Another selection of songs curated with the characters in mind …
As usual, the PonyTail Shakespeare read-through of a play ends with a ‘Soundtrack Album’.
As usual, it probably says a lot about my poor taste in music.
As usual, I’d love you to let me know what’s missing …
Continue reading “PTS 08/050: The Comedy of Errors Soundtrack Album”
Not everyone gets their just desserts as our RomCom ends …
The Comedy of Errors, Act V
Shakespeare has plenty to do in the 400-odd lines of Act V. The general confusion needs to create a crisis before we can have our happy ending – in this case, perhaps an equivocal, unsatisfying one, but more on that later.
Methinks the Tudors did protest too much …
Michael K Jones, 1485: Bosworth – Psychology of a Battle (John Murray: London, 2014)
My hopes for this book weren’t high, having bought it for £2-99 from one of those small discount bookstores that seem to defy all logic in staying afloat. I’ve been pleasantly surprised: Jones has something different to say, and he argues it clearly and persuasively.
One of the things he looks at is the demonisation of Richard, asking if it isn’t just a little over the top. If so, why?
Antipholus (E) is NOT a twenty-first century role model – but was he a sixteenth-century one?
… but truly two.’ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
PTS read through: Comedy of Errors, Act IV
In 2018, the notion of what it means to be a ‘man’ feels ever more opaque, with behaviours and attitudes being scrutinised as never before, perhaps. As a gender, we sometimes appear confused about the path we ought to take to find a satisfying and yet socially acceptable direction or self-definition.
Maybe it was ever thus.
In yesterday’s post on Macbeth I touched upon the fragility of our hero’s notions of himself when his masculinity was challenged by his wife. Macbeth is largely a play about what it means to be a man, but that’s way down the line in terms of my reading schedule. Reading Act IV of Comedy of Errors felt like one of those non-comic interludes towards the end of plays like Much Ado About Nothing, and instead of laughing, I found myself thinking about what Antipholus (E) implies a ‘man’ should be. It’s not an attractive picture …
Can I REALLY be an apologist for Macbeth? I think so.
“Something something isn’t Macbeth a villain!?!?!? something something.”
This is someone’s response to my suggestion that Macbeth (and, incidentally, his wife) is one of Shakespeare’s most ‘memorable’ characters. The ‘something’s are their words.
It set me thinking … IS he a villain, or simply a victim? Can I really be an apologist for him, I asked myself?
I reached for my Arden …
Is royal blood THINNER than water?
Pollard, AJ: Edward IV, The Summer King (Penguin Monarchs) (Allen Lane: London, 2016)
It happens in the best of families. Royalty is often an accident of birth, and doesn’t guarantee fitness for rule, as we’ve seen in the exploits of Henry VI and Edward II – weak sons of strong fathers.
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 