Monday May 12 2014

There’s not much for me to boast about this week. The text on Coriolanus is getting written in fits and starts but it is not done. It’s very complicated, at least my brain thinks so.  Maybe next week...

From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

• Lappland (which Hal and I have visited and seen the reindeer along the road and have been eaten alive by the mosquitoes mentioned in D&F) was in Shakespeare’s day inhabited by “a mysterious people at the top of the world.” The English traded with Russia though and would have been in contact with the Lapps (samer in their own language and these days in Swedish as well) quite regularly. Lapland was known for its sorcery. This is mentioned in A Comedy of Errors.
• Lear was not invented by Shakespeare but has figured in many legends. One who was instrumental in establishing it was Geoffrey of Monmouth (of King Arthur and Merlin fame although D&F don’t mention this). We don’t know if Lear really existed or where his name comes from; possibly Leir Castre (Leir’s town), the Celtic sea god Lir or the Welsh tales of Lyr.

Shakespeare sightings:

• Follower of Shakespeare Calling, IA, sent me this message: "I read in the magazine "Historia" yesterday that they have found two new portraits of Shakespeare. Exciting ;-)"  Exciting indeed! I Googled it and came up with this link http://news.discovery.com/history/art-history/two-new-portraits-of-shakespeare-found-140212.htm .  Thank you, IA!
• LL-förlaget, which is a Swedish publisher of Easy Readers in Swedish, is celebrating Shakespeare’s 450^th birthday by publishing an easy reader of Romeo and Juliet.
• The Pickwick Papers is not my favourite Charles Dickens novel (I love Dickens) and it is taking me a long time to get through it. On page 541 Shakespeare is mentioned but I really don’t understand why. It seems that somebody is calling somebody else “Shakespeare” for no reason that I can see, but there you have it. It’s a Shakespeare sighting anyway.
• How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran is, in spite of the somewhat possibly misleading title, about a very funny and spot on “strident feminist” who only slightly connects to Shakespeare by mentioning Rabelaisian and Falstaffian people who really enjoy “sensory delights”.
• There was a long article in Dagens Nyheter about the Globe’s wandering (global!) of Hamlet (directed by Dominic Dromgoole and Bill Buckhurst) which has now reached Sweden – but not Stockholm! It’s in Ystad (of Wallander – Kenneth Branagh, you know, who should be doing Shakespeare! -  fame) far away from here. The critic was not terribly impressed and suggested we go see something at the Globe instead.  Well, yeah. But this Hamlet really ought to come to Stockholm too. I want to see it!
• My colleague M has given me an article from Svenska Dagbladet – another contribution to the celebration of the 450^th anniversary.  It’s a long article that wanders from his glove making father, to his turbulent times, to his love of language. Thank you, M!
  

Further since last time:

• Continued writing: text about Coriolanus
• Posted a review of Coriolanus on the movie blog
  http://rubyjandsmovieblog.blogspot.se/2014/05/coriolanus.html

Posted this week:

• This Monday report.

Monday May 5 2014

Corialanus.  You’ve read it, seen it right? No, maybe not. If not, you’re among the great majority.  I suggest you join us in the minority.  It’s a very good play.  Disturbing, yes. Hard to follow, too. But intriguing. I’m a little obsessed with Corialanus at the moment. We’ve watched the BBC version (good) and the Ralph Fiennes version (excellent) and while both performances clarify some things, they make others more difficult to interpret.  Still, I know what I want to write. But the pen is finding it hard to meet the paper. Ah well, it will come.  Not this week, and maybe not next week but it will come.  Meantime, we realize that it will be the last play we do before our trip to London which is – OMG – just a month away.  We’ll use the time to brush up on our Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra in preparations for the two Globe performances.  That sentence sends little shivers down my spine. Us. At the Globe. Again.  But not yet! Now just a normal Shakespeare Monday, rather quieter than some.  But not a complete dearth:

From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

• William Kemp, a contemporary and colleague of Shakespeare, was the main clown for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and played Dogberry and Peter (in Romeo and Juliet) and probably many more. For unknown reasons he left the theatre in 1599, became known for Morris dancing from London to Norwich and then he disappears from history.
• Labio helped Brutus and Cassius plot the assassination of Julius Caesar. I don’t remember him in the play but maybe I will when we see it.

