Oh! I’m beginning to understand that
something big is happening. Yesterday Hal and I finished reading The Tempest
and that concludes the marathon of reading the plays this time around. It
has taken about three years. It was with a feeling of regret that it was over
and satisfaction that we had done it that we read the final lines and then came
the question: how are we going to deal with the plays in the future? We don’t know yet. But we are not finished
with reading Shakespeare. It will just take a different path. For now we still have five films of The
Tempest to watch and I have a text to write. And a month and a half to do
it all...
From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.
- Pannonians, mentioned in Cymbeline, were a nation of people in the area of present-day Hungary, Austria, Yugoslavia and Italy, invaded by the Celts in the 4th century B.C. In the first centuries BC and AD they revolted against the Romans. And to think we’ve never heard of them.
- Paris we have heard of, both the city and the person. The city figures in the Henry plays and in Hamlet and All’s Well That Ends Well. The person pops up in Troilus and Cressida and another one in Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare sightings:
- In Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery Anne’s friend Hazel says, ”I feel so much better since I’ve confided in you...’touched your soul in shadowland’, as Shakespeare says.” And just as I was wondering where he says that, Anne informs Hazel, “I think it was Pauline Johnson.” Whoever that was.
- Peter Ackroyd is well-known for many things including books about London and the Thames which have figured on this blog earlier. Today he’ll make two appearances. The first because in his novel Three Brothers the scholarly (and, it must be admitted, snobby) brother, Daniel, says about his younger brother, “I don’t know how Sam seems, Father. I know not ‘seems’.” And in a later conversation certain acquaintances are compared to Puck, Falstaff and Hamlet.
Further since last time:
- Finished reading aloud with Hal: The Tempest
- Received from colleague MA a link to a
radio program about Shakespeare’s philosophy.
In Swedish I’m afraid but for those of you who understand the language
it’s interesting http://sverigesradio.se/sida/
avsnitt/437975?programid=793 Thank you, MA! - Started reading Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare the Biography.
- Started watching Season One of the Canadian series Slings and Arrows, received from friends KJG and JG, about a theatre troupe putting on Shakespeare plays. We’ve only watched two episodes but already we like it very much.
- Received from friend AB, who has recently been to London and seen A Comedy of Errors (I’m so envious!): two insult buttons with two of my favourite Shakespeare insults – “I do desire we may be strangers” and “thou art a boil”. I can’t quite think of when I could wear them but thank you, AB (I think...)!
- Reserved and paid for: hotel in London at the end of April. The Globe opens the 23rd. We’ll be there! What play we’ll see is yet unknown, but no matter, we’ll be online in February the minute tickets can be ordered.
- Ordered: the film Hamlet Goes Business, otherwise known as Hamlet liikemaailmassa, directed by the renowned Finnish direct Aki Kaurismäki. Our friend EG has long recommended it but it hasn’t been available for awhile. Now it is.
Posted this week:
- This Monday report.
- Report on Rewriting Shakespeare Rewriting Ourselves by Peter Erickson
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