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In a unique series of six films, Shakespeare Uncovered combines history, biography, iconic performances, new analysis, and the personal passions of its celebrated hosts — Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Irons, Derek Jacobi, Trevor Nunn, Joely Richardson, and David Tennant — to tell the stories behind the stories of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Produced by Blakeway Productions, 116 […]
So I’ve signed up for another MOOC since I enjoyed the one on Hamlet so much. (More on that later.) So this one is titled Shakespeare and His World and is led by Professor Jonathan Bate, in conjunction with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. From the course description: Each week, Professor Bate will examine a particular […]
More online musing on the online Hamlet course I’m taking… In the upcoming week’s class there is a major focus on Hamlet as a negative character as well as looking at the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. The best performances I’ve seen of that scene is when the actor makes it clear that […]
A few notes on the online Hamlet course I’m taking… The Argumentative Old Git had a good post on the three different versions of Hamlet. We took a closer look at the First Quarto (Q1) and despite all its deficiencies the order of its scenes resolve some issues raised in the Second Quarto and First […]
Some out-loud musing on this week’s topic in the online course on Hamlet: melancholy and madness… For such a major component of the play (not to mention a topic that has been examined so often), I didn’t realize ‘melancholy’ was only used twice in the play. Although it was published about two decades after Hamlet […]
Renata Adler’s “Letter from Selma”, about the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, is available at The New Yorker. The real magicians of Latin America looks at Machado de Assis and “the publication by Dalkey Archive Presshttps://dalkeyarchive.store/products/selected-stories?_pos=1&_psq=machado&_ss=e&_v=1.0 [scheduled for March] of a book simply titled Stories, which contains 13 of Machado’s stories, 10 […]
Well, the play is over but I thought I would share this clip from Shakespeare Santa Cruz on The Taming of the Shrew. In it are Gretchen Hall (Kate), Fred Arsenault (Petruchio / Christopher Sly), and Edward Morgan (Director). They get to the heart of the play in the first sentence when mentioning […]
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $26.00 ISBN: 1416541624I enjoyed James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 and wanted to read his latest book on Shakespeare as soon as I could. I didn’t realize Wikipedia had a long article on the Shakespeare authorship question as […]
I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, but PBS’ Great Performances has King Lear available online. CastKing Lear – Ian McKellenGoneril – Frances BarberRegan – Monica DolanCordelia – Romola GaraiAlbany – Julian HarriesCornwall – Guy WilliamsGloucester – William GauntEdgar – Ben MeyjesEdmund – Philip WinchesterKent – Jonathon HydeFool – Sylvester McCoy
This is the first book covered in the online Shakespeare course I joined. Shapiro’s work goes into detail on Shakespeare’s achievements in 1599 (a remarkable output–Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and the first draft of Hamlet ), his business dealings, and the national scene within which he worked. The approach of […]