Honour, riches, marriage-blessing, Long continuance, and increasing, Hourly joys be still upon you! Juno sings her blessings upon you.
(The Tempest, IV.i)
It wasn’t just Twitter’s #ShakespeareSunday that was focused on love and marriage this weekend … if last week gave me an opportunity to reappraise Father’s Day from different perspectives, then Saturday’s wedding of my eldest has given me something else to think about …
It’s almost impossible to check in my earlier hostility to Henry Bolinbroke at the door; I take grim satisfaction at the suggestion that he’s ‘shaken’, or ‘wan with care’ as the play opens. [a] He deserves it.
Not that I believe him …
Actually, looking back, I promised to crucify you (Henry) at the end of Richard II … OK, here goes.
To understand Richard, Duke of Gloucester, you must know him.Really know him …
And to know him, I think it’s essential we don’t look at his eponymous play in isolation.Think of it as a season finale. And like Margaret of Anjou, Richard’s character has been developing towards this climax – in my read-through, I’ve likened his journey to that of Anakin Skywalker from ‘freckled whelp’ to Sith Lord …
Like so many annual festivals, Father’s Day is, I suppose, all about perspective. It certainly has a different resonance now I am a father myself, and with my eldest son getting married soon, there might come a time when it means something else entirely …
A little research suggests that the secular celebration is less than a century old in the US (far after Mother’s Day was established, incidentally), and only common in the UK after the Second World War! That said, Catholics have been commemorating the Virgin Mary’s husband, St Joseph, since before Shakespeare’s day. And of course, we shouldn’t forget the fifth of the Ten Commandments: ‘Honour thy father and mother‘.
Rather than write something mawkish about the way I am turning into my dad, or about my sons, I wanted to think about fathers in the 16th Century …
Can we send the Y11s on study leave yet, Headmaster? They’re getting restless … [image: June, The Shepheardes Calendar]Today marks the beginning of one of the most eagerly anticipated parts of the school year … the final summer half-term. The countdown’s on, for teachers at least: 7 weeks; 35 working days; a maximum of 28 lessons with each of those classes.
Every play needs a proper send-off as I amble through the PonyTail Shakespeare read-through – bearing in mind my current pace, there’s no telling when I might read them again.
As ever, the selection is a little, erratic, and I’m already feeling the need to disown any implied connection to number 3 …
Too many books? I think you mean ‘not enough shelves‘ …
It’s become a habit, when visiting a second-hand and/or independent bookshop, never to leave empty-handed.
I think that’s all the more worth thinking about this week, when the Guardian reports that two ‘iconic’ British bookshops are closing. Like our libraries, it’s so obviously ‘use them or lose them‘ …
So, my travels taking me a little further afield than normal, I wanted to give a bit of free publicity to the excellent two bookshops I came across:
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 