I’ve learned to celebrate the occasional small victory …
Remember my Shakespeare-hating GF? She Who Must Be Obeyed?
She who mocks my enjoyment of the plays – actually, scorns every single mention I make of him?
It’s not even Shakesphobia – more Shakesloathing …
Actually, INTERTEXTUALITY is king in English Lit …
Think of this familiar toy as Jan Kott‘s Great Mechanism of History.
With one small difference: imagine that once the cute penguins reach the top – kingship – the next step is not an exhilarating slide but more of a plunge onto the razor-sharp rocks of tragedy. They are immediately replaced by the next penguin (King Penguin? Emperor Penguin?) on his or her own journey to bloody immolation and little more than the proverbial footnote in the history book, if they’re lucky …
‘It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ [a]
‘Does he think he’s effing Mr Tickle?’, I scribbled feverishly in the dark …
[Andrew Scott is Hamlet: director, Robert Icke]
Part One: a six-period day (out of a maximum of six); full of allergies, and C5 full of pupils I sometimes I wonder if I am allergic to; then the first half of this, in my classroom, accompanied by some of my lovely sixth-formers. By the way: if you didn’t come along, that doesn’t mean you’re unlovely – it means I missed having you along for the ride.
We had fun. And you can too, if you come on Monday to see the final half …
Nowadays, I look on Shakespeare performances as ‘cover versions‘ of classic songs. Before we discuss this one, I need to talk about two things:
A suggestion for the happy couple …
So let me get this straight – a Royal Baby (not that I’m massively interested) – born on Shakespeare Day?
If they’re not going to call it William, and I guess they won’t for obvious reasons – there’s only one alternative, surely …
Let there be copious amounts of cakes and ale …
Wishing Will ‘happy birthday‘ today would cause an outcry from people who know me and my pedantic ways … Yes, yes, yes, baptised on 26 April, no real proof of birthday, and all that. Get on with it!
Nothing compares to WHO?
Today marks two year since Prince died. It’s not that long ago that I confessed that his was one of the very few celebrity deaths that have personally touched me. Step aside, Princess Diana! People have got tired of me saying he was the ‘effing Mozart of his age‘, I think.
This weekend is a busy one – or should be. One of my favourite watering holes, Beerwolf, are hosting a live music tribute on Sunday afternoon, marvellously entitled ‘Prince you’ve been gone‘. I suspect this might put a dent in my Sixth Form marking – sorry, people.
Whilst there’s an argument to be made that Shakespeare himself was a multi-faceted genius, you know me by now: I started thinking about who the Shakespearean ‘Prince’ might be. These were my criteria …
Don’t Panic, as Douglas Adams might say. Together we can beat this awful disease.
This is a PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING brought to you by the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap.
There is a deadly, debilitating disease sweeping schools in the UK. Parents, teachers, and especially students need to be informed. Many people do not realise they have it until it is too late. Treatment can be lengthy, and painful, and some patients (err, I mean students) never recover.
Continue reading “Crimes Against Shakespeare 011: beware Shakesphobia”
The beard maketh the man, it seems …
BOTTOM: What beard were I best to play it in?
QUINCE: Why, what you will.
BOTTOM: I will discharge it in either your straw colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow. [a]
Although The Guardian confidently proclaimed we’d reached ‘peak beard’ two years ago – in fact exactly two years ago today [b] – I stopped shaving before Christmas. I’m far from a fashion victim: this was initially sheer laziness (I loathe shaving); now increasingly compounded by curiosity about exactly what I might grow. After nearly thirty years of a more-or-less maintained goatee, I’ve gone wild.
It’s a work in progress (and had to survive a pre-Portugal pruning by She Who Must Be Obeyed), but I’ve ended up with a hybrid: think the hirsute love-child of Hemingway and Fidel Castro … the addition of a very disreputable cap during my Easter hols jolly to the Algarve has added, I like to think, a revolutionary aura to the whole thing. Plus, some students have given it a name of its own, like a stray dog. So, the beard is staying – for now.
Naturally, this started me thinking about beards and the Bard …
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings …
PTS read-through: Richard II, act III (part ONE)
Witnessing the utter disintegration of a human being – even a fictional one – is, I’d suggest, an uneasy, distressing experience. And yet …
Voyeuristic shame accompanies the compulsion to keep spectating what is usually such a private affair. My first experience of this type of slow-mo car-crash literature was Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, when I was about 12. It scarred me – I’ve never quite been able to revisit Michael Henchard’s self-induced immolation; it also, I think, gave me my first seductive bittersweet taste of tragedy. Like that initial stolen underage drink, whilst I wasn’t quite sure I liked it, I wanted another – just to be certain.
Richard’s collapse is the most devastatingly beautiful in Shakespeare, perhaps in the wider canon: it begins here, spanning three poignant acts.
Continue reading “PTS 11/066: Alas, poor Richard …”
‘… men must be either pampered or crushed …’
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince, (transl. George Bull, ed. Anthony Grafton), (Penguin Classics: London, 2003). e-book ISBN: 9780141912004 (£2.99)
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Niccolò Machiavelli … the name has a seductive musicality, like all the Devil’s best tunes, and in Italian, ‘Il Principe’ uncoils like a snake, before hissing and then biting. This, his most famous work, has insinuated its way into our psyche until ‘Machiavellian’ has become part of a sinister cabal of authorial-adjectives including ‘Orwellian‘, ‘Lovecraftian’ and ‘Kafkaesque‘. Yet how many people appreciate its true meaning, having read ‘The Prince’? Is its reputation merited? Is it a useful, topical read, or a dusty, centuries-old curiosity?
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 