Monday, July 1, 2013

Monday July 1 2013

We’ve been back from London for a week. What a trip. You can read about various aspects of it below.  It can safely be said that this trip was a Shakespeare trip.  As always, we say have to go back immediately.  I hope it doesn’t take five years this time. 
There are several new posts here to read today. On the other hand my summer English class starts next Monday so I won’t be back on blog until August 19th (possibly a short visit on the 5th) and you’ll have plenty of time to read it all.


From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary:
  • Cade, Jack, from Henry VI Part II, was a real person. He led the rebellion of the gentry and merchant classes who were basically conservative, objecting to taxes but not wanting to abolish the monarchy. His headquarters were in Southwark at the entrance to the London Bridge, about a five minute walk from our hotel this trip.
  • Cadwallader was the last British king to resist the Anglo-Saxon invaders after the fall of the Roman Empire.


Shakespeare sightings:
  • In the first novel by Joss Stirling Finding Sky Sky herself contemplates “slamming the window on this weird Romeo-and-Juliet scene” with her soon-to-be sweetie Zed.
  • Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next have moved back to the Sighting list (temporarily I hope!) because in First Among Sequels Shakespeare only pops up a few times: Bottom from Midsummer Night’s Dream had hidden out in Pinocchio’s workroom during a textphoon but only the “odd verb or two” seemed to have been disturbed. The fact that time is out of joint is mentioned twice (but isn’t it always with Thursday Next?) And evidently Hamlet has become a colleague of Thursday because even though he doesn’t show up in the book itself Bradshaw tells his agents, “If anyone sees Hamlet or Peter or Jane before I do, send them immediately to me.” Hopefully Hamlet will be back to play a major role in the drama again in the next Next!
  • Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is still another novel about teen witches, quite a good one in fact (Shakespereans Emma Thompson, Eileen Atkins and Jeremy Irons are in the movie). The sightings: Ethan asks Macon if the book he’s holding is Shakespeare. He asks Lena if the quote she used was Shakespeare and she answers it was Francis Bacon, but if one believes Bacon wrote Shakespeare then…Marian the Librarian gives Ethan Julius Caesar in order to contemplate the role of fate and one’s own decisions in one’s life.
  • There was an interview with Emma Watson in Dagens Nyheter on June 14 in which she described director Darren Aronofsky as  a very demanding director, “apocalypse and Shakespeare at the same time”.
  • In the book bought at the Globe Shop, The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England, by Ian Mortimer, Shakespeare is mentioned fifteen times in the first 186 pages: his status, his father, his plays, his education and knowledge, his language, his troop members, his beard, and most recently his earring, which according to Mortimer is unlikely to have existed since men didn’t pierce their ears in Elizabethan England.  What a shame. I think he looks very dashing in that supposed portrait.


Further this month:
  • Purchased in London: DVDs of Globe productions of some of the plays, pens, pencils, T-shirts, hoodies, erasers, mugs, magnets…
  • Seen at the Barbican: Much Ado About Nothing
  • Seen at the Globe: The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth
  • Conference – see separate text under “Ruby’s Reflections”
  • Read: My Father Has a Daughter by Grace Tiffany. This fictionalized account of Judith’s relationship with her father and his plays is so believable and well written that one thinks it must be true.  I couldn’t put it down.
  • Received as gift from AB: Shakespeare and Myself by George Mikes, from 1954. Thank you, AB!
  • Watched: the DVD of the Globe production of All’s Well that Ends Well


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