Monday, August 29, 2011

Not a lot to report this week. It's been pretty quiet on the Shakespeare front.

• Shakespeare sightings - They're everywhere. We don't even think of them, they're so much a part of our lives. But starting this week I'm going to take note:
  • in Dagens Nyheter (for you non-Swedes, one of the two major daily newspapers) on the 28^th, a notice on Shakespeare's insults. It refers to the site http://www.william-shakespeare.org.uk/shakespeare-insults-dictionary.htm (although I had to search a bit because the address wasn't complete in the notice.)
  • Upon listening to the remastered CD's of Blondie's LP's, Hal noticed the listing of ”Once More into the Bleach” which turns out being a remix album released in 1988. So here's a contest: What's the original quote? In which play? The first to post a comment with the correct answer (not you, Hal!) wins a big prize (a gold star in my soon to be started book of gold stars).
  • A very minor character in the novel I'm reading (Self by Yann Martel) has a cat named Shakespeare. Said cat sat in the main character's lap while he was watching TV. Sorry. Not much of a sighting, I agree, but a sighting nevertheless.
  • That's it for sightings this week.
• Books ordered and finally received: The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, edited by Margreta de Grazia and Stanley Wells. Not a guide to each play as I had kind of expected but a series of essays about various subjects by a bunch of different people, for example Stephen Greenblatt, ”The Traces of Shakespeare's Life”. Looks interesting.
• Website to Shakespeare Calling has now been sent to several friends and colleagues. Hoping for responses. I got an email from one colleague but he doesn't want to comment on the blog itself. Too bad! It was interesting!
• Now reading
  • still Kermode's Shakespeare's Language. Should finish it this week.
• Now reading aloud with Hal
  • still Richard III. We'll finish it this evening and then we have lots of intros, essays etc to read plus six movies to watch; three are the actual plays and three are other related stuff. Who knows when I'll get to writing my analysis and what I'll write about.
• Posted today
  • ”From Anticipation to Disappointment and Exasperation - Margaret's Marriage to Henry” in The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, or Henry the Sixth, Part Two