May 2017

Dear Shakespeare friends,

Today, 1 May, is the day for international solidarity. It’s needed more than ever. Things do not look good in the world at the moment. Racism, sexism, fear and hatred, religious fanaticism amongst followers of all the religions, environmental catastrophe and blindness and denial of science, all of this is frightening. But let us remember: ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together,’ Shakespeare wrote in All’s Well that Ends Well. And surely together we can, in solidarity, counteract the ill and strengthen the good.

Meanwhile, again life has conspired against Hal and me and we have been unable to read any Shakespeare plays together. Hopefully next time!

As always I will once again mention to visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is available for purchase. Please help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please encourage your local book shops and libraries to buy it.  Thank you. Your support is needed to keep this project alive.

Available on  http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Calling-book-Ruby-Jand/dp/9163782626/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436073737&sr=1-1&keywords=Ruby+Jand+shakespeare+calling  

or

http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789163782626/shakespeare-calling-the-book/

or Adlibris. Or contact the publisher info@vulkan.se

Shakespeare Calling – the book is promoted by

http://shakespearesallskapet.se/

and

http://www.britishshakespeare.ws/new-book-by-bsa-member/

Shakespeare sightings:

• The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer is, as I mentioned last time, a wonderful book. Here are some more sightings that are well worth repeating:
• Shakespeare often mentions bad breath, which was indeed a big problem in Elizabethan England. There were many rotten teeth due to eating too many sweets.
• Considering the vicious delight Elizabethans take in seeing bear baiting and other cruelty to animals, Mortimer wonders how they could also appreciate Shakespeare’s humanism.
• One of the most famous bears in England’s bear-baiting enthusiasm was called Sackerson and Shakespeare mentions him in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
• Seeing that Elizabeth loves to go to Paris Garden to enjoy the bloodshed of bear-baiting Mortimer finds it odd that she never went to the Globe to see Shakespeare.
• Music plays an important part in Elizabethan society and Mortimer writes: ‘Although no one has yet conclusively proved that music is the food of love, there is little doubt that Shakespeare himself thinks it is. More than 170 passages in his plays allude to music or musicians…’
• Many musicians live in the parish of Saint Helen Bishopsgate, as does Shakespeare.
• ‘Shakespeare has given voice to so many of our feelings. Probably no other Englishman has been more influential. His influence is not militaristic or nationalistic, nor is it the discovery of a scientific phenomenon; it is simply that his writings are the biggest step ever taken along the path towards understanding the human condition. It is a path we are still following.’
• ‘If Shakespeare is ‘for all time’, then so too is Elizabethan England.’
• Norda Mullen, flutist for the Moddy blues, compares Justin Hayward’s lyrics to Shakespeare – ‘everyone can relate’. Well, I wouldn’t go that far.
• In the musical film Singing in the Rain aspiring actor Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) tells silent star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) that real acting is only done on stage such as Shakespeare and Ibsen. When she shortly thereafter pops up out of a cake as a dancing girl he asks her for Hamlet’s soliloquy or some lines by Juliet. Later in the song ‘Make ‘em Laugh’ Cosmo (Donald O’Connor) sings that you could do Shakespeare but it’s better to make ‘em laugh. The song writer had apparently never seen a Shakespeare play.
• On the TV quiz show Vem vet mest? (Who knows the most?) the question was who directed The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover? The answer: Peter Greenaway and the program leader said, ‘He also directed a film of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.’
• On another TV quiz show Smartare än en femteklassare (Smarter than a six year student) one of the kids is going to be in a summer production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
• In Dagens Nyheter Johan Hilton writes: ‘Without having a doctorate in the subject I can still claim that all political leaders in the world, now and historically, can find their role model in one of Shakespeare’s kings. Emmanuel Macron? Henry V, with a little luck. Theresa May? Henry VI. Vladimir Putin? Undoubtedly Richard III. With Donald Trump it’s harder. Richard II, the vain title role in one of Shakespeare’s best plays maybe? …History professor Rachel Weil writes that Trump is unpredictable, lives in a dream world and solves conflicts with the help of narcissistic impulses. He therefore risks, like the king, undermining the legitimacy of the whole administration. I don’t know though. Trump is closer to the swashbuckling liar Falstaff. Minus the charm.’ Hmmmm.
• In Tana French’s novel The Secret Place Detective Stephen Moran finds a book amongst one of the suspects’ belongings: ‘…it looked old, Shakespeare old.’

