“We’ll hear a play to-morrow,” says Hamlet to the players. Of course, he’d see the play as well as hear it, but “We’ll see and hear a play tomorrow” is far too clumsy a line for Shakespeare to write, and, given the choice between “see a play” and “hear a play”, Shakespeare opted, rather interestingly, [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Shakespeare’
1 Apr
The late greats
Liszt’s famous summary of Beethoven’s career – “L’adolescent, l’homme, le dieu” – accords well with what we perhaps feel ought to describe the career of any great artist: for surely, the more an artist experiences of life, the more profound and wise their vision of it must be; and the closer they are to death [...]
30 Jan
Not Prince Hamlet
Which character in Shakespeare do you identify with most strongly? And, assuming you were capable of doing so, which Shakespearean role would you most like to play? The two questions are not quite the same. When I was asked the first question some years ago over a few drinks in the pub, I had answered [...]
29 Oct
By Anonymous
Strange how one changes over time. I used to get quite worked up over all this Shakespeare-didn’t-write-Shakespeare business, and was happy to engage in debate. Nowadays, I really don’t care. If some people really want to believe that someone else wrote those plays, then fair enough, and good luck to them. I was, nonetheless, amused [...]
6 Sep
The unreliable narrator
The omniscient narrator, I often hear, was prevalent in the fiction of the 19th century, but, as we became more sophisticated – or, to be more specific, as we stopped believing in God, and hence, in the possibility of omniscience – we found ourselves more in sympathy with fiction that is told from the perspective [...]
7 Aug
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Nancy Meckler, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, 2011 To begin with, I feared the worst. Theseus’ court was a grim, grey, bare place, with men playing cards and hookers lounging around. Why should Theseus hold court in a cheap brothel, I wonder? The mood projected seemed so far from the [...]
10 Jul
Initial impressions of Dante’s “Inferno”
It is presumptuous to set out to “review” something such as Dante’s Inferno. Even at best, what one reviews is not so much the poem itself, but one’s reactions to the poem. Entire books can be written – indeed, have been written – about how this poem, or the larger poem of which this is but [...]
12 Jun
The finest decade: 1601-1610
Looking through the history of Western culture, has there ever, I wonder, been a decade quite as rich in achievement as the first ten years of the 17th century? Shakespeare was, in this decade, at his very peak. Exact dating is difficult, but it appears