Shakespeare sightings:

• In the novel The Generation Game by Sophie Duffy the teenage protagonist writes of 1978 as being the Winter of Discontent, uses the old Romeo-Juliet reference to passionate love, is reading Shakespeare at school and at a party meets a man with the voice of a Shakespearian actor.
• Dagens Nyheter has Rickard III as number two on the best on stage list this week too.
• DN’s crossword had the clue “Lear” and the answer was “tragedy.”
• In the second season of Fringe, the fourth episode is called “To sleep perchance to dream.”
• In the rather bad, but fascinating, film Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Johnny Depp’s eyes are gouged out à la Gloucester in King Lear. Yuck. But JD gets on rather better than poor old Gloucester.

Further since last time:

• Read aloud with Hal: The Norton Intro and the chapter in Bloom about Coriolanus
• Watched: the BBC production and the Fiennes version of same.
• Started writing: text about same.
• Finished reading myself: Shakespeare and the American Musical by Irene G. Dash

Posted this week:

• This Monday report.

Monday April 28 2014

There’s been a little bit of this and a little bit of that in this week of Shakespeare. We finished a play, I started a book, sightings have been sighted, links have been shared, and comments good and bad have been made on the blog to last week’s Contested Will.

From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

• Ben Jonson, contemporary, colleague and friend of Shakespeare, maintained that “drama should adhere to Aristotelian principles and avoid such practice as the blending of comedy and tragedy.” Aren’t we glad that Shakespeare didn’t always do as his friends suggested?
• Jove is the Roman name for Jupiter who is known in Greek as Zeus and he is the Indo-European sky god. He appears in almost all of Shakespeare’s plays, as does Jupiter, often as a substitute for “God”.

Shakespeare sightings:

• In London a Social History Roy Porter ends with the economic crisis in London at the end of the1990’s and mentions that due to a sharp decrease in public funding the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican had to close.
• In the book we’re reading at work to make us all even more brilliant teachers, Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam (the Swedish translation) (it’s a very good book, we will become even better teachers if we follow its advice) it mentions how a teacher uses Shakespeare’s plays in her classroom work.
• In the novel Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love by Sarah Butler ( very good book!) one of the two main characters, Alice, is going through her late father’s things, among which is one of her late mother’s books of Shakespeare poetry.
• Dagens Nyheter has Rickard III as number two on the best on stage list this week too.
• DN’s weekly Friday two-page crossword always has a theme and this week in honour of his birthday the theme was Shakespeare.  I almost never complete these crosswords because usually the themes are obscure or uninteresting to me but on this one I got all of the Shakepseare clues except for a four letter word from a quote from Julius Caesar. It was in Swedish of course and we don’t have the Swedish version of the plays.  There is, in fact, no Swedish translation of the complete plays of Shakespeare currently available on the market. Shame on Sweden! But the crossword was fun.
•  Agent Jessup: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are....” Peter: “Wow, really? Butchered Shakespeare?”  In the second season of Fringe.
• English Proverbs Explained by Ronald Ridout and Clifford Witting, borrowed from MM of the library’s English Book Circle, had a few more Shakespeare proverbs:
• “The truth will out” is compared to “Murder will out” – The Merchant of Venice
• “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” – Henry IV Part Two
• “What’s mine is yours and what is yours is mine” – Measure for Measure
• In Edward Rutherfurd’s rather magnificent 1,300-page novel London Shakespeare shows up, not unexpectedly, in the chapter called “The Globe”. He flits in and out of the story as a pleasant fellow, a good but not yet quite great playwright.  The main character of the chapter intends to fulfil that role and usurp Shakespeare but that doesn’t quite happen. He falls into disgrace and obscurity and Shakespeare goes on to the heights we know he achieved.  Thereafter in the novel he’s mentioned now and then.

