And so to our traditional end-of-play knees-up.
The usual defiantly embarrassing mix-tape, in no particular order, with the usual plea: if I’ve missed anything, please let me know!
Continue reading “PTS 11/070: The Richard II Soundtrack Album”
Category: Ponytail Shakespeare
PTS 11/069: I’ve Wasted Time …
Be careful what you wish for, Bolingbroke …
PTS read-through – Richard II; Act V
Why’s it taken me so long to get this one written? To get this play finished? To ‘officially’ say goodbye to Richard II for a few years, given I have no opportunity to teach it at either GCSE or A Level? That question probably contains its own answer.
Or, the fact that it’s Romeo and Juliet next …
You know – if you’ve been reading along – how deeply I feel an affinity for Richard’s journey. Perhaps when I (eventually) get to the end of the PTS I’ll reflect that the ‘most important things are the hardest things to say‘, as Stephen King tells us [a]. It’ll be interesting to look back and see whether the plays I found harder to connect with came and went rather quicker.
PTS 11/068: ‘Team Richard’ T-shirt Time …
The power of beauty vs. the beauty of power …
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 …
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 …
My Shakespeare Bromance
What was the first word I thought of when I heard the word, ‘Shakespeare’?
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?‘
PTS 11/066: Alas, poor Richard …
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings …
PTS read-through: Richard II, act III (part ONE)
Witnessing the utter disintegration of a human being – even a fictional one – is, I’d suggest, an uneasy, distressing experience. And yet …
Voyeuristic shame accompanies the compulsion to keep spectating what is usually such a private affair. My first experience of this type of slow-mo car-crash literature was Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, when I was about 12. It scarred me – I’ve never quite been able to revisit Michael Henchard’s self-induced immolation; it also, I think, gave me my first seductive bittersweet taste of tragedy. Like that initial stolen underage drink, whilst I wasn’t quite sure I liked it, I wanted another – just to be certain.
Richard’s collapse is the most devastatingly beautiful in Shakespeare, perhaps in the wider canon: it begins here, spanning three poignant acts.
Continue reading “PTS 11/066: Alas, poor Richard …”
PTS 11/065: Stop being such a Dick, Richard!
‘On Brexit, and Ignoring the Advice of Uncles’, as Montaigne might have written …
PTS read-through: Richard II, act II
Richard II plays against the backdrop of an enormous cosmic clockface. Our poetic but ineffective, spiteful monarch ends act I cynically hoping to arrive too late; he begins act II suffering the consequences of being early, getting an earful from his uncle.
What Richard does miss, though, is Uncle Gaunt’s remarkable crie de couer on the state of the nation. It’s an interesting, beautiful swansong, the breathless anaphora creating a crescendo of patriotic fervour – but I have three issues with it.
Continue reading “PTS 11/065: Stop being such a Dick, Richard!”
Quote of the Week: 09 April 2018 (#36)
We all have something we can’t part with when we go abroad, surely?
Kent Cartwright, ‘Introduction’ to William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (Arden Third Edition), (Bloomsbury Publishing: London, 2017)
Her: [hefting my Arden Third copy of Richard II in her hand] ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit heavy to take on holiday?’
Me: [defensively] ‘It’s as heavy as it needs to be. That’s why you pay more for the Ardens. And anyway, that’s the text I’m writing about at the moment.’
Her: ‘But we’re going away. You can access the play online.’ [statement, not a question]
Me: That’s not the same!
Her: [giving a silent ‘look’ and the merest suggestion of a shrug with one shoulder]
You probably know that look …
Quote of the Week: 02 April 2018 (#35)
Bogdanov (and Shakespeare) on the corrosive effects of real life on the soul …
Michael Bogdanov, ‘Richard II: The skipping King’, in Shakespeare : The Director’s Cut (Capercaillie Books: Edinburgh, 2005)
I picked this startling book up from Waterstones in Gower Street, London on Saturday – remaindered at a measly £5-99. Scuffed but basically sound, it seemed destined for the upper slopes of my ever-growing Mount Tsundoku – about which I’m bound to post at some stage, recently becoming familiar with the term.
Either way, as I often do with new Shakespeare-related books, I ambled through the Introduction. Not properly knowing who Bogdanov was in truth, I wanted a sense of who I’d invited to share my bookshelves. I’m at my parents’, and despite the TV blaring at a volume only a practically-deaf father can justify, I became completely immersed.
Bogdanov died almost a year ago, at 78 (a little older than my father is). If we’d been contemporaries, and moved in similar circles, I reckon we would have been drinking buddies …
PTS 011/064: I wasted time, and now?
All’s far from well for Richard, and a facility with words isn’t helping …
PTS read-through: Richard II, Act I
The lengthy gap since I finished posting about A Midsummer Night’s Dream has everything to do with volume of work, and absolutely nothing to do with what I’m about to confess you now. But we ought to get it out of the way, or it will cloud all my posts about Richard II …
On today’s journey to the late 1590s, let’s take a detour via 1987 …
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 