Still a bit of a limbo week. We've read some more critical comments on Romeo and Juliet and have seen a few more Romeo and Juliet movies (we have one take-off plus a short ballet version left to watch). I have also written my text but I need time to think about it and revise it so it won't be posted today, unfortunately.
And I can't promise when it will be posted. Sadly, this is my last Shakespeare Monday for awhile. Next week I go back up to full time for four weeks. However one of those Mondays is a holiday so I'll try to get something posted then. And I will be back on January 16 to resume my Mondays.
So it's a little early but Happy Winter Solstice!
- This week's Shakespeare sightings –
- At the end of Harry Potter 5 – The Order of the Phoenix, Tonks wear a T-shirt with a Weird Sisters logo.
- In “Downton Abbey” when Daisy is reluctant to talk to her fiancé William, home from the war and dying, the cook Mrs. Patmore says, “It doesn't have to be Shakespeare!”
- In Sherman Alexie's short story “Search Engine” in his collection Ten Little Indians the main character, college student Corliss, watches a young guy trying to seduce a young woman by quoting Auden. Corliss, herself a poet, “wondered if Shakespeare wrote his plays and sonnets only because he was trying to get laid?”
- Fridays' crossword in DN. Clue: “More than one in Hamlet”. Dane? Murder? Sword fight? Sign of madness? None of the above. Answer: act. How mundane.
Further, this week:
- Book received: Jean E. Howard's Companion to the Tragedies. I see that she's the editor, not the author. Too bad, but it still looks interesting.
- Movies watched: Zefferelli's version of Romeo and Juliet, the Thames version of same, the Ballet de Paris version of same.
- Text posted on blog: the next Book of Interest – Eric S. Mallin's Godless Shakespeare.
Random, but: "Happy Winter Solstice" caught my eye there. It's the neutral "Merry Christmas," right? I always thought of that as a bit silly (the "let's be neutral" stuff), but now that I think about it again, after some years, I realize it's pretty important, after all. Then my next thought was "so how do I say it neutrally in Swedish?" and the obvious answer is -- it already is. "jul", afaik, has nothing to do with Christ or religion -- or does it?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia[1] it does not. It's apparently not known entirely, but it would seem "jul" originally meant "högtid" which I guess is... "feast".
[1]: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jul