example, in declaring that Hamlet ‘is not just imagining what is beneath Ophelia’s skirts, he has found out for himself’ (1937, though he seems to have changed his mind for the film version in 1948: *Branagh’s film version, by contrast, supplies flashbacks to a nude bedroom scene). In some stage productions the violent language of the nunnery scene has been accompanied by violent groping: Jonathan Pryce’s Hamlet, for example, was particularly physical with Harriet Walter’s Ophelia in 1980. The 19th century preferred their Ophelias more innocent: on stage the bawdier verses of her mad songs were cut, and in fiction Mary Cowden *Clarke, in ‘Ophelia: The Rose of Elsinore’ (from Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines), explained how Ophelia had learned them from a seduced and abandoned peasant girl. An enduring fascination with Ophelia’s psychology (visible, for example, in the *Pre-Raphaelite Millais’s hugely popular painting of her death) was accompanied by a sentimentality which, Elaine Showalter has argued, affected the way that madness in real women was perceived.
Anne Button
oral traditions. Perhaps all Shakespeare’s plays derive material not just from printed texts but from a variety of unwritten forms, from *fairy tales, gossip, superstitions, *ballads, *jigs, and mummings. To trace such borrowings we are paradoxically reliant upon written records which will only exist if this information was finally thought worthy of preservation. Sixteenth- and 17th-century drama is itself an important resource in studying oral traditions.
The oral culture of Britain may be traced from the Anglo-Saxon society wherein the retainers or comitatus of a great lord would gather to hear the narrative performed by the poet and accompanied by harp, to the 11th–14th-century minstrel tradition. With the invention of print, minstrels in their medieval form largely disappeared, becoming balladeers selling broadsheets of their songs and singing to advertise their wares, or stage-players. Nevertheless, for the considerable percentage of the population of Elizabethan England still illiterate, this oral culture continued. Whilst more than 4,000 *ballads were printed before 1600, they continued to be produced and transmitted orally. The popular festive rites of a particular town or village continued to be passed on from year to year without being fixed through literacy. Memory was a much more important and reliable tool than it is now.
Some of the plots that Shakespeare turned into drama clearly have their roots in the fairy tale. The choice between three caskets in The Merchant of Venice or between three daughters of whom only the youngest is good in King Lear derives ultimately from folk tales, as does the wicked stepmother of Cymbeline. The Taming of the Shrew recalls a tradition of stories about scolds. Even Hamlet was a popular Danish legend before *Belleforest’s French translation made it more accessible in written form. Shakespeare probably drew upon his own knowledge of superstition, fairy lore, and *ghost stories for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth. The ballad tradition was also an important influence upon his work, supplying ‘old’ and ‘fantastical’ tales such as are proffered by Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, tales to which the play’s improbable drama is likened. There are snatches of ballads in many of Shakespeare’s plays, performed by *Ophelia, *Desdemona, and, of course, Autolycus.
The influence of various festive kinds of oral performance is also apparent. The *jig was a popular kind of dancing performed to the music of a pipe or tabor that often had a vocal accompaniment. In the 16th century, jigs became a common conclusion to stage plays. Although they varied in content, there was often a narrative précis improvised beforehand and some kind of structure to the dancing, usually a competition in which the *fool triumphed. One specific kind of jig in which the Robin Hood tradition, a popular subject of ballads, prevailed was the *morris dance. The dancers competed for the favour of a lady, usually called Maid Marian, in a kind of ritual combat, often featuring the hobby-horse. Another kind of festive combat was the mumming. These plays were based on the conflict between St George and his adversary, the Turkish knight, and sometimes a dragon. St George is killed in the course of the action but miraculously brought back to life through the attentions of the Doctor. Yet another popular festive rite passed on through oral tradition rather than through any written text was the charivari or skimmington ride, an opportunity for neighbours to protest at the perceived wrongdoing of one of their number by means of a noisy procession with the subject represented in effigy.
Some of these popular forms, particularly the Robin Hood plays, were deliberately appropriated for the stage and Shakespeare’s plays include a number of references to them: Jack Cade as morris dancer in 1 Henry VI (3.1.365–6), the mention of ‘the old Robin Hood of England’ in As You Like It (1.1.111), the reference to jigs and the hobby-horse in Hamlet (3.2.126–9), the morris dance in The Two Noble Kinsmen (3.5). Parallels have also been identified between the St George mummings and Coriolanus and between the combat between Carnival and Lent and Henry IV.
