Sometimes the smoke is easier to read than others …
Love’s Labour’s Lost – Act III
Inspired by Ursula K Le Guin and The Pet Shop Boys, I picked this up again with a steely glint in my eye. I’ll read. I’ll gloss. I’ll conquer!
I’d stopped listening to the voices in my head, and actually, they’re the important ones in English.
My Ponytail Shakespeare read-through project is behind schedule.
Not drowning, necessarily – still waving, to paraphrase Stevie Smith, but wishing I wasn’t quite so far away from the shore, paddling blithely in the warm shallows of Romeo and Juliet, as I should be by the end of January; having splashy fun with the rest of the blog and my new excursions on Twitter. But fifty-plus posts and nine plays in? Not dead.
That said, despite plenty of opportunity, I’ve ‘not got round to‘ reading Act III of Love’s Labour’s Lost. I’m still reading: Iain M Banks, Paolo Bacigalupi, and chunks of George Wilson Knight on Julius Caesar, but, when all’s said and done, no Shakespeare or LLL.
We might say I’ve lost any love of my labour in this play … (sorry about that)
Why?
As Alice might say: ‘de tongues of de mans is be full of
deceits’
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act II
‘We could do with a shot on goal, John. The game’s mostly being played in the middle of the pitch’ …
Our Princess arrives, and immediately impresses. In fact, she reminds me of my girlfriend: scarily competent, impervious to flattery (no, really), and icily, frustratingly logical at times.
Continue reading “PTS 09/052: It’s got nil-nil written all over it …”
Lesson 1: Books, no matter how interesting, are not a girlfriend substitute …
PTS read through: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I
It feels appropriate to arrive at this play in the month when it seems you’re not a functioning member of society if you don’t add some kind of punishing denial to the post-Christmas blues: Dry January, the unappetising-sounding Veganuary, or in my case, the Walk 1,000 Miles in 2018 challenge (already behind schedule). Personally, I think we’ve enough to cope with, waiting for things to warm up and the nights to become appreciably longer.
Nevertheless, this is how the play opens – with a preposterous resolution by the foolish King of Navarre and three of his intimates to ‘abjure the rough magic’ of the fair sex. Unlike Rocky’s trainer Mickey, they’re worried about the intellectual rather than physical effects that women may have on them
I give them a maximum of ten minutes, stage time …
Continue reading “PTS 09/051: Women Weaken Legs (and Brains, too)”
Another selection of songs curated with the characters in mind …
As usual, the PonyTail Shakespeare read-through of a play ends with a ‘Soundtrack Album’.
As usual, it probably says a lot about my poor taste in music.
As usual, I’d love you to let me know what’s missing …
Continue reading “PTS 08/050: The Comedy of Errors Soundtrack Album”
Not everyone gets their just desserts as our RomCom ends …
The Comedy of Errors, Act V
Shakespeare has plenty to do in the 400-odd lines of Act V. The general confusion needs to create a crisis before we can have our happy ending – in this case, perhaps an equivocal, unsatisfying one, but more on that later.
Antipholus (E) is NOT a twenty-first century role model – but was he a sixteenth-century one?
… but truly two.’ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
PTS read through: Comedy of Errors, Act IV
In 2018, the notion of what it means to be a ‘man’ feels ever more opaque, with behaviours and attitudes being scrutinised as never before, perhaps. As a gender, we sometimes appear confused about the path we ought to take to find a satisfying and yet socially acceptable direction or self-definition.
Maybe it was ever thus.
In yesterday’s post on Macbeth I touched upon the fragility of our hero’s notions of himself when his masculinity was challenged by his wife. Macbeth is largely a play about what it means to be a man, but that’s way down the line in terms of my reading schedule. Reading Act IV of Comedy of Errors felt like one of those non-comic interludes towards the end of plays like Much Ado About Nothing, and instead of laughing, I found myself thinking about what Antipholus (E) implies a ‘man’ should be. It’s not an attractive picture …
What I read in 2017, what YOU should read in 2018, and what to avoid like, ahem, the Plague …
Announcing my Ponytail Shakespeare read-through back in January did something to me; maybe several things.
Firstly, it made a public commitment. I’m just a bloke, and a busy one at that, being an English teacher, but I am still following the schedule – albeit several paces behind.
It also made me realise that however confident I might be, there was/is an awful lot I don’t/didn’t know for someone who enjoys being the ‘go-to’ at work for all matters Shakespearean – those ‘known unknowns’ were simultaneously a cause for embarrassment and a spur to do better.
These two ingredients combined to make me jump into bed with Shakespeare in 2017 …
Near misses, and fascinating Misses – Luciana’s journey continues …
Ponytail Shakespeare read-through: The Comedy of Errors, Act III
We’ll come to the idea that ‘cheats never prosper‘ in a while. It’s a busy act.
In the meantime, sometimes the margins in comedy and tragedy are very, very fine. Exactly like in real life, actually …
Doormat or A-dor-ably Feisty? Luciana and Adriana swap roles in Act II …
Ponytail Shakespeare Read-Through: The Comedy of Errors, Act II
Aha! A single woman in a Shakespeare comedy – what she needs is a HUSBAND, I thought, my Jane Austen goggles firmly on. In this, I was egged on by Kent Cartwright, as I mentioned in writing about Act I, and who colluded with Jane and my previously-held assumptions.
And what a catch Luciana appears to be for our unreconstructed EMP man!
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 