Category: Contextual Information

Quote of the Week: 28 August

BH macaulayMACAULAY, Thomas Babington: The History of England from 1485 to 1685 (ed. Peter Rowland) (The Folio Society: London, 1985)

Before we look at Macaulay, let me give you one of mine from the classroom.  It’s always an attention-grabber – you can see students falling into a few different categories:

a) people who clearly haven’t considered the issue before but are now thinking rapidly;

b) those who panic at the agency I’m potentially giving them; and

c) the ones who get a twinkle in their eye and would like to test my theory but daren’t.

I hardly ever get a d) can’t be bothered or not listening …

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Quote of the week: 21 August

BH saccioPeter Saccio, Shakespeare’s English Kings:  History, Chronicle, and Drama (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000)

One of the biggest problems with being on holiday with non-reading friends is that you become embarrassed by the amount of time you want, no NEED, to spend in bookshops.

So this was a book I could easily have missed whilst browsing a second-hand bookshop in Leominster.  I was really lucky to have my other half on hand to find it out for me, because time was running out, and I was beginning to worry about the patience of the friends we were holidaying with, who had already politely wandered round the shop and were now at the ‘waiting outside for you‘ stage ….

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PTS 05/030: There’s nothing ill …

BH mirror mirror
Mirror, mirror, on the wall …

The Two Gentlemen of Verona:  Act IV

Thus far, I feel like I’ve been quite objective about the play, glossing over the obvious errors about travelling by boat between land-locked cities, etc. I’m not one to lionise Shakespeare (whatever my other half thinks), but nor am I interested in joining the current fad I see online for ‘dissing’ him.

Having said that, Act IV begins with a ‘mote to trouble the mind’s eye‘, though – and more on it later, but Act V trumps even this episode. What am I talking about?

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Boar’s Head Bookshelf update: ‘travelling light’ …

Books in the vault, Deck C, Folger Shakespeare Library, 9/11/09
image courtesy Folger Library

Spending practically all of the summer holidays away from home, you’d think I travelled loaded with books?

Not a bit of it – I simply brought down my Ponytail Shakespeare texts, so I could try to catch up on writing about the read-through.  Plus, experience told me that I’d be buying books wherever I went.  Shakespeare’s an exacting master, and wherever I go I usually end up returning to Cumbria laden like a donkey.

Half way through the hols, my score so far is:

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Quote of the week: 14 August 2017

BH okerlund coverArlene Okerlund, Elizabeth Wydville: The Slandered Queen (Tempus Publishing: Stroud, 2005)

Proof that even a stopped clock can occasionally be correct …

A book review of Professor Okerlund‘s book may well be in the offing – on the basis that (as I often tell students) it’s easier to write about something you don’t like, rather than something you do.  This book really annoyed me as few others have, but I managed to get to the end of it.

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PTS 05/029: Would I Lie To You?

BH pinocchio

Ponytail Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III.

Like so many of Shakespeare’s villains (and here perhaps I have Iago uppermost in mind) Proteus is a decent dissimulator, and Act III begins with his breathless betrayal of his best friend.

How does Shakespeare make Proteus credible?

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PTS 05/027: The Arch of Experience

BH durdle door 2
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.                                                                                                                     (Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona:  Act 1

Recently, I wrote about bringing your personal baggage to your interpretation and enjoyment of texts. It’s why I re-read: every few years I genuinely believe I approach a text as a different person, changed in infinite, indescribable ways by my experiences.

This is my first time with the Two Gentlemen, though, and I approached this text with some trepidation. It has a reputation – despite being the first play performed at the newly-built Globe – and Dennis Carey‘s reaction on being asked to direct the play was not reassuring:

“I had only just read the play, and was badly shaken. Could the author really be grateful to anyone for preserving this youthful, unfinished, minor exercise?”

A read-through is a read-through, though …

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Quote of the Week: 07 August

BH riggs marlowe coverDavid Riggs:  The World of Christopher Marlowe (Faber and Faber:  London, 2004)

If you squint, you’ll see that this was one of the books I bought as retail therapy a short while back.  I tackled this one first owing to my commitments to teach Edward II again this coming school year – I was hoping to get a few additional nuggets about Marlowe‘s private life.

The book has turned out to be an absolute revelation …

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Sometimes, only a book can make it better …

image

Several days’ existential angst  was only ever going to be killed by one thing …

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Who would Shakespeare vote for?

BH polling station
Something for your dog to ponder as you leave him outside tomorrow

[SPOILER ALERT] There’s a UK General Election taking place tomorrow …

Setting aside my own lefty, ‘soft’ eco-warrior credentials, and using mostly contextual information or material from the plays (because, as Bill Bryson gently reminds us over the course of 200-odd pages, we know next to nothing about the man) I thought it would be fun to see how Shakespeare might have voted.

And, regardless of my – or your – political beliefs, for the love of God, please VOTE tomorrow, if you’re entitled to.  Never mind the hackneyed cliché: ‘people died so you could‘ argument – you have absolutely no right to complain about what happens over the next 5 years if you didn’t even make the smallest effort to effect a change …

Anyway, I visited isidewith, and tried to answer the questions as someone who died 401 years ago … here’s a selection of the conundrums I was faced with, plus the (firmly tongue-in-cheek) result …

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