Jane Kingsley-Smith
orchestra, in the Roman theatre the space directly in front of the stage reserved for the senators. In his drawing of the *Swan, Johannes de Witt labelled as ‘orchestra’ the auditorium gallery adjacent to the tiring house, presumably to indicate that this was the place (known as the *Lords Room) where the most socially elevated members of the audience sat. The reorganization of spectating positions in the *Restoration theatre gave the position in front of the stage to the musicians who, by transference from the old name for this location, became known as the orchestra in the early 18th century.
Gabriel Egan
organ. Although Shakespeare’s play texts do not refer to the organ, the instrument was used in the indoor theatre; Marston’s tragedy Sophonisba (1606) indicates an organ in ensembles playing between the acts.
Jeremy Barlow
Orlando, mistreated by his eldest brother Oliver, escapes to the forest of *Ardenne in As You Like It. The parallel character in *Lodge’s Rosalynde is Rosader.
Anne Button
Orléans, Bastard of. See Bastard of Orléans.
Orléans, Duke of. One of the noblemen at Agincourt, he is taken prisoner (Henry V 4.8.76). He is based on Charles, Duke of Orléans (1391–1465).
Anne Button
‘Orpheus with his lute’, sung by a Gentlewoman in All Is True (Henry VIII) 3.1.3, to her own lute accompaniment; the earliest setting to survive is by Matthew *Locke, published 1667. Nineteenth- and 20th-century settings include those by Bishop, Coates, Gurney, Kodaly, Quilter, Rubbra, Stenhammer, *Sullivan, and *Vaughan Williams.
Jeremy Barlow
Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, is rejected by Olivia and is ultimately betrothed to Viola in Twelfth Night. His name may have been adapted from *Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, who was in London during the winter of 1600–1.
Anne Button
Osric, an effete courtier, acts as an umpire during the fencing match of Hamlet 5.2.
Anne Button
Ostler, William (c. 1585–1614), actor (Blackfriars Boys 1601–8, King’s Men 1608–14). Ostler first enters the dramatic record via the actor list for *Jonson’s Poetaster (performed 1601), printed in the 1616 Jonson folio. In the Sharers Papers of 1635 Cuthbert *Burbage described Ostler as one of the ‘boys growing up to be men’ (the others were John *Underwood and Nathan *Field) who joined the King’s Men when the *Blackfriars reverted to the Burbages in 1608. Ostler subsequently appeared in actor lists for the King’s Men’s performances: Jonson’s The Alchemist and Catiline; Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi in the role of Antonio; and Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Captain, Bonduca, and Valentian. In 1611 Ostler married Thomasine Heminges, daughter of John *Heminges, and soon after he acquired shares in the Globe and the Blackfriars which were the subject of a legal dispute between Thomasine and her daughter after Ostler died intestate on 16 December 1614. An epigram by John Davies, printed around 1611, described Ostler as ‘sole King of Actors’.
Gabriel Egan
Oswald, Goneril’s steward in King Lear, is challenged by Kent (Tragedy of King Lear 2.2; History of King Lear 7) and killed by Edgar (4.5.249; History 20.242).
Anne Button
Other Place. See Royal Shakespeare Company.
‘O’ the twelfth day of December’, snatch sung by Sir Toby in Twelfth Night 2.3.81. The ballad of ‘Musselburgh Field’ opens similarly; the music is unknown.
Jeremy Barlow
‘ousel cock so black of hue, The’, sung by Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.1.118. The original tune is unknown, but the early 17th-century tune ‘Woodicock’ fits well, as suggested by Professor John Ward.
Jeremy Barlow
outlaws capture Valentine and Speed in The Two Gentlemen of Verona 4.1, then Silvia, 5.3, the Duke of Milan and Thurio, 5.4.
Anne Button
Overdone, Mistress. A bawd in Measure for Measure, she is sent to prison, 3.1.464.
Anne Button
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (43 bc–ad 17) was Shakespeare’s favourite classical poet: ‘for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy…Ovidius Naso was the man. And why indeed “Naso” [nose] but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention’ (Love’s Labour’s Lost 4.2.122–5). The epitome of style, the preceptor of love, Ovid was exiled from Rome to Tomis on the Black Sea for an offence against the Emperor Augustus. Hence Touchstone among the exiles in Arden: ‘I am here with thee and thy goats as the most capricious poet honest Ovid was among the Goths’ (As You Like It 3.3.5–6). At school Shakespeare would have been drilled in extracts from Ovid’s works in their original Latin—first brief passages in textbooks for the teaching of grammar and rhetoric, then more substantial sections of the poems themselves.
