I’ve thought long and hard since I saw this article in the Guardian yesterday … and the upshot is, I’m simply not having it!
Category: Teaching Shakespeare
PTS 05/031: I Don’t Know Whether To Laugh or Cry …
‘Good comedy is tragedy narrowly averted’ Jonathan Bate
The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Act V
Over the past year I’ve used the question ‘What’s in a name?’ more than once, dismissing labelling in its many forms, but this feels the best way of articulating my unease with The Two Gentlemen as I finish the play …
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PTS 05/030: There’s nothing ill …
The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Act IV
Thus far, I feel like I’ve been quite objective about the play, glossing over the obvious errors about travelling by boat between land-locked cities, etc. I’m not one to lionise Shakespeare (whatever my other half thinks), but nor am I interested in joining the current fad I see online for ‘dissing’ him.
Having said that, Act IV begins with a ‘mote to trouble the mind’s eye‘, though – and more on it later, but Act V trumps even this episode. What am I talking about?
Boar’s Head Bookshelf update: ‘travelling light’ …
Spending practically all of the summer holidays away from home, you’d think I travelled loaded with books?
Not a bit of it – I simply brought down my Ponytail Shakespeare texts, so I could try to catch up on writing about the read-through. Plus, experience told me that I’d be buying books wherever I went. Shakespeare’s an exacting master, and wherever I go I usually end up returning to Cumbria laden like a donkey.
Half way through the hols, my score so far is:
Continue reading “Boar’s Head Bookshelf update: ‘travelling light’ …”
Crimes Against Shakespeare: 005
My gut reaction deserted me a little for this one, perhaps because of the subject matter, so I found myself consulting both my girlfriend and my best friend, the latter also an English teacher. Second and third opinions corroborating my initial intake of breath, and therefore I am pleased to present you my latest Crimes Against Shakespeare Award …
PTS 05/028: Et tu, Proteus?
Ponytail Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II.
If The Taming of the Shrew was about disguises, William C Carroll is right in considering The Two Gentlemen as a text about metamorphosis in the tradition of Ovid.
Before we look at these transformations, though, a word on Silvia. It drives me mad every time I hear or read someone preface some ill-informed remark with ‘Shakespeare was …’ More on this at regular intervals, I suspect. But for the moment, let’s take a small nibble at ‘Shakespeare was misogynist‘.
Post 100: Shakespeare is my Playstation
“What do you do, then, if you don’t watch TV?”
One of my opening gambits with new classes every year is the simple statement that I don’t do TV. ‘We might as well get it out of the way, folks.’ I loathe, truly loathe, the way it commands all my senses, to the exclusion of anything else. I usually read with mood music, I can type listening to something too (it’s Pink Floyd‘s Brick In The Wall at the moment), but I simply dislike TV as a way to spend my precious spare time. Reading, no, reading is NOT the same.
PTS 05/027: The Arch of Experience
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move. (Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Act 1
Recently, I wrote about bringing your personal baggage to your interpretation and enjoyment of texts. It’s why I re-read: every few years I genuinely believe I approach a text as a different person, changed in infinite, indescribable ways by my experiences.
This is my first time with the Two Gentlemen, though, and I approached this text with some trepidation. It has a reputation – despite being the first play performed at the newly-built Globe – and Dennis Carey‘s reaction on being asked to direct the play was not reassuring:
“I had only just read the play, and was badly shaken. Could the author really be grateful to anyone for preserving this youthful, unfinished, minor exercise?”
A read-through is a read-through, though …
Quote of the Week: 07 August
David Riggs: The World of Christopher Marlowe (Faber and Faber: London, 2004)
If you squint, you’ll see that this was one of the books I bought as retail therapy a short while back. I tackled this one first owing to my commitments to teach Edward II again this coming school year – I was hoping to get a few additional nuggets about Marlowe‘s private life.
The book has turned out to be an absolute revelation …
PTS 04/024: How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?
Ponytail Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew, Act IV
KATHERINA: ‘And be it moon or sun or what you please,
And if you please to call it a rush-candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.
PETRUCCIO: I say it is the moon.
KATHERINA: I know it is the moon.
PETRUCCIO: Nay then, you lie; it is the blessed sun.
KATHERINA: Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun.’
(IV.v.13-19)
I so often say to students (usually when we’re looking at poetry) that you should ‘bring your baggage’ to a work. It’s one of the things that makes re-reading an unexpected joy, as you arrive at a familiar work with fresh eyes. The ‘baggage’ can, of course, be life experiences, or other works that you’ve read: regular readers will already know that I have a habit of conflating Caliban, Richard III and Frankenstein’s monster, to talk through a sympathetic lens about those three characters and the nature vs. nurture argument.
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The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 