Category: As You Like It

PTS 04/023: Is that you, baby?

BH bruce springsteenOr just a brilliant disguise?

… as The Boss might remark. A guy who, perhaps appositely in the light of this post, I admire for his authenticity as much as his music.

The Taming of the Shrew: Act III

By now, I wonder if anyone is who they say they are in this play. Poor old Christopher Sly‘s been conned into thinking he’s a Lord with a young, beautiful wife, remember: and that was BEFORE the play properly started … When I see the Stage Direction:

“Enter LUCENTIO [as Cambio], HORTENSIO [as Licio] and BIANCA”

(who I suspect is not as pure, dutiful, or even as nice as she seems), my heart sinks a little.

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Brașov your Shakespeare …

BH carpathian-mountains-large-view
It really WAS like this!

(with apologies to Cole Porter.  This is my all-time favourite bit of Shakespearean fan fiction – take a look here to see why …

It turned out that as well as simply bringing along the June 2017 Ponytail text – Two Gentlemen of Verona – I had packed the Complete Works with me for my trip, in my mind, at least. The plays haunted me wherever I went, fighting tooth-and-nail (if you’ll pardon the pun) against the constant impulse to declaim lines from Dracula in my best Bela Lugosi Romanian accent, to make even worse puns than the one I’ve just used, and to call my other half ‘Nadia’ (until she lost patience).

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PTS01/006: Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus

bh-serge-and-jane-terry-oneill
Serge and Jane:  detail from image by Terry O’Neill.  Looking not dissimilar to Suffolk and Margaret, methinks …

Henry VI 1:  Act V

[subtitled: “It’s always the quiet ones you need to watch out for.”]

As I finished the play, it occurred to me that women play a much larger role than I might have guessed back in the heady days of January, when I started seriously thinking about this project.  Perhaps I might refine that to say that French women.

What was/is it about the allure of French women to English men?

Continue reading “PTS01/006: Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus”