Category: Edward II

PTS 015/098: Kill Your Darlings!

We each owe a death. Let’s examine that of Harry Hotspur: a hero too big to be allowed to survive …

PTS read-through: 1 Henry IV, Act IV

Prince Hal pays tribute to his fallen enemy, Hotspur, in he Hollow Crown version of the play.

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

Stephen King, ‘On Writing: A Memoir’ (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000)

Blame Phil Beadle, and his book ‘Rules for Mavericks: A Manifesto for Dissident Creatives‘ – he made me come back. Not knowing how long I’m here for, just testing the water, I thought it better to simply crack on and see how I felt afterwards: no cringing excuses or apologies for my lengthy absence; no promises either … publish and be damned, if you like.

First-time visitor?  Click here and here to find out what Ponytail Shakespeare is all about.  Then come back, read, and comment. Please do.

Let’s finish this magical play together, shall we?

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QotW (#088): 07 October 2019

peacock-display
This little thing?  Oh, I picked it up at TK Maxx …

You ought to know me by now, after almost 4 years and not far off 400 posts …

Not overly-blessed with common sense (as my Dearest Partner of Greatness) would confirm; prone to flights of giddy excitement, silliness even; with a pretty good memory for quotations and an eye for intertextual connections; but usually sceptical when it comes to wild conspiracy theories, especially about Shakespeare.

So I want to be clear that this is not one of the latter.

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QotW (#87): 02 September 2019

One to wed?
The other to bed?

… and we’re back to school today, for another year’s fun and games.

Cue all kinds of traffic on Twitter and elsewhere on-line: pre-battle speeches from the veterans; advice sought by the newbies, and given by the self-styled ‘influencers’; new teaching-year resolutions declared; virtue-signalling pictures of classroom displays, and so on …

Have I got anything to add to the Babel? Not really.  I’d rather chat about Literature …

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PTS 015/095: Two Bravehearts Collide

Owain-Glyndwr
Owain Glyndŵr stirs the blood in Corwen, North Wales

PTS 015/095 1HIV Act III, scene i

When my Dearest Partner of Greatness (DPG) and I were discussing Trilogy Day at The Globe, THIS is the scene that prompted my suggestion she come along to this first play.  Curiosity mixed with mischief as I thought about her reaction to an English representation of the national hero, Owain Glyndŵr …

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PTS 015/091: The Man of a Thousand Faces

lon chaney
Lon Chaney jr trailblazes Bilbo Baggins, Sherlock Holmes, Pennywise, and Forrest Gump

1 Henry IV Act I scene ii is, really, all about that devastating soliloquy in which Hal channels Lon Chaney jr.

But before that, I want to have a word about … EXPOSITION.

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PTS 015/090: Crusade My Arse

henry iv jeremy irons

1 Henry IV:  Act I, scene i

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.

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Our revels now are ended … Class of ’19

boat sunset

Occasionally, teacher good luck messages and the valedictories get a bit mawkish or twee (and wearing my heart on my sleeve, I’m probably as guilty of this as others).  That said, I still want to write one for my Y13s.

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QotW (#77): 20 May 2019

elizabeth essex film poster

When you teach Richard III you almost inevitably touch on the idea that ‘history is written by the winners’, as Orwell said in 1944 (and again, of course, so horrifically in Nineteen Eighty-Four). [a]

Who were victorious over Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex in the end?  Would he have recognised the history they wrote for him?

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QotW#76: 13 May 2019

bird fights snake
“… though she be but little, she is fierce”  A Midsummer Night’s Dream (III,ii)

Poor Isabella.

Not just married to Edward II.  Not simply denounced by history as the ‘She Wolf of France‘.  As if all that wasn’t enough, she was relegated to a footnote in last week‘s QotW.

It’s her turn.  Be afraid.

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QotW (#75): 06 May 2019

trafficking

Last week’s pre-exam discussions with Year 13 looked again at how we might adopt a Feminist critical stance to our exam texts.  The fabled AO5, I hear OCR students gasp …

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