Monday December 3 2012

This week has been a Winter’s Tale with about ten centimeters of snow falling on the Stockholm area and the temperature this morning at -14 degrees centigrade.  What that has to do with Shakespeare I have no idea except that it probably snowed in his day too…

From Gregory Doran's Shakespeare Almanac:

• On November 27, 1582, a marriage license was granted to William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
• On November 29, 1596, Shakespeare and some colleagues were arrested in an altercation with the son of the Justice of the Peace outside the Swan, where the JP had tried to stop a performance. It doesn’t say why but the arrest doesn’t seem to have led to any ill consequences.
• On December 2, 1603, As You Like It was performed with King James I in the audience.

 Shakespeare sightings:

• The Shakespeare sightings in Jasper Ffforde’s Thursday Next  novel The Well of Lost Plots would fill a book of their own. Here are just a few of the best:
• Miss Twiggywinkle is in charge of promoting hedgehogs in literature and has found four references in Shakespeare
• Thursday has been recruited as a jurisfiction apprentice and as such attends the meetings of the Council of Genres. Among the members of the council we find Beatrice and Benedick (spelled Benedict in the book), who argue and insult each other constantly, and Sir John Falstaff, an obnoxious lecher according to Thursday, though she does get to know him a little better towards the end of the book.
• All of the dire predictions of the three witches (who were wrongly quoted by me last week as saying “Hail McNext”. What they are saying is “Hail MsNext”) come true.
• In the annual Book World Awards, Othello is nominated as the Dopiest Shakespearean Character and Hamlet rivals Heathcliff as The Most Troubled Romantic Lead (Male). I’ll let you read the book to find out who wins…
• Dagens Nyheter had a notice on December first about the new theater being built near the Globe which will allow plays to be performed year around.
• In the book The Blood Never Dried, a People’s History of the British Empire by John Newsinger, the somewhat (for the 1850’s) radical Richard Cobden sort of supported the Indian rebellion but didn’t do much about it - about which the author comments, ”discretion proved the better part of valour.”  Any guesses on play and speaker?
• In Svenska Dagbladets article on November 29 about movie versions of Jane Eyre (all bad according to the critic) Zefferelli is called “the Shakespeare veteran.”
• Surfing through You Tube I came across a clip of Rowan Atkinson and Kate Bush doing a duet (honest!) about love (sort of):“love at first sight, Romeo and Juliet” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QeyRIyBJy4 about 2 minutes into it.

 Further, since the last report:

• Still reading aloud: Twelfth Night.

 Posted:

·         This Monday Report

·         Response to Alexander’s thought-provoking comments on “Can You Do That to Shakespeare?”

·         Review of Douglas Brode’s Shakespeare in the Movies from the Silent Era to Today.