Shakespeare Calling: April 2023

Sunday, April 30, 2023

May 2023

On this 1 May, International Workers’ Day, let us remember that solidarity takes many forms.

Here expressed in Shakespeare’s appeal spoken by Sir Thomas Moore:

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silenced by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reason, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Feed on one another.…

You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in lyam
To slip him like a hound. Alas, alas, say now the King,
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleas’d
To find a nation of such barbarous temper
That breaking out in hideous violence
Would not afford you an abode on earth.
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owned not nor made not you, nor that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But charter’d unto them? What would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case
And this your mountainish inhumanity.

And, I repeat what I have repeated for far too long:

‘O war! thou son of hell’ O Putin! Thou son of hell! Our thoughts and support are still needed to the people of Ukraine, and the people of Russian who hate this war. Protest in any way you can! And don’t give up hope. ‘True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings.’

In this time of turmoil and hope I give you this familiar promo for the book Shakespeare calling – the book. Indie authors like me always need support, even now when book signings and lectures can again be scheduled. Only on the Internet can I reach people like you, who are interested in Shakespeare would like to support the Shakespeare Calling project. I do so hope you will help me by ordering the book online. Any sales I make of this book will go directly to Doctors without Borders for their work in Ukraine as long as the war lasts. Just let me know and I’ll send the money forthwith. You can also order directly from me. Just write me an email. Thank you.

Anyone from Ukraine – send me an email and I will send you the book free of charge.

The book is available for those of you in Great Britain and parts of Europe on this site:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/9163782626/ref=tmm_hrd_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=1514378301&sr=8-1

Also available on http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Calling-book-Ruby-Jand/dp/9163782626/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436073737&sr=1-1&keywords=Ruby+Jand+shakespeare+calling

Or in Sweden

http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789163782626/shakespeare-calling-the-book/

or Adlibris. Or contact the publisher info@vulkan.se

I would be thrilled to get an email from you if you bought the book. rubyjandshakespearecalling@gmail.com

Shakespeare sightings:

In the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter there is a long report on the director Staffan Valdemar Holm who explains in detail how Shakespeare’s plays can be improved by cutting all the dead weight. He is currently directing The Tempest in the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
In The Lincoln Highway, a novel by Amor Towles, one of the characters quotes from Macbeth then goes on to explain the play to an eight-year-old boy and tell about his actor father. He goes on the refer to Shakespeare throughout the book, but that doesn’t help. It’s still boring and I only skimmed the last half.
There’s a lukewarm review of an opera version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the newspaper today.

Films with a Shakespeare connection seen this month - see reviews on https://rubyjandsfilmblog.blogspot.com/

Source Code - Jeffrey Wright is in Hamlet.
Promising Young Woman - David Strathairn is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Elvis - Baz Luhrman directed Romeo & Julia.
The Chronicles of Riddick - Judi Dench is in The Hollow Crown, Shakespeare in Love, Hamlet, Henry V, Macbeth
Upside Down – Timothy Spall is in Love’s Labour’s Lost and Hamlet.

Further since last time: quiet Shakespeare month

Posted this month:

This report

Shakespeare Calling – the book is promoted by http://shakespearesallskapet.se/

Read more about my alter ego’s books, in one of which Shakespeare appears live and in person, on:

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

April 2023

In memory of Harold Leighton Berglund 18 October 1945 – 26 February 2023

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 29