Sunday, October 23, 2011

Weird Tales from the Renaissance

William Shakespeare
Playwright, Poet, Actor
Born April 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, England
Died April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon, England

If you leave out Sir Thomas More's translation of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Weird Tales printed only six other works from the Renaissance by my count. All were by William Shakespeare, two poems and four excerpts from his plays. Those four excerpts were part of Virgil Finlay's poetry series, which ran from December 1937 to May 1940. The series came to an end with Dorothy McIlwraith's assumption of the editorship of Weird Tales.

William Shakespeare's Works in Weird Tales
"Fairy Lullaby" (poem, Mar. 1927)
"Double, double, toil and trouble" from Macbeth (July 1938)
"Death" (poem, Oct. 1938)
"I can call spirits from the vasty deep" from King Henry IV (Aug. 1939)
"Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night" from King Henry VI (Dec. 1939)
"The graves stood tenantless" from Hamlet (May 1940)

Ghosts? Witches? Monsters? Murderers? The Bard of Avon was also a teller of weird tales.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

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