Monday October 1 2012

This has been a more interesting Shakespeare week than the last two. The main thing is that after finishing Julius Caesar and looking ahead it was a bit of a shock to see that there's only one play between now and Hamlet. That's a bit scary actually but I'll deal with that when the time comes!

From Gregory Doran's Shakespeare Almanac:

• On September 28, 1571, Shakespeare's sister Anne was born. She died at the age of seven when Shakespeare was 15, his first big loss. 
• On September 30, 1399, Richard II abdicated, making Bolingbroke King Henry IV and giving Shakespeare something to write about a couple of hundred years later. 

Shakespeare sightings:

• More sightings from the silly novel Monarch of the Glen but they weren't memorable enough to specify. 
• In the back of the booklet of Scottish fish recipes bought in Scotland this summer there is a list of other booklets from the same publisher. Among them: Favourite Shakespeare Country. If this really excites you, here's the link http://www.jsalmon.com/index.htm but I didn't actually find this title. Let me know if you do!
• In the movie Frankie and Johnny Al Pacino's character, an ex-con who read a lot in prison, quotes Shakespeare to his co-workers at a greasy spoon restaurant in New York. 
• In Ali Smith's intriguing novel The Accidental the first sighting is very subtle: “Like the play she saw with the man in it whose eyes were gouged out...It was his daughters who did it or his sons...”Any guesses? One of the characters is a professor of English literature so there are more sightings. In one of them he is questioning the point of literature, and even of “old Will Shakespeare.” 

Further, since the last report:

• Finished reading aloud with Hal: Julius Caesar. 
• Watched: BBC's version of same. 
• Started writing: text about same. 

Posted: This Monday Report