Monday, December 17, 2012

Monday December 17 2012


Now I remember why I went back up to full time last December. Yesterday I spent several hours reading and grading tests and other teachery things which means today I have to do things that need to be done on weekends, like going to town to buy a winter coat. We’re going up north for New Year’s and my cheapskate coat won’t be enough. So this Monday report will be all for this time.

From Gregory Doran's Shakespeare Almanac:
  • On December 16, 1977, Nelson Mandela, still in prison on Robben Island, signed his name in a copy of Shakespeare’s plays (smuggled into the prison) by the following lines from Julius Caesar, Act Two, Scene two.
Cowards die many times before their deaths
The valiant only taste their death but once.
Of all the wonders that I have yet heard,
It seems me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

The great Nelson Mandela is still will us.

Shakespeare sightings:
  • More from Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy: Hamlet’s ghost, Macbeth’s witches, Lear, Malvolio and Iago all make their appearance then wander on.
  • In the novel  Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult, seventeen-year-old Cara is reminded of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet when she visits a spaced out New Age lawyer who has lots of herbs and things on her shelves.
  • Nick Hornby, who writes such lovely books, has written about songs that mean a lot to him. It’s called Songbook and he refers to Shakespeare…
    • “you may as well shuffle off this mortal coil now…”
    • “Emma Kay…has done a series of artworks that consist entirely of her (verbal) memories of Shakespeare plays…” Oh I’d like to hear that! Couldn’t find her on You Tube though.
    • Hornby made a list of things he remembers about Bob Dylan and adds:”I will not attempt a similar list pertaining to the life of William Shakespeare, because it would be far too shaming, but suffice it to say that it would not extend much beyond Stratford-Upon-Avon, Anne Hathaway and her cottage, the Globe and the Dark Lady.”

Further, since the last report:
  • Read the Norton intro to Twelfth Night, and started Bloom’s chapter on it.
  • Watched Trevor Nunn’s production of same.

Posted:
·         Just this.

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