September 5, 2011

• Shakespeare sightings
  • Oh no, now they're making a movie about Shakespeare not writing his plays. Of course it's by the same director who did “Day After Tomorrow” and “2012”, which, admittedly were pretty exciting but not terribly serious. So this one will probably be about as believable, that is to say...not. But how exciting can a movie about some other guy writing Shakespeare's texts be, I wonder. I used to say, and still do sort of, what difference does it make, somebody wrote the plays and they're brilliant so who cares? But I find I care, partly because as a history teacher I take historical sources seriously, and the ones we have really do indicate that Shakespeare wrote his own stuff, often not alone but still he did it. And partly because it's so insulting to claim that a relatively uneducated (at least formally) guy from the lower classes and rural England to boot can't be a genius. Come on!
  • In Juliet Nicolson's interesting book The Great Silence, about the two years after the end of World War One and how people adjusted, I've so far found two mentions of Shakespeare:
    • In the general anger towards and hatred for the Germans after the war, George V of England changed the family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (a good German name, the king was after all the Kaiser's – and the tsar's for that matter – cousin) to Windsor. According to Nicolson, the Kaiser joked about it by saying that he was on his way to the theater to see The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Ha ha.
    • On July 19, 1919, a large parade and festival were arranged in London to celebrate the signing of the treaty and A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed in Hyde Park.
  • A non-sighting: I love the movie Hair, and have seen it many times, most recently this Saturday evening with friends, and every time I ask myself and the world, “Why????” was “What a Piece of Work is Man” deleted? It's on the soundtrack so evidently it was going to be included at some point. I first heard this song on the Broadway soundtrack and it was probably the first time I fell in love with Shakespeare, and I didn't even know it was Shakespeare at the time. It took years and years before I figured out what play it's from. For those of you who have never heard it, or don't have the soundtracks: here they are:
    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChTBKjtfd2w from Broadway soundtrack, 1 minute 35 seconds
    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6lxQiGR2qI from movie soundtrack
  • Book finished this week: Frank Kermode's Shakespeare's Language. A brief report will appear on this blog when I get to doing books.
  • Play finished this week: Richard III. Hal and I have also started reading various analyses of the play and have watched the BBC version. Five more DVDs to watch this week. Today I started taking notes for my text, to be posted on this blog in a month or so.
  • Meantime, I'm still working on my text for Henry VI Part 3. I hope to post it next week.
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