March 2018

A busy month with Shakespeare, of course, but also with Merlin and Shakespeare. Please do visit my alter ego’s new web page, especially the Shakespeare bits! https://themerlinchronicles.wordpress.com/ One of history’s greatest secrets is revealed – Merlin and Shakespeare were good friends!

Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet have all figured in this month’s Shakespearising. And there have been a lot of sighting. So, let’s get to it.

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 novel The Purchase by Linda Spalding the girl Mary writes in the year 1799 to her friend from Virginia and wonders if her old school was performing Shakespeare while she had only one student, a slave boy, to teach in the wilderness.
• There are so many references to Shakespeare in Philip Roth’s incoherent, almost unreadable but somehow fascinating novel I Married a Communist that the page notations almost filled the inside back cover. Here just a few of them:
• It starts out with 90-year-old Murray enrolling in a course ‘Shakespeare at the Millennium’. He had taught Shakespeare throughout his teaching career and refers to him often throughout his narration to Nathan
• As Ira is betrayed, Murray (his brother) mentions the betrayal in Othello, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth.
• Just a few minutes after writing in An Isle Full of Noises – the Merlin Chronicles Volume 3 about Merlin’s reaction to seeing the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy at the Globe, I read in this novel: ‘the three-hundred-word assignment – discuss, from the perspective of a lifetime, any one line in Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy…’
• Christopher Hill also refers often to Shakespeare in his The World Turned Upside Down – radical ideas during the English Revolution. Here are the best:
• ‘The Forest of Arden gave shelter to a shifting population of blacksmiths and nailers as well as to Shakespeare’s artless countrymen.’
• ‘…both Spenser and Shakespeare had clearly heard communist propaganda.’
• ‘In the freer circumstances of the 1640s and 50s most “madmen” appeared to be political radicals…One wonders how conscious Shakespeare was of what he was doing when he put significant social criticism into the mouths of fools and those, like Lear, under extreme mental stress.’
• The film The Holiday starts with the quote ‘Journeys end in lovers meeting’ and one of the characters telling us that she now knows that ‘love is blind’ is true.
• In Prunella Scales and Timothy West’s delightful program about canals they make the journey to Stratford by boat. The whole program is filled with quotes and recitations by these two brilliant Shakespearean actors, though perhaps we remember Scales best as Sybil in Fawlty Towers.
• Dagens Nyheter had an article about the book published in 1970 by Maja Ekelöf, Report from a Cleaning Bucket, about supporting five children on the salary of a cleaner while studying at university. The article ended with a list of books about scrubbing and included Macbeth with the comment that Lady Macbeth had history’s worst cleaning problem, going mad because the spots of blood would not wash out.
• In the YA fantasy Linger by Maggie Stiefvater, bad girl Isabel opened the Shakespeare she was supposed to be reading. 

Further since last time:

• Finished writing: a text on Twelfth Night
• Watched: the Globe version of same.
• Read aloud with Hal: Romeo and Juliet
• Watched: the Globe version of the same
• Appeared on alter ego’s new webpage:
• https://themerlinchronicles.wordpress.com/ruby-and-shakespeare/shakespeare-calling-the-book/
• https://themerlinchronicles.wordpress.com/ruby-and-shakespeare/spoiler-merlin-and-shakespeare/
• The insult for today, 4 March 2018, in our calendar of Shakespeare insults, a gift from JS, is ‘Then he’s a rogue, and a passy-measures pavin. I hate a drunken roague.’ Twelfth Night. Well, that’s a coincidence.

Posted this month

• ‘A horribly funny play – Twelfth Night’
•  https://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.se/2018/03/a-horribly-funny-play-is-twelfth-night.html
• This report

  

Shakespeare Calling – the book is promoted by

http://shakespearesallskapet.se/

and

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

A horribly funny play is Twelfth Night

How can a play in which there is a shipwreck which surely kills many people, a male romantic lead who is murderous misogynist (and almost a stalker), a pathetic vain old man who is shut up in the dark and told he is mad, two sisters grieving over the deaths of their beloved brothers, a loyal friend who is betrayed then abandoned, and two old men who live as parasitic, drunken sots – how can a play with all this be so funny?

      Well, to start with there are some great one-liners.

      Sir Toby: ‘He…speaks three or four languages word for word without book’ (Act 1.3).

      Sir Andrew: ‘I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit’ (Act 1.3). Hmmm, maybe not so funny after all! But clever.

      Orsino: ‘I myself am best when least in company’ (Act 1.4). Again, not so funny but in Orsino’s case (and often mine!) so true.