Further since last time: Well, that’s it.

Posted this month

• This report

April 2017

There has been little Shakespeare this month as life sometimes has other ideas. No plays or movies, few sightings. But one event has made up for it. Språklärarnas riksförbund (The National Association of Language Teachers in Sweden) invited me to give my presentation ‘Why Shakespeare?’ at their conference and what a pleasure it was! A keen audience, the chance to meet Shakespeare enthusiasts from round the country, and I even met up with old friends. Annette Å, whom Hal and I met in London in 2013 at the Shakespeare course arranged by Shakespearesällskapet (see my reports in June and July of 2013 here on the blog) was at the conference and we had a nice chat reminiscing about the great time we had then. Hal and I met Ingrid A, one of the arrangers of the conference, originally on a bus trip to England in 2011, on which we visited Stratford upon Avon and began talking over a book about Shakespeare. Ingrid was responsible for arranging for me to speak now at the conference. So, a wonderful Shakespeare day to round off the last month and begin this one. Thank you, Ingrid and Språkbad väst!

As always I will once again mention to visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is available for purchase. Please help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please encourage your local book shops and libraries to buy it.  Thank you. Your support is needed to keep this project alive.

Available on  http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Calling-book-Ruby-Jand/dp/9163782626/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436073737&sr=1-1&keywords=Ruby+Jand+shakespeare+calling  

or

http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789163782626/shakespeare-calling-the-book/

or Adlibris. Or contact the publisher info@vulkan.se

Shakespeare Calling – the book is promoted by

http://shakespearesallskapet.se/

and

http://www.britishshakespeare.ws/new-book-by-bsa-member/

Shakespeare sightings:

• In Belinda Bauer’s novel The Beautiful Dead  the police suspect that the serial killer will strike at a West End theatre during a performance of Romeo and Juliet. When Romeo collapses during the poison scene, and stays collapsed, the police rush to the stage but he revives, as the killer calmly murders the theatre manager…
• In Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi as the twelfth Doctor in the episode ‘Sleep No More’ says, ‘Never shall Cawdor sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more. Shakespeare. He really knew his stuff.’
• In Dagens Nyheter there was
• a review of a satirical Hamlet which ‘must be seen…..’ This production is high quality nightmare theatre…’
• an advert for the coming return to the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Rickard III with the brilliant Jonas Karlsson. Hal and I saw it the first time round.  In the advert it says, ‘He is manipulative, murderous and power-mad. You will love him.’ Yep.
• In Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising she explains ancient pagan customs in Britain and quotes Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor: ‘There is an old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter…’ and continues by describing this frightening spirit.
• The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer is a wonderful book. I’ve read it before and written about the Shakespeare sightings in it before but it’s well worth reading again, which I’m doing now, and some of the sightings are well worth repeating:
• Shakespeare has reason to be proud when he buys New Place in 1597, ‘with its brick, glazed windows and chimneys – a far cry from the smelly house where he spent his boyhood (and where his aged father still lives). And you can see why William’s wife, Anne, is pleased to be living in New Place rather than the two-room farmhouse in Shottery where she grew up.’
• The Mermaid in Cheapside is ‘the drinking haunt of William Shakespeare of Stratford’.
• Writing books is not considered professional and Shakespeare is one of the ‘very few writers who manages to elevate himself from a relatively humble level to the status of a gentleman.’
• Shakespeare is an example of those many who move to London to make their fortune before returning to the place of their birth.
• It is the custom to kiss one’s hostess on the lips when greeting her and Cassio mentions this custom to Iago when greeting Emilia with a kiss.
• Though a later portrait of Shakespeare shows him wearing an earring (in fact this is the portrait – which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London – used on the cover of Shakespeare calling – the book) it is highly unlikely to be accurate as few or no men in Elizabethan times pierced their ears. 

Further since last time:

• ‘Why Shakespeare?’ in Gothenburg (see above) 

Posted this month

• This report