If we paid something forwards, maybe especially Shakespeare, once in a while, the world would be a better place …
It’s hard to believe this is post 150 at The Boar’s Head.
Google ‘150’ and the images aren’t especially inspiring, unless you are Canadian, it seems. This one – representing the 150 million horny spiders invading the homes we warm up as autumn approaches (according to Metro.co.uk) – is only here because I’m an arachnophobe.
But 150 is an important number for me …
Where Marlowe went when he should have been at Uni …
George Carleton, A Thankfull Remembrance of God’s Mercie (1630)
Much as I’d like a copy of this on the Boar’s Head Bookshelf, I’ve been playing with a facsimile copy I got from www.archive.org. I think it was mentioned in one of the episodes of BBC’s wonderful Shakespeare’s Restless World – which I recommend to anyone remotely interested in Shakespeare, Marlowe and their contemporaries.
As usual, I have one eye on anything that could be interesting or useful to my A Level students, so whilst I’d like to dwell on some of the pretty hilarious vitriol this man of the cloth (Bishop of Winchester, to be exact) reserves for the Catholic faith, I’ve something a little quotable for the students of Marlowe.
It felt like cheating, it felt like a betrayal, but it also felt like the right thing to do …
We’re now 66, without my Ardens, and probably need to announce an extension to the library …
Presuming someone’s guilt can create a dangerous reaction …
The Gunpowder Plot: The Narrative of Oswald Tesimond alias Greenway (ed. Francis Edwards), (The Folio Society: London, 1973)
Given the date, and the current BBC production of ‘Gunpowder‘, currently horrifying the squeamish across the country, it seems apt to take a second quotation from this book – the first is here.
Buckingham wants, needs, perhaps even deserves, a lover’s farewell …
This is All Souls’ Day, fellow, is it not?
Why then, all Souls’ Day is my body’s doomsday. (Richard III – BUCKINGHAM: V.i.10-11)
Some genuine questions for Shakespeare-deniers, prompted by Ivor Brown’s labour of love …
Ivor 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.
What could be worse than dying, believing that you’re going to hell?
PTS read-through: Richard III, Act II, scene i
June 27, 1996. George Street, Luton, at a bus stop opposite the town hall. Genuinely nauseous to the verge of throwing up. Could I have torn my eyes up from the book I was reading, I would broadly have seen the image below …
Continue reading “PTS 07/043: The Bad Death of Eduard (Delacroix) IV”
It often takes something (we consider) sub-human to remind us of our humanity …
‘… you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die.’
Not that you needed me to complete the speech, I dare say … I’m also guessing you want to watch it again (I had to), so here it is.
The weekend brings an exciting reward for my ‘holiday’ week’s hard marking. On consecutive nights I’ll be watching Bladerunner: The Final Cut, and then Bladerunner 2049. And I’ve got my tattered copy of Philip K Dick‘s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep‘ (1968) out – the first non-Shakespeare/EMP book I have read in weeks, or perhaps even months …
Yet there is, because there always is, an opportunity for me to connect to Shakespeare.
Christ, this is IT […] THIS is why I do it. All of it.
W. 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 …
Stewed-ants, too-daze lessen his a bout de weighs inn witch spiel-chequers cant bee deep-ended own.
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.
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 