Crimes Against Shakespeare 009

“This is all the UK has to show for itself.  The situation is urgent.  Please think of others far worse off than you and give generously”

BH steven woolfe

For those who don’t know Mr Woolfe, he was hovering on the edges of glory at UKIP for a few years, challenging for the ‘leadership’ at one stage, until leaving in high dudgeon after a classy physical altercation with a colleague, and now standing as an ‘Independent’. UKIP is, for the uninitiated, the United Kingdom Independence Party – a political party of xenophobic, borderline racist, swivel-eyed loons who have done as much as anyone else to get us into this desperate Brexit mess.

Mr Woolfe is currently one of my MEPs (Member of the European Parliament).  I didn’t vote for him.  But tonight, to my shame, he represents me.

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Macbeth: Villain, or Victim?

Can I REALLY be an apologist for Macbeth? I think so.

BH macbeth stewart and fleetwood
Kate Fleetwood and Sir Patrick Stewart as the happy couple …

“Something something isn’t Macbeth a villain!?!?!? something something.”

This is someone’s response to my suggestion that Macbeth (and, incidentally, his wife) is one of Shakespeare’s most ‘memorable’ characters.  The ‘something’s are their words.

It set me thinking … IS he a villain, or simply a victim?  Can I really be an apologist for him, I asked myself?

I reached for my Arden …

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Shakespeare’s Sister says: ‘YOU’RE HISTORY!’ …

Claiming ‘Shakespeare was this or that’, or worse, ‘Shakespeare did not write the plays’, does NOT entitle you to a mic-drop. It just shows your intellectual bankruptcy …

BH shakespeare's sister
Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit – women I fancied (at 19) as much for their deranged, dangerous, deep and devil-may-care personas as their looks.

I’ve written elsewhere about the Rally of Revenge – about my unease that once you abandon all faith in ‘due process‘ or ‘justice‘ (either earthly or divine); once you understand that inequality is endemic, you have nothing left to lose – if you are already losing – so keep raising the stakes until someone has to leave the game.  If it’s uncomfortable, perhaps it’s also sometimes necessary, to affect change of a fundamentally broken system.  You might not see the benefits yourself.  Hey, if you have to leave the game, then so be it: losing can become preferable to playing along, eventually.

There are always other games, other paths, whilst we are still alive – experience has taught me that, even if Shakespeare hasn’t.

And that’s where I find myself, professionally, this weekend.  Approaching change, but ready for it, and maybe, in some ways, relieved that an unhappy stasis has broken. There are always other games.

There is a third way – for revenge – I’ve not written about before.  The poet George Herbert (1593-1633) suggested that:

Living well is the best revenge.

And I’ll embrace and adapt that, in a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants‘ sense.

Living well equals happiness.  LAUGHTER is the best revenge.

Today, I intend to laugh at someone.  Long, and hard.

Let’s get moving, shall we?

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Quote of the Week: 30 October

Some genuine questions for Shakespeare-deniers, prompted by Ivor Brown’s labour of love …

BH ivor brownIvor Brown, Shakespeare (The Reprint Society: London, 1951)

This was a real find, as I’m discovering, at £1 from a second-hand bookshop in North Wales.

Brown has a wonderful writing style, self-deprecating and witty, subtly acerbic at times.  In this book he reminds me of an English (although to be precise he was born in Penang) version of Bill Bryson.

He freely admits that there is simply no need for yet another book on Shakespeare, but that it is a labour of love.  I think I feel the same way.

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Crimes Against Shakespeare 008

WE CANNOT, MUST NOT, WIPE ART WITH ANTI-BACTERIAL WIPES BEFORE ALLOWING THE NEXT GENERATION TO HANDLE IT …

BH CSF blinding of Gloucester
‘Out, vile jelly’:  the blinding of Gloucester …

I took this picture – from King Lear – at the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival back in 2012.  I often show it to pupils who try to tell me that Shakespeare is ‘boring‘.  Or indeed I give them some of the plot details from Titus Andronicus that have caused such concern of late …

It’s taken me a little while to allow this one to sink in to the extent that it became a ‘crime’, but in the Dock, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I give you no less than the English Faculty of Cambridge University (or at least some members of that august institution) …

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Quote of the Week: 23 October

Christ, this is IT […] THIS is why I do it.  All of it.

BH the summing upW. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (Penguin:  London, 1992)

Today’s post is all about one simple fact: the world-wide-web existed centuries before the Internet.  Before electricity, in fact.  And I want you to plug into it.

I find it apposite, and slightly ironic that writing about Shakespeare, and without any deliberate choice on my part – I promise you – I’m listening to the Tron Legacy soundtrack as I type this.  My other literary love is Science Fiction, and again, the point I’m making relates to that intoxicating cocktail of the 16th and 26th centuries, with a dash of the present thrown in.

So, the pre-internet web …

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Hay Spiel Chequer Lessen …

Stewed-ants, too-daze lessen his a bout de weighs inn witch spiel-chequers cant bee deep-ended own.

BH weakish speller

I dedicate this to all the Y12 and Y13 students whose typed submissions I am marking at the moment.  You deserve something in return for the frequent face-palms and occasional belly-laughs you are giving me …

Hay Spiel-Chequer Lessen.

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‘Dews of blood’: Hurricane Ophelia, 16 October 2017

BH ophelia 2Working in a school, of course I met several people who seemed genuinely frightened by the eerie sky that only half-illumined our collective journey to work on Monday – some, only some, of them were pupils …

Conditions really were awe-inspiring up here in the frozen North of England.

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To buy, or not to buy …

lego_WS_firestar

Students, people who know me, or indeed regular visitors will know I have a bit of a fetish for Lego

Just to be clear, I don’t play with it, but I do collect some of the minifigures, photograph them – sometimes for classroom posters, or just because I generally like them.  My Schemes of Work for school, like the one on Conan Doyle‘s The Sign of Four, is full of Lego pics.  I buy plenty of minifigures.

Imagine, though, the situation …

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Crimes Against Shakespeare 007

BH hiddleston hamlet

Alas, poor Shakespeare fans …

In the dock for my latest Crime Against Shakespeare we find Kenneth Branagh and RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art).

Picture the scene (if you pardon the pun) …

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