And so it has arrived, the last Monday
report for this spring. I’ll be working
full time in May but that will go fast and I’ll be back on May 27th
when my vacation starts. It’s been a bit of a frantic shuffle to get the text
for Measure for Measure ready to post
but I made it. Though I won’t be on this blog, I’ll do the movie blog on
weekends. There are several more Hamlets in the wings. See you there (on the
movie blog, not in the wings)!
From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary:
- The Bermudas were in the news towards the end of Shakespeare’s career because of several much reported shipwrecks there and it seems reasonable to believe that Shakespeare used this in The Tempest, though the play itself doesn’t actually take place there.
- John Blunt is not exactly one of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters. He doesn’t even have a speaking part but simply appears on stage in Henry IV Part Two in order to escort another character off stage. He’s included here because he’s one of the few characters Hal and I have actually seen on stage, H4:2 being the only Shakespeare play we’ve ever seen in England and one of the few we’ve seen in English. Can’t say I remember old Blunt though…
Shakespeare sightings:
- In Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity the neurotic protagonist Rob is for the nth time moaning about ended relationships, for which one solution is: “you can take the Romeo route” which he doesn’t seem to think is a good idea.
- In the novel Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, the brother Ben is in prison for the murders of his family, but he’s turning his life around by getting an education, even reading Shakespeare. Hmmm. Well, there are a lot of family murderers in Shakespeare so this isn’t any creepier I guess.
- There was a small notice in Dagens Nyheter which makes some kind of incomprehensible comparison between Tobias Billström, the conservative Minister of Migration and Asylum Policy, and The Tempest.
- In case you’ve forgotten that Inspector Morse’s first name was Endeavor, British television has given the whole series about the young Morse the title Endeavor and in the episode we watched yesterday evening the murderer had written the words “an bancio ancora”, on the door to the boxcar where his first victim was left. The young opera-loving Endeavor informs us that these are the last words in Verdi’s opera Othello.
- There was a glowing review in Dagens Nyheter this morning of Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear performed by the Malmö Opera. It’s called “bold” and “risky” and “ecstatically received.”
Further this week:
- Finished: text on Measure for Measure.
- Finished reading: Thomas Goltz’ Assassinating Shakespeare Confessions of a Bard in a Bush.
- Listened to: Blogging Shakespeare’s web debate on April 26 about the authorship of Shakespeare (the two Stratfordians’ arguments can be heard on http://bloggingshakespeare.com/webinars/shakespeare-bites-back but the debate itself I can’t find.) Nothing revolutionary, but it was interesting to hear the reasonable arguments of the two Stratfordians, Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, countering the non-arguments of the single debater (sorry, I missed her name) trying to convince us there is no evidence to show that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. I felt rather sorry for her; it was quite brave of her to take part, but clearly very frustrating for her, and she certainly didn’t convince me.
Posted
this week:
- Text on Measure for Measure, “The Duke, the Professional Virgin and the Dastardly Deputy”.
- This Monday report
- Reviews on Ruby Jand’s Movie Blog of more Hamlet related movies and now the Hamlet movies themselves
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