Category: William Shakespeare

Quote of the Week: 20 November 2017

Fair’s fair: if you think it is important for me to learn what a ‘360 No-Scope’ is, why can’t you get a grasp on similes and metaphors?  

BH periodic table
image:  https://othmarstrombone.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/the-elements-of-language-a-periodic-table-of-sorts/

BE MORE LIONEL MESSI, STUDENTS …

Today’s quote is taken from:  David Crystal, Think On My Words – Exploring Shakespeare’s Language (Cambridge Uiversity Press:  Cambridge, 2008)

To my knowledge, the displays in my classroom had been up since 2012/13 – until this week, at least.

The non-existent magic money tree has been given a shake, and someone in the school has now been given paid time to do this for us.  It’s a bit bizarre, given we’ve had to do it ourselves, unpaid, in the past, which is part of the reason I didn’t bother.  Continuing the general thrust of this post, I felt that making me choose between covering my back by marking students’ work or prettifying the walls was an Rq.  See what I did there?

Anyway …

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Pay it forward, Will …

If we paid something forwards, maybe especially Shakespeare, once in a while, the world would be a better place …

BH 150It’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 …

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Quote of the Week: 13 November 2017

Where Marlowe went when he should have been at Uni …

gorgeous georgius carleton
‘Gorgeous’ Georgius – with a beard any woman would want to lose herself in …

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.

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New Books, New Shelves!

 It felt like cheating, it felt like a betrayal, but it also felt like the right thing to do …

BH library laddersWe’re now 66, without my Ardens, and probably need to announce an extension to the library …

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Quote of the Week: 06 November

Presuming someone’s guilt can create a dangerous reaction …

BH Cover Gunpowder PlotThe 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.

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PTS07/044: RIP, Buckers …

Buckingham wants, needs, perhaps even deserves, a lover’s farewell …

BH buckingham executed

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)

 

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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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PTS 07/043: The Bad Death of Eduard (Delacroix) IV

What could be worse than dying, believing that you’re going to hell?

BH eduard delacroix
No trigger warnings, sorry …

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 …

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I’ve … seen things …

It often takes something (we consider) sub-human to remind us of our humanity …

BH blade runner

‘… 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.

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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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