      Maria: ‘Go shake your ears!’ (Act 2.3). Must remember that one and use it sometime.

      Sebastian: ‘ …let me be boiled to death with melancholy’ (Act 2.5). Not funny at all but such an unexpected turn of a phrase that I laughed out loud.

      Sir Toby: ‘For Andrew, if he were opened and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of th’ anatomy’ (Act 3.2). What an image!

      And then there are those silly, fast-paced scenes.  Feste showing Olivia why she’s the fool, not he. Viola in her first meeting with Olivia and trying to give her prepared speech: ‘Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ‘tis poetical’ (Act 1.5). Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Feste, Maria and Malvolio upon partying late into the night: Sir Toby, ‘To be up after midnight and to go to bed then is early’ (Act 2.3). The duel between Sir Andrew and Cesario, from planning, to challenging, to evading and finally to almost fighting – classic slapstick!

      And, of course, poor Malvolio’s entire yellow-stockings-crossed-garters-and-smiles episode. Poor ridiculed humiliated Malvolio. We cringe, we pity him, and we laugh. It can’t be helped. Malvolio making a fool of himself is simply hilarious.

      One final little detail that endears this play to me. Sir Andrew’s name. Aguecheek. It sums him up perfectly. Pale, insipid, bloodless, pathetic aristocrat. It’s even better in Swedish. Blek af nosen.  Pale of snout. What a perfect name.

      What a perfect comedy, steeped as Shakespeare so well understood – in tragedy and human foibles. If we didn’t laugh we’d never survive.

Films seen this time:        

• BBC, 1979. Director: John Gorrie. Cast: Orsino – Clive Arrendell; Viola – Felicity Kendal; Olivia – Sinead Cusack: Feste – Trevor Peacock; Malvolio – Alec McCowen; Sir Toby Belch – Robert Hardy; Maria – Annette Crosbie; Sir Andrew Aguecheek – Ronnie Stevens; Sebastian – Michael Thomas; Antonio – Maurice Roeves; Fabian – Robert Lindsay. 
• A well done enjoyable production.  The cast is very competent but sadly Felicity Kendal is just too sweet and girly to make a convincing Cesario. I have a hard time seeing Trevor Peacock as anybody but Talbot but he’s OK as Feste.  Best is Robert Lindsay (Benedick in BBC’s Much Ado about Nothing and Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)  He might have been better as Feste here.
• 1988. Director: Kenneth Branagh. Cast: Orsino – Christopher Ravenscroft; Viola – Frances Barber; Olivia – Caroline Langrishe: Feste – Anton Lesser; Malvolio – Richard Briers; Sir Toby Belch – James Saxon; Maria – Abigail McKern; Sir Andrew Aguecheek – James Simmons; Sebastian – Christopher Hollis; Antonio – Tim Barker; Fabian – Shaun Prendergast.
• One of Branagh’s earliest film efforts, it already shows the greatness that he soon became known for.  Anton Lesser is the perfect clown, rough, subtle, sad and very funny, not to mention very good-looking in his rags and dreads.  James Simmons is the perfect Aguecheek – dumb, sad and funny.  Christopher Ravenscroft makes a great Orsino although he’s a bit too dignified.  Wonderful music by Patrick Doyle.  My only complaints – I don’t like Frances Barber as Viola - too teary and weepy and uncharismatic.  Best laugh: Aguecheek entering on snowshoes.
• The Globe production, 2012. Director: Tim Carroll Cast: Orsino – Liam Brennan; Viola – Johnny Flynn; Olivia – Mark Rylance; Feste – Peter Hamilton Dyer; Malvolio – Stephen Fry; Sir Toby Belch – Colin Hurley; Maria – Paul Chahidi; Sir Andrew Aguecheek – Roger Lloyd Pack
• A very successful all-male cast. Stephen Fry is always a sweetie and Mark Rylance has the perfect balance of comedy and sorrow. 

February 2018

The shortest month starts with what might prove to be the year’s longest monthly report. A lot has been happening with Shakespeare in our lives. The most exciting is of course that we have booked our tickets at the Globe for Hamlet together with our oldest Shakespeare friends, EG and EG. We’re so happy that we will be able to spend time together with them in London. And how incredibly lucky we are that Hamlet is playing at the Globe!

