Some genuine questions for Shakespeare-deniers, prompted by Ivor Brown’s labour of love …
Ivor Brown, Shakespeare (The Reprint Society: London, 1951)
This was a real find, as I’m discovering, at £1 from a second-hand bookshop in North Wales.
Brown has a wonderful writing style, self-deprecating and witty, subtly acerbic at times. In this book he reminds me of an English (although to be precise he was born in Penang) version of Bill Bryson.
He freely admits that there is simply no need for yet another book on Shakespeare, but that it is a labour of love. I think I feel the same way.
What could be worse than dying, believing that you’re going to hell?
PTS read-through: Richard III, Act II, scene i
June 27, 1996. George Street, Luton, at a bus stop opposite the town hall. Genuinely nauseous to the verge of throwing up. Could I have torn my eyes up from the book I was reading, I would broadly have seen the image below …
Continue reading “PTS 07/043: The Bad Death of Eduard (Delacroix) IV”
It often takes something (we consider) sub-human to remind us of our humanity …
‘… you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die.’
Not that you needed me to complete the speech, I dare say … I’m also guessing you want to watch it again (I had to), so here it is.
The weekend brings an exciting reward for my ‘holiday’ week’s hard marking. On consecutive nights I’ll be watching Bladerunner: The Final Cut, and then Bladerunner 2049. And I’ve got my tattered copy of Philip K Dick‘s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep‘ (1968) out – the first non-Shakespeare/EMP book I have read in weeks, or perhaps even months …
Yet there is, because there always is, an opportunity for me to connect to Shakespeare.
WE CANNOT, MUST NOT, WIPE ART WITH ANTI-BACTERIAL WIPES BEFORE ALLOWING THE NEXT GENERATION TO HANDLE IT …
I took this picture – from King Lear – at the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival back in 2012. I often show it to pupils who try to tell me that Shakespeare is ‘boring‘. Or indeed I give them some of the plot details from Titus Andronicus that have caused such concern of late …
It’s taken me a little while to allow this one to sink in to the extent that it became a ‘crime’, but in the Dock, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I give you no less than the English Faculty of Cambridge University (or at least some members of that august institution) …
Christ, this is IT […] THIS is why I do it. All of it.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (Penguin: London, 1992)
Today’s post is all about one simple fact: the world-wide-web existed centuries before the Internet. Before electricity, in fact. And I want you to plug into it.
I find it apposite, and slightly ironic that writing about Shakespeare, and without any deliberate choice on my part – I promise you – I’m listening to the Tron Legacy soundtrack as I type this. My other literary love is Science Fiction, and again, the point I’m making relates to that intoxicating cocktail of the 16th and 26th centuries, with a dash of the present thrown in.
So, the pre-internet web …
Stewed-ants, too-daze lessen his a bout de weighs inn witch spiel-chequers cant bee deep-ended own.
I dedicate this to all the Y12 and Y13 students whose typed submissions I am marking at the moment. You deserve something in return for the frequent face-palms and occasional belly-laughs you are giving me …
Hay Spiel-Chequer Lessen.
If there’s another Shakespeare play in which dreams loom as large, I’ve yet to read it …
PTS Shakespeare read-through – Richard III, Act I sc iv.
Back in early 1997, I discovered that my eldest son was on his way. The pregnancy was unplanned, and to say the least a shock to a frankly very immature young man who was focussed on nothing but wine, women and song – not necessarily in that order. To be fair to that youth, books sometimes made an appearance, too. He was, I like to think, a completely different person to the one who’s writing this evening – I look back on him with some shame (on sleepless nights), listing the apologies I owe people.
Continue reading “PTS 07/042: Mr Sandman, Dream Me A Dream …”
You know, the Shakespeare nerd in people’s lives.
In some ways, this post feels like a partner to yesterday’s …
Survive in teaching long enough – it IS a question of survival, and of course many do not – and your students grow up, and they leave ‘the nest’ that is your classroom. Some you never hear from, or indeed see, again, and all you can hope is that the The Long Goodbye … applies.
Others stay in touch. It’s one of my chief joys this year that some of my Year 11 class from last year pop in and say hello every now and then, even though, or perhaps especially where they haven’t chosen English at A Level. Don’t tell them that. Oops.
Eventually, some become friends. And James is one of mine.
I think I might finally have achieved critical mass. One of my students (thanks, Struckers) pointed out today that I’ve got a Shakespeare quotation for every occasion. That pleased me quite a bit, in the way that only an unabashed nerd can take pleasure from their weird obsession being recognised by others (even if they are being gently mocked) …
What was this occasion?
Working in a school, of course I met several people who seemed genuinely frightened by the eerie sky that only half-illumined our collective journey to work on Monday – some, only some, of them were pupils …
Conditions really were awe-inspiring up here in the frozen North of England.
Continue reading “‘Dews of blood’: Hurricane Ophelia, 16 October 2017”
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 