Category: Cambridge Shakespeare Festival

Three: it’s the magic number …

Henry-lV-Part-l-Globe-1318-1600x1000
image:  The Globe.  Excitement:  it’s all mine!

It’s been a long, hard year, and I need a real treat …

Whilst it’s not all been bad news, Spring Term was dominated by an insidious, invidious, but ultimately innocuous illness that lingered like an unwelcome guest at a party, refusing to take all the hints I could throw at it that it needed to exit stage left.  Summer Term replaced that with a series of professional setbacks and niggles that have led to my heavy-hearted decision to leave a school I always thought I would (eventually) retire at, and where I work daily alongside some of my closest friends.  ‘You do the math‘, as Shakespeare never said.

I’m currently open to offers inside and outside the profession, by the way …

Continue reading “Three: it’s the magic number …”

PTS 12/072: A Game of Two Halves …

Maybe Prince Escalus should have gone to VAR … ?

BH mob-football-in-england
The keeper (left) tried to make himself look big, whilst under pressure from a swarthy Croatian defender, Harry Kane tried to nudge the ball home

Ponytail Shakespeare read-through: Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene i

Regular readers will understand my complex relationship with the notion of ‘England’.

The catchy simplicity of Three Lions (It’s Coming Home) turned from pleasantly nostalgic ‘earworm‘ – I well remember the song’s release for Euro ’96 – to a cankerous ‘worm ‘i the bud‘ [a] long before Wednesday’s almost inevitable defeat to Croatia.  The entire nation, it seemed, had been reduced to a vocabulary of just three words – a mantra which was unchallengeable, a self-evident truth destroyed in just 120 minutes (if only Brexit could fall as quickly.) As I watched people (including several students) spill out of The Sun – opposite where I was drinking – in a numbed state of shock after the match, I was glad I wouldn’t hear it for a while.  Having ‘sat like Patience’ I was now, almost, ‘smiling at grief’.  To no avail:  by 11am the next day – no lie – I was hearing “World Cup 2022:  It’s Coming Home” in the corridors of ‘C’ Block … sigh.

Has this anything to do with Romeo and Juliet?  Of course.

Continue reading “PTS 12/072: A Game of Two Halves …”

PTS 11/068: ‘Team Richard’ T-shirt Time …

The power of beauty vs. the beauty of power …

BH CSF14 RII 86647
Cambridge Shakespeare Festival 2014.  Image: ME

An emerging theme in my reading – and teaching – is the notion of being careful what you wish for.  For too many, Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ is ephemeral, evaporating once a goal is achieved.  To others, it is an insatiable addiction. What links both is the outcome: unhappiness and deep satisfaction – the former cannot easily retain their newly won goal; the latter need another, greater fix of achievement.
Continue reading “PTS 11/068: ‘Team Richard’ T-shirt Time …”

PTS 11/067: Know When to Hold ‘Em

Know when to fold em …

BH CSF14 RII 86564
Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, 2014.  Image:  ME

PTS read-through:  Richard II, Act III (part 2)

(in which Richard shows what a crap poker player he would have made)

An important lesson for students:  it is OK to disagree with a critical view – in fact OK to disagree with ME and my ideas.  As long as you can argue your opposition to a stance or point of view.  I’m about to take issue with  Germaine Greer …

Continue reading “PTS 11/067: Know When to Hold ‘Em”

My Shakespeare Bromance

What was the first word I thought of when I heard the word, ‘Shakespeare’?

BH upstart_crow_0103
‘Here’s tae us, wha’s like us?’  as Rabbie Burns might say

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?‘

Continue reading “My Shakespeare Bromance”

Alas, Mr. Bump, I knew him, Horatio …

‘Does he think he’s effing Mr Tickle?’, I scribbled feverishly in the dark …

BH andrew scott 2
My sixth-formers commented on the extended nipple arousal … because why WOULDN’T they – we were all 16/17 years-old once …

[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:

Continue reading “Alas, Mr. Bump, I knew him, Horatio …”

Quote of the Week: 26 March 2018 (#34)

The long road to the civil war begins here …

BH Richard II 86536
Photo by me:  taken at the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, 2014

This week’s quotation is from:  Charles R. Forker, ‘Introduction’, in William Shakespeare, Richard II (Arden Third Edition), (Thomson Learning:  London, 2002)

A recent Reddit thread discussed the extent to which the History plays critiqued the monarchy.  To be honest, I didn’t want to get involved, because it looked like a straight request for homework help, and yet, it was hard to resist such a fascinating subject …

Continue reading “Quote of the Week: 26 March 2018 (#34)”