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 Calling – the book is promoted by

http://shakespearesallskapet.se/

and

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

Shakespeare sightings:

• In the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara there is only one mention of Shakespeare in all the 800+ pages: someone sketched designs for a production of The Tempest. Fewer pages and more Shakespeare might have made this somewhat good novel the great novel some already think it is.
• In the witches-coming-of-age YA novel Half Bad by Sally Green the author starts with one of my favourite quotes: ‘There is neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ from Hamlet. In her acknowledgements the author admits that she hasn’t read a lot of Shakespeare, but this quote was pivotal in her writing of this novel.
• The title of Anita Shreve’s The Stars Are Fire is a quote from Hamlet which she includes before the novel starts but no mention is thereafter made of Shakespeare.
• In The Night Is for Hunting, by John Marsden, Ellie compares herself to ‘that guy in Shakespeare who’s turned into an ass’ because she was listening so hard that she felt her ears were growing.
• In Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale the book lover narrator, when presented with the theoretical question of whether to save her beloved books or a human life concludes, ‘Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life.’ Oh dear! I hope we are never faced with that choice!
• On the first page of Moi qui n’ai pas connue les hommes by Jacqueline Harpman (in English I Who Have Never Known Men, read in the Swedish Hon som aldrig kände männen) the narrator writes that she has started reading the introductions of books where, for example, it might be explained why a new translation of Shakespeare is needed. Further on in the novel
• she considers that her story is as important as Hamlet’s or King Lear’s ‘as that Shakespeare has taken the bother to relate in detail’ (translated from the Swedish)
• near the end of the book she wonders if she has understood Shakespeare
• and as she lays dying, in pain, at the end, she asks, ‘How can prince Hamlet’s father appear and talk to him if he’s dead?’
• Yuval Noah Harari mentions Shakespeare three times in his Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind
• ‘…even if a Neanderthal Romeo and a Sapiens Juliet fell in love, they could not produce fertile children, because the genetic gulf separating the two populations was already unbridgeable.’ Well, that, and being they were Romeo and Juliet they would die before they got that far….
• ‘Attending gruesome executions was a favourite pastime for Londoners and Parisians in the era of Shakespeare and Molière.’
• ‘Producing a film about the life of some super-cyborg is akin to producing Hamlet for an audience of Neanderthals.’
• In Solaris, the sci fi classic by Stanislaw Lem, Snow, one of the astronauts/researchers on the space station studying the mystical planet Solaris, says to the narrator Kelvin, about fetishes, ‘the feeling he has for it is perhaps as overwhelming as Romeo’s feelings for Juliet.’
• Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed has now been translated into Swedish. The review of it in Dagens Nyheter calls it a dark comedy and delightful interpretation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece (The Tempest). I couldn’t agree more.
• In an interview with Carole Ann Ford, who played Susan, the first Doctor Who’s granddaughter, she said that though she has taught Shakespeare, she has never played Shakespeare but would love to.
• In an interview with another Doctor Who actor, William Russell, he mentions that he played Lancelot in a school production of The Merchant of Venice and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet at Oxford.
• In describing two of the main characters in Erin Kelly’s The Poison Tree a minor character compares the brother and sister as lookalikes in a bizarre Shakespearean comedy. Later, the narrator comments that her friend, the actor Bibi, would have said that the run-down theatre in which she was performing would not matter because the language of Shakespeare or Ibsen is so powerful that the venue is unimportant.
• In the film Their Finest the minister of war, Jeremy Irons, recites the ‘We few we happy few’ monolog to pep his staff.
• In the novel Dust by Elizabeth Bear the author uses Shakespeare quotes to head some of her chapters. Sadly, it didn’t help. I gave up after about 50 pages. Just didn’t grab my attention.
• In the TV series with Robert Carlyle Hamish Macbeth (bought both for the title and for Robert Carlyle), some smirks and giggles have met him when he introduces himself, but it is not until season three episode three that a clear reference is made. Says the villain: ‘Macbeth, eh?  To be or not to be, that is the question.’ Replies Hamish: ‘That’s Constable Hamlet. He’s up in the next village.’ 

Further since last time:

• Read aloud with Hal: Twelfth Night.
• Started writing: a text on Twelfth Night
• Watched: the BBC and Branagh versions of same.
• Played again with friends EG + EG: ‘Shakespeare – the Bard Game.’
• Booked tickets for Hamlet at the Globe in July! Oh yes!
• The insult for today, 5 February 2018, in our calendar of Shakespeare insults, a gift from JS, is ‘What a pied ninny’s this! Thou scurvy patch! From The Tempest. But who speaking to whom? Caliban? To Caliban? I’ll google it. Right, Caliban to Stephano and Trinculo. 