Ovid’s love poems, the Amores, are among the key precedents for the Sonnets; each sequence is a set of variations on the moods of love, shifting rapidly between different poses and tones. The Fasti, which linked major events in Roman history and mythology to the calendrical year, provided the principal source for The Rape of Lucrece. The Amores could have been read in *Marlowe’s translation, but the Fasti were only available in Latin. When Ben *Jonson wrote of Shakespeare’s ‘small Latin’ he was measuring with the yardstick of his own prodigious learning—by modern standards, Shakespeare had perfectly adequate Latin.
Ovid’s Heroides, imaginary verse-epistles from women in mythology who are deserted by their lovers (e.g. Ariadne on Naxos, Dido after the departure of Aeneas from Carthage), were widely studied in school, where a frequent exercise was to imitate them. They are cited in the tutoring scene in The Taming of the Shrew (3.1.28–9), which also alludes playfully to Ovid’s notorious Ars amatoria or ‘art of love’. Like *Lyly and Marlowe, Shakespeare found in the Heroides models for a character’s solitary self-examination at moments of emotional crisis.
The influence of these shorter works pales beside that of Ovid’s magnum opus, the Metamorphoses (written before his exile in ad 8). About 90% of Shakespeare’s allusions to classical mythology refer to stories included in this epic compendium of tales. Shakespeare knew the book in both the original Latin and Arthur Golding’s 1567 English translation. Golding’s language influenced, for example, the bristles on the boar in Venus and Adonis and the ‘babbling’ of the nymph Echo to whom Viola compares herself in Twelfth Night (1.5.262). Shakespeare frequently referred to the stories in the Metamorphoses as parallels or paradigms for the emotional turmoil of his characters. Where Ovid told of bodily metamorphoses wrought by extremes of passion, Shakespeare translated these into psychological transformations and vivid metaphors. Ovid was especially important for his representation of female feeling.
Shakespeare was most Ovidian at the beginning and the end of his career. Both his early narrative poems are based on Ovidian sources. Venus and Adonis takes a 100-line story from the third book of the Metamorphoses and expands it into more than 1,000 lines of elegant artifice. Shakespeare wove into the narrative structure elaborate arguments for and against the ‘use’ of beauty. For this, he pulled together different parts of Ovid: the witty persuasions to love are in the manner of the Amores and the Ars amatoria, while the figure of the vain youth has something of Narcissus and that of the forward woman more than a little of Salmacis, who seduces another gorgeous but self-absorbed boy, Hermaphroditus (Metamorphoses 4). Lucrece combines the Ovidian narrative of Tarquin’s act of rape with a long lament in the tradition of female ‘complaint’ which descends from the Heroides. Tarquin’s ravishing stride returns as a sinister image in several of the plays.
If Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are poetic explorations of, respectively, the light and the dark sides of desire, then A Midsummer Night’s Dream (written soon after) and Titus Andronicus (written or revised in 1594) are their dramatic equivalents. Titus is explicitly patterned on the story of the rape of Philomel in book 7 of the Metamorphoses (some fifteen years after Titus Shakespeare returned to this tale in Cymbeline, where Giacomo notices in Innogen’s bedchamber that ‘She hath been reading late, | The tale of Tereus. Here the leaf’s turned down | Where Philomel gave up’—2.2.44–6). A copy of Ovid’s book is actually brought on stage in Titus (4.1) and used as a plot-device: by pointing to the story of Philomel, raped in the secluded woods by her brother-in-law Tereus, Lavinia indicates that she too has been violated. Titus then acts out his revenge in deliberate homage to that of Procne, Philomel’s sister: ‘For worse than Philomel you used my daughter, | So worse than Progne I will be revenged’ (5.2.193–4)—Procne tricked Tereus into eating his own son, whereas Titus goes one better and bakes both Tamora’s sons in his pie.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the metamorphic power of the flower ‘love-in-idleness’ is Ovidian. Bottom’s assumption of the ass’s head plays on animal transformation, while ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’—which includes clanking verse that may parody the ‘fourteener’ of Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses—is a comical staging of one of Ovid’s most tragic stories of doomed love (Metamorphoses 4). Ovid’s great theme is the inevitability of change. Book 15 of the Metamorphoses offers a philosophical discourse on the subject, mediated via the philosophy of Pythagoras. It was from here that Shakespeare got many of those images of transience that roll through the Sonnets, but A Midsummer Night’s Dream is his chief dramatic celebration of how something positive and potentially enduring can grow from change: ‘And all their minds transfigured so together | More witnesseth than fancy’s images, | And grows to something of great constancy’ (5.1.24–6).
Though no subsequent comedy has transformation woven so fully into its texture as this, Ovid was of continued importance in Shakespeare’s later work in the genre. At the climax of The Merchant of Venice, Lorenzo and Jessica duet upon a sequence of Ovidian lovers—Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido, Medea. The myth of Actaeon, transformed into a hart and torn to pieces by his own hounds as punishment for his gaze upon the naked goddess Diana bathing, is alluded to in both The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night. The Golden Age before the earth was scarred by property-ownership, legal codes, and empire-building (Metamorphoses 1) is an important point of reference in both As You Like It and The Tempest.
In The Winter’s Tale, Perdita, flowers in hand, invokes Proserpina (4.4.116), whose abduction to the underworld by Dis (Metamorphoses 5) symbolizes the coming of winter, her recovery the return of spring. Florizel, meanwhile, compares his mock-transformation of dress and rank to the disguises of the Ovidian gods (4.4.25–31). The reanimation of Hermione is modelled on the bringing to life of Pygmalion’s ivory statue (Metamorphoses 10).
Shakespeare’s most sustained passage of Ovidian imitation is Prospero’s renunciation of his rough magic (The Tempest 5.1.33 ff.). That Shakespeare went to the Metamorphoses so late in his career shows that his Ovidianism was no mere young man’s affectation; that Prospero’s speech is modelled on the words of Ovid’s witch Medea (Metamorphoses 7) raises questions about the ‘whiteness’ of his magic.
Jonathan Bate
Oxford, Earl of. A Lancastrian in Richard Duke of York (3 Henry VI), he is captured at the battle of Tewkesbury, 5.5.2. In Richard III he speaks two lines, 5.2.17–18. He is based on John de Vere (1443–1513), 13th Earl of Oxford. On the 17th Earl, see Oxfordian theory.
Anne Button
Oxford English Dictionary, commonly known as OED and now in its second edition (1986). It is constructed on historical principles, using quotations, listed chronologically, to illustrate the various senses of a word, as well as providing etymology, pronunciation, and derivatives. It includes nearly all the vocabulary of important authors from 1590 to 1660, including Shakespeare.
Susan Brock
Oxfordian theory, a term for what has since the mid-20th century been the most visible strand in the *Authorship Controversy, the claim that Shakespeare’s works were in fact written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604). De Vere published verse and also wrote comedies, though these do not survive (they are mentioned by *Meres in Palladis Tamia, quite independently of Shakespeare’s). His involvement with the theatre extended to employing *Lyly as a secretary, and patronizing an acting company from 1580 onwards, Oxford’s Men, who seem to have mainly toured the provinces and were absorbed by Worcester’s Men after 1602. De Vere was a notorious figure at Elizabeth’s court, violent and irresponsible: he killed a servant when only 17, and his many subsequent quarrels included a brawl with the family of a lady-in-waiting he had impregnated and a conspiracy against *Sidney. In between squandering his estate, fighting in Flanders, and feuding, however, he established a reputation as a good dancer and musician.
The view that de Vere supplemented his more public involvement with poetry and the theatre by secretly writing the Shakespeare canon in his spare time was first put forward by the unfortunately named Thomas J. Looney in ‘Shakespeare’ Identified (1920). Already convinced that Shakespeare could not have written his own works, Looney hit upon Oxford as the true author after noticing that his poem ‘Women’, anthologized in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, was written in the same (common) stanzaic form as Venus and Adonis. Looney offered no explanation as to why or how de Vere should have published mediocre work under his own name and masterpieces under Shakespeare’s, nor why the deception should have been kept up by the compilers of the Folio, and he had to argue that the Shakespeare plays visibly written after de Vere’s death in 1604 must have been subsequently revised by others. An exception was The Tempest, which Looney simply dismissed as inauthentic.
