Imagine, if you have been following, the difficulty in putting a soundtrack album together for Love’s Labour’s Lost – a play I was largely disconnected from and apathetic about.
Still, some thought and a trawl through my embarrassing CD collection served up a dozen or so songs, and a few pointers for others.
Question is – as always – what have I missed?
Continue reading “PTS 09/057: The Love’s Labour’s Lost soundtrack”
This has been on my mind for a while …
This is a long read – I say that on a blog where posts often hit 1,300 words, against ‘accepted wisdom’ – so apologies in advance. YOUR blog is your blog; my blog is MY blog, and I write for catharsis and as a kind of journal, not ‘popularity’, ‘followers’, or ‘influence’. I was tempted to temper my words with a gallery of pictures, but that didn’t feel right, either. This post feels a little more personal than most.
In spite of, or maybe because of, constant trawling for Shakespeare-related content, I have only just found this. Last April, Peter Marks wrote a piece for The Washington Post (link below) suggesting that Americans are too ‘intellectually lazy’ to appreciate Shakespeare, and fearing for the future popularity of the plays. My immediate response was ‘you think it’s bad in the US? Try over here, where Shakespeare was born!’
Continue reading “Crimes Against Shakespeare 010: On ‘Dumbing Down’”
How could I dislike this so much? Was it the play, or actually me?
CLAUDIUS: How fares our cousin Hamlet?
HAMLET: Excellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish, I eat the air, promise-cramm’d. You cannot feed capons so.
CLAUDIUS: I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not
mine.HAMLET: No, nor mine now. (Act III, scene ii)
Love’s Labour’s Lost: Act V
ME: Thank God for that!
HER: You’ve finished?
ME: Yup!
HER: Great, so now you never have to read it again.
(pause)
Re-reading a text every few years can be like reading it for the first time …
‘Shakespeare in Ideology’, James H Kavanagh, in Alternative Shakespeares, (ed. John Drakasis), (Methuen: London, 1985)
A part of me is looking forward to moving onto ‘the Dream’ in my Pony Tail Shakespeare read-through more than I thought I would.
Where is the ‘son-in-law’ material in LLL?
Love’s Labour’s Lost: Act IV
My life has been filled with obsessions, and for reasons too complex to go into here, about twenty-five years ago, one of them was Scottish history. With no knowledge ever completely wasted, it’s contributed to where and who I am today, struggling with this play, and especially to find any kind of empathy with its male characters.
Put simply, if I had a daughter, none of these men would be son-in-law material …
Continue reading “PTS 09/055: The Rough Wooing of the Monstrous Regiment”
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 