Posted this month

• This report

January 2018

January 2018

Happy New Year! It has been a turbulent year, this 2017, but here we are, entering 2018 with perhaps more optimism than I would have thought possible. What fools these mortals be but also how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable.

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 Calling – the book is promoted by

http://shakespearesallskapet.se/

and

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

Shakespeare sightings:

• ·       In the novel Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh the title character is a misfit, ‘like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life – the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible.’ Later she had to leave school to take care of her mother and was secretly relieved but blamed her parents for her unhappiness and wished she was ‘in school again learning…the history of art, Latin, Shakespeare, whatever nonsense lay in store.’
• ·       The Swedish YA fantasy novel Norra Latin by Sara Bergmark Elfgren is about the historical upper level school Norra Latin (which in reality is now a conference centre). In the novel it is still a school with a theatre program. It also has magic and ghosts but so much Shakespeare that the author was interviewed in the latest number of the journal of the Swedish Shakespeare Association.
• ·       A literature critic compared the current turbulence in the Swedish Academy (brought about by the #metoo campaign) to a Shakespeare drama.
• ·       In the rather sweet YA novel about werewolves, one of the two main characters, Sam, who is sometimes a wolf but often human, says to the other main character Grace’s mother, who claims not to be disappointed in her daughter’s practical nature: ‘Methinks the mom doth protest too much.’ Whether or not he knows he’s quoting Shakespeare is not mentioned.

Further since last time:

• ·       Finished reading aloud with Hal: The Two Noble Kinsmen. Some by Shakespeare, more by Fletcher. Quite a strange play but not without interest.
• ·       Wrote and posted: ‘Reflections’ on The Two Noble Kinsman
• ·       Scheduled with friends E, E, A & L but not yet played: ‘Shakespeare – the Bard Game.’
• ·       Had a book signing event, Saturday 9 December, with my alter ego Rhuddem Gwelin at the local bookshop Klackenbergs in Sundbyberg, Sweden. We mostly sold and signed the Merlin books but Shakespeare Calling – the book received not a little attention as well
• ·       Received from friend JS – a calendar of Shakespeare insults. The insult for today, 1 January 2018, is ‘That quaffing and drinking will undo you’ (Twelfth Night). Very mild as Shakespeare insults go!
• ·       Discovered that the public library in Östersund (northern Sweden) has Shakespeare calling – the book as an e-book.

Posted this month

• ·       ‘Reflections’ on The Two Noble Kinsmen https://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.se/2018/01/the-two-noble-kinsmen-reflections.html 
• ·       This report

The Two Noble Kinsmen - Reflections

Reflections

on

The Two Noble Kinsmen

     It is believed that Shakespeare wrote the beginning act and the ending of this play while John Fletcher wrote most of the rest. We have no filmed versions, which is why we haven’t read it before, but it is included in all three of our Complete Works and so this time, our third time through of reading all the plays, we decided it’s time.

     It’s worth reading. It has many themes one recognises from earlier Shakespeare – male friendship, female friendship, strong women, rivalry in romance, but all with a feeling of… more.

     The story: On the day of the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, three widows appeal to Theseus to go to war against Thebes because their husbands have not been given a proper burial. The two noble kinsmen, Palamon and Arcite, fight to defend their city but are captured. They both see Hippolyta’s sister Emilia from their prison window and though they have just declared eternal love and friendship for each other they both fall in love with Emilia and become rivals. Plot twists get them both out of prison. The jail keeper’s daughter goes mad with love for Palamon. Theseus demands that Emilia choose one of the two. She can’t so they must duel to the death for her hand. Arcite wins. Palamon is to hang. Arcita falls off his horse and dies. Palamon and Emilia are wed.

     It’s funny to the point of parody and then suddenly it’s not. All this we recognise in Shakespeare. Fletcher was a good student.

     I’m not going to do a great deep analysis, but I would like to mention a few points of interest.

• ·       Hippolyta is a strong character, though she has but few lines. The three queens at the beginning appeal not only to Theseus but to Hippolyta as well:

Honoured Hippolyta,

Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain

The scythe-tusked boar… (Act 1.1).

When the soldiers then head off to war Hippolyta says

We have been soldiers and we cannot weep

When our friends don their helms… (Act1.3).

     Oh, that Shakespeare never wrote a whole play about Hippolyta! What a character he would have made her. Much more interesting than Cleopatra!

• ·       The two noble kinsmen’s love for one another is so passionate that I’m surprised this play hasn’t become a flagship for the Pride movement.