Despite the theory’s shortcomings it attracted followers in the 1920s and 1930s (most notoriously Sigmund *Freud), and was further developed in the 1950s by Charles and Dorothy Ogburn, who in the 1,300-page This Star of England claimed that Oxford had been secretly married to Queen *Elizabeth and that the *Fair Youth of the Sonnets was their hitherto unacknowledged son, the Earl of *Southampton. Since the 1980s the Oxfordian theory has been enthusiastically propagated by one of de Vere’s descendants, the Earl of Burford (sometimes to the embarrassment of his father, the current Earl of Oxford), who has successfully appealed, in particular, to the displaced snobbery of wealthy Texans. The 2011 film Anonymous lent its support with eccentric verve.
Michael Dobson
Oxford Shakespeare (1) 1982–2011 (2) 1986. (1) A new ‘Oxford Shakespeare’, one work to a volume, began to appear, under the general editorship of Stanley Wells, in 1982. The established canon was completed with the publication of Richard II in 2011. Like the *New Cambridge edition that began life at almost the same time, this series is based on a fresh appraisal of the texts by scholarly editors, as well as a concern with performance, and uses illustrations to enliven the substantial critical introductions. It also provides a collation and notes on the same pages as the text. Its format and printing style suggest a more sober approach than that of the New Cambridge, but in their general aims the two editions appear to be much alike.
(2) The Complete Works, general editors Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, published by Oxford University Press, together with a second volume containing an edited ‘original spelling’ text, and often referred to as the Oxford Shakespeare, appeared in 1986. It is based on a comprehensive rethinking both of the textual basis for each of the plays, and also of the best way to present them for present-day readers. The works are printed in a newly determined chronological order, which often challenges previous assumptions, though the dating of many plays and poems remains speculative. This means, for instance, that 1 Henry VI follows 2 Henry VI, here titled The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster. (The title is taken from the quarto, although the control text for this play is the Folio). The effect is destabilizing, as is this edition’s choice of texts, preferring, where possible, those associated with the stage rather than those thought to be derived from Shakespeare’s drafts or *‘foul papers’. The edition thus subverts a tradition of textual criticism that argued for recovering as nearly as possible what was in Shakespeare’s manuscript. The edition also acknowledges that Shakespeare may have *revised his plays, most notably by printing two texts of King Lear, based on the quarto and the Folio, and also by relegating to a list of ‘Additional Passages’ the lines found in the second quarto of Hamlet but not in the Folio text. Another innovatory feature of the edition is the provision of numerous stage directions that help the reader to visualize the staging, so that ‘Enter Ghost’ (Hamlet 1.1.37) becomes ‘Enter the Ghost in complete armour, holding a truncheon, with his beaver up.’ Some critics of the edition have been troubled that these editorial interventions are often not marked as such, and others protested that such innovations as renaming Falstaff, a character of mythic repute, as *Oldcastle (in 1 Henry IV), are ill advised. The edition was published with double-column plain text on the page, very brief prefaces to each of the works, a glossary at the end of the book, and a general introduction that includes a brief explanation of the thinking that went into the edition. A full account of this thinking was later published separately in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (1987). A revised edition (2005) adds Edward III and included a complete text of Sir Thomas More. See also Norton Shakespeare. The text of the Oxford Shakespeare has been taken over, with some modifications, into the *Norton Shakespeare (1997), which adds the full apparatus that American students expect. Two of the original Complete Works editors, Gary Taylor and John Jowett, are, along with Terri Bourus, overseeing a complete re-edit, building on the 1986 edition in approaches to the textual treatment of each work, and responding to the many ways in which Shakespeare’s canon and chronology have been reconceived in the last 30 years. It will be published in 2016 as The New Oxford Shakespeare.
R. A. Foakes, rev. Stanley Wells
Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS, pronounced ‘owds’) was formed in 1885 by undergraduates and limited by the university to the performance of the classics, especially Shakespeare. The involvement of professionals (including John *Gielgud) as guest directors and designers has sometimes attracted national reviews. It has launched many theatrical careers, among them those of Peter *Brook and Kenneth *Tynan.
Susan Brock
oxymoron, a compressed paradox, in which complete opposites qualify one another:
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health
(Romeo and Juliet 1.1.177)
This figure of speech is particularly associated with *Petrarch, and became a cliché among his English imitators.
Chris Baldick