‘Who’s Macduff again, Sir?‘
Who’s Who in … Macbeth
Everyone remembers the ‘Egg’, but not who his father is …
Category: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The hottest name in Literature …
Be warned: today’s post has little to do with Shakespeare per se, except as an example of my own peculiar insanity, and a way of getting rid of an ‘ear-worm’ that has been plaguing me since May.
QotW (#79): 17 June 2019
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 …
PTS 14/085: Ye Olde Three-Card Monte
PTS read-through: The Merchant of Venice, Act II
‘Watch the plays, don’t read them!’
Advice given so often to people who say they ‘don’t get’ Shakespeare – advice I almost always disregard, much preferring the film running in my head as I read. But there’s one time when I find reading difficult, and that’s the multi-scene act. It distracted me last time I read The Merchant of Venice, and it has done this time, too. Just don’t speak to me about Antony and Cleopatra‘s 42 scenes …
And yet, for all that there are nine scenes in Act II, there are only really two plots.
Pay attention, there’s a test (part 2)
At 18, students ought to be able to handle History plays, but the exam boards don’t seem to like them?
Following my recent KS4 post, I extended my research to A Level – that is the exams taken by 18-year olds before they hit university. Again, I’d love to hear from students or teachers, especially in other countries. Here are a few thoughts of my own:
PTS 12/071: Choose Life!
‘Why would I bother watching Titanic, when I know how it ends?’ Silence …
Ponytail Shakespeare read-through. Romeo and Juliet: Prologue
As a trainee, I remember ‘inheriting’ R&J from the usual teacher on placements. Twice. And I vividly remember teaching the Prologue to a top set of smart, welcoming, wonderful students.
This was the class that christened Romeo the ‘pervy monkey boy‘ after watching Zeffirelli‘s interpretation of the balcony scene. Thanks, Hannah – I will never forget that. They’re also the bunch that did the ‘Mean Girls‘ recreation of Act III, scene v. They made ‘fetch’ happen! So much for ‘Two households, both alike in dignity‘ …
Despite the brilliant memories, I wonder if it’s significant that I have never, since, opted to teach the play, now that I am largely in charge of my own destiny? And for PTS purposes, what can we, can I, pull out of these fourteen lines that hasn’t been said before over the last 400-years?
QotW: 04 June 2018 (#44)
Students laugh when they hear it, but Anne was in deadly earnest …
We have hedgehogs.
I say ‘we’, but I’m appropriating the cute nocturnal visitors at my Snowdonia home (also known as ‘her place‘) …
Having spent most of the week camping in the back garden – yes, by choice – I’ve become a lot more familiar with their comings and goings: their enthusiastic crunching of mealworms (these are spoiled, and resolutely ignore the slugs they are supposed to be eating – I’ve seen them nudge slugs aside with their snouts!); their irritated huffing and snorting when a rival appears at bowl number two, all within a couple of feet of my head.
Which, of course, makes me more sensitive to the hedgehogs – just three of them* – in Shakespeare …
My Shakespeare Bromance
What was the first word I thought of when I heard the word, ‘Shakespeare’?
Apologies. I’m neglecting my PonyTail Shakespeare read-through, but suddenly writing more frequently, and hopefully more pithily (but I somehow doubt that), at the moment. Let’s see how long it lasts …
I’ve already recommended Duane’s blog – the longest-running Shakespeare blog I know of – to you. Tonight – and I had something work-related to do – I stopped by whilst having dinner, and promptly got distracted. Which is what the best blogs do, right?
The internet being a brilliant example of intertextuality, Duane’s most recent post is itself a response to something he read on Reddit. And here I am, responding in turn.
The premise is ‘What do you think of when you hear the word Shakespeare?‘
Scaling Mount Tsundoku
To buy, or not to buy? A completely rhetorical question when it comes to books …
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Albert Camus (1)
Consider Sisyphus … (2)
A mythical king condemned to spend eternity atoning for his lifetime sins by pushing a boulder up a mountain in Tartarus, only to have it roll to the bottom overnight: as a result, he was obliged to start afresh each morning.
I like to think he is the patron saint of English teachers. If you are struggling to work out why, the answer’s at the foot of the post.
Quote of the Week: 19 March 2018 (#33)
Sometimes we need to be reminded that our historical figures are human beings.
This week’s quotation is taken from Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (ed. J.H. Elliott), (The Folio Society: London, 2002)
– – –
This is just a humble tavern, and we’ve no real pretensions to royal patronage. Prince Hal, of course is a regular, but he doesn’t behave very … ahem … regally, when he’s here, Lor’ bless and keep him.
But like every good English ale-house, we do have a portrait of Good Queen Bess behind the bar, and it’s this one. This week, I’ve been thinking about Elizabeth I …
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 