Further since last time:

• Finished reading aloud with Hal: Coriolanus
• Started reading myself: Shakespeare and the American Musical by Irene G. Dash
• Comments received on the review of Shapiro’s Contested Will, one supportive, one decidedly against. Take a look and add your views (if you dare throw yourself into the maelstrom!) http://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.se/2014/04/contested-will-by-james-shapiro.html
• Link of interest seen on blog follower Anneli’s Facebook: http://www.newscientist.com/special/shakespeare Thanks, Anneli!

Posted this week:

• This Monday report.

Monday April 21 2014

Happy Birthday, dear William! 450 years old this week, well done. You’re very much in the news this week, and coincidentally in the books I’ve been reading so here we go:

From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

• Jessica is a popular girl’s name these days.  Shakespeare invented the current version of the name when he created the not altogether admirable character of Shylock’s daughter in The Merchant of Venice.
• John is the name of many characters in Shakespeare and appears not only as the title role in King John but in smaller roles in Henry VI Part One, Richard III, Henry IV Part One, Much Ado about Nothing, Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo and Juliet and Henry V.

Shakespeare sightings:

• In Edna Ferber’s novel Giant the main character Leslie, angry with her husband Jordan as she so often is, is told by one of her friends, “Stop looking like Lady Macbeth.”
• In London a Social History Roy Porter
• quotes Oscar Wilde in connection with the excellence of London, “’Shakespeare wrote nothing but doggerel verse before he came to London and never penned a line after he left’.”
• Reports that in the 1830s Covent Garden led a Shakespeare revival.
• Dagens Nyheter has Rickard III as number two on the best on stage list this week too.
• DN also had a four-page supplement about Shakespeare in honour of the coming birthday. The title: “Dear William, Who were you actually?” (In Swedish: “Dear William, vem var du egentligen?”) The journalist made a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, was horrified at finding in a gift shop little yellow rubber ducks looking like Shakespeare and talked to actors and others involved in the Birth Place and Grave.  She visited the Globe and the British Library and included a list of famous quotes. Another reporter tells of experiencing Shakespeare when he was in London to go to football games and realizing that it’s not necessary to understand everything but that the language itself is enough.
• DN’s crossword on one of the Easter days included a clue using the witches of Macbeth. Witches are an Easter thing in Sweden.
• In the little gem English Proverbs Explained by Ronald Ridout and Clifford Witting, borrowed from MM of the library’s English Book Circle, there are naturally many Shakepseare sightings. The introduction tells us what we all know, that Shakespeare is the source of a great many proverbs and household words, so often used that we are often unaware of the source. Here are just a few from the more than fifteen proverbs listed so far:
• “Conscience does make cowards of us all” – Hamlet
• “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose” – The Merchant of Venice
• “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” – Hamlet
• “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin” – Troilus and Cressida. Not the most famous quote exactly; what it means is that a show of human emotion often brings people together.
• “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” – Romeo and Juliet
• “Sweet are the uses of adversity” – As You Like It
• “There is a tide in the affairs of men” – Julius Caesar
• Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet was on TV this past week.
• In the documentary film Lost in La Mancha, about the ill-fated filming by Terry Gilliam of Don Quixote, the fact that this project was jinxed from the start was compared to bad luck that reportedly often accompanies production of “the Scottish play” and when an unexpected thunderstorm floods out the filming of one of the desert scenes, King Lear is mentioned.

Further since last time:

• Continued reading aloud with Hal: Coriolanus

Posted this week:

• This Monday report.
• Report on Contested Will – Who Wrote Shakespeare? By James Shapiro