April 2018

Even Shakespeare addicts like me are susceptible to computer problems and this past week has been frustrating to say this least. This is being written on an old computer and posted with the help of Hal’s internet.  Fortune shines on me!

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.

FINALLY easily available for those of you in Great Britain and Europe on this site:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/9163782626/ref=tmm_hrd_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=1514378301&sr=8-1

Also 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 sightings:

• In the Swedish dystopia Enda vägen (The only way) by Anna Jakobsson Lund, the setting is vaguely England in a future after the wars. A meeting is set up between two rebels in a round white building from which the stucco is falling and in which, one of them informs the other, the greatest plays of the kingdom were performed eight hundred years ago.
• In the film St Trinian 2 the headmistress says, approximately, ‘Some women are born great – Cleopatra, the queen, me – some become great – Mother Theresa, Lady Gaga – others have greatness thrust upon them, like Monica Lewinsky…’ Then: ‘We few, we happy few, we happy band of sisters’…the whole St Trinian, oops Crispin speech has girls in tears and cheers. And then the treasure is in the Globe where the film ends…
• In another dystopia, Wool, by Hugh Howey, the survivors live in underground silos. The main character Juliette is named after a character in an ancient play that her parents loved. A manual for running the place is written on the back of the manuscript to the play.
• Keith Thomas, in his fascinating Religion and the Decline of Magic, has mentioned Shakespeare several times in the first half:
• Pondering upon the backwardness of Tudor and Stuart England he writes: ‘Not every under-developed society has had its Shakespeare [and] Milton…’
• Many students took magic seriously and studied it. Thomas writes: ‘Small wonder that for the populace learning still meant magic: “Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio”.’
• In explaining dreams and divination Thomas points out that we believe the ones we want to believe in: ‘The utterances of the three weird sisters were treated with suspicion by Banquo.  But they struck an answering chord in the heart of Macbeth.’

Further since last time:

• Read aloud with Hal, EG and EG in preparation for seeing the performance at the Globe in July: Hamlet.
• Read: Nutshell by Ian McEwan. Now that is Hamlet with a twist!
• The insult for today, 2 April  2018, in our calendar of Shakespeare insults, a gift from JS, is ‘Were’t not for laughing, I should pity him.’ Henry IV, Part 1. Rather mild for being a Shakespeare insult.

 Posted this month

• ‘Rebel girl in Romeo and Juliet’ 
• This report

  

Shakespeare Calling – the book is promoted by

http://shakespearesallskapet.se/

and

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

More Shakespeare on this link:

https://themerlinchronicles.wordpress.com/