Arcite:

We are one another’s wife, ever begetting

New births of love: we are father, friends, acquaintance.

We are, in one another, families:

I am your heir and you are mine…

Palamon:

Is there record of any two that loved

Better than we do, Arcite? (Act 2.2, Fletcher)

     I suppose the fact that two minutes later they’re both madly in love with Emilia and deadly rivals brings their sincerity somewhat into question but still, I find the quotes a bit sweet.

• ·       The jailer’s daughter is very much an Ophelia character in her passion and madness. She shows, however, more insight and initiative. She has fallen in love with Palamon though she knows it is pointless:

Why should I love this gentleman?

‘Tis odds

He never will affect me: I am base,

My father the mean keeper of his prison,

And he a prince. To marry him is hopeless,

To be his whore is witless. Out upon’t!

What pushes are we wenches driven to

When fifteen once has found us! (Act 2.4, Fletcher)

            Fifteen she may be, but she is also feisty:

Let all the dukes and all the devils roar,

He is at liberty: I have ventured for him

And out I have brought him, to a little wood

A mile hence I have sent him…

…there he shall keep close

Till I provide him file and food, for yet

His iron bracelets are not off (Act 2.6, Fletcher).

            I could go on. As I write I discover that there is quite a lot of interest in this play. I wish Shakespeare had written it when he was in his most prolific and brilliant period – not to put down Fletcher, his writing isn’t bad either. I wish we had some filmed versions.

            In any case, if you haven’t read it, do. It’s worth it.

PS The RSC has done a production in 2016. Perhaps a DVD is on its way?

December 2017

Approaching the Winter Solstice. It’s a good time to read Shakespeare and play the newly acquired Bard Game (see below). If we can figure it out.

In this dark (literally and figuratively) time, don’t let us forget to light candles, to hope and strive for equality and a strong healthy planet. Why not continue to find inspiration in Shakespeare?

Happy holidays to all!

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 Star Trek, season 1 (from the 60’s – the original!) Kirk and Spock are watching Arcturian Macbeth played by Kodos the Executioner. Then Lady Macbeth (a young beauty) quotes Antony and Cleopatra to Kirk. Later the cast does Hamlet for the crew of the Enterprise. Clever use of quotes throughout, including the episode title ‘The Conscience of the King.’ Come to think of it, this was one of my early exposures to Shakespeare, when I watched the series faithfully every week as a teenager in the 60’s.
• Christopher Hill opens the epilogue of his The Century of Revolution with one of my favourite quotes: ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’
• In Philip Roth’s American Pastoral Lou, the avid glove maker, refers to Romeo and Juliet and quotes, ‘See the way she leans her cheek on her hand? I only wish I was the glove on that hand so I could touch that cheek.’
• In the last episode of Season Five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer they are off to fight the evil god Glory: Spike – ‘Not exactly the St Crispin speech’. Giles – ‘We few, we happy few.’ Spike – ‘We band of buggered…’
• The entire film The Dresser with Albert Finney and Tom Courtney is full of Shakespeare references. Finney plays a grand old Shakespearean actor. Great film. See it!
• In Peter Ackroyd’s Civil War he mentions that
• it is believed that Shakespeare introduced the masque in The Tempest to celebrate the marriage between James’s daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V of the Palatinate.
• Frederick assumed the Bohemian throne and thus Bohemia became a concern for James though ‘it was a distant land of which he knew nothing, remarkable only for the scene of shipwreck in Shakespeare’s The Winter Tale, performed nine years before, in which it was miraculously granted a sea coast.’
• The Tempest was performed before the king on 1 November 1611 and Ackroyd emphasises the importance of music to the play and to theatre in general at the time.

Further since last time:

• Finished reading aloud with Hal: King Lear
• Wrote: ‘Nothing’ in King Lear
• Ordered, received but not yet played: ‘Shakespeare – the Bard Game.’
• Gave: my lecture ‘Why Shakespeare’ at the English Bookshop in Uppsala on Tuesday 7 November. A full house!
• Started reading aloud with Hal: Two Noble Kinsmen. Some by Shakespeare, more by Fletcher. Quite a strange play but not without interest.
• Have booked: a book signing event, Saturday 9 December, with my alter ego Rhuddem Gwelin at the local bookshop Klackenbergs in Sundbyberg, Sweden. We hope to sign many copies of Shakespeare calling – the book and the Merlin Chronicles. Do stop by if you happen to live in the area!

Posted this month

• ‘Nothing’ in King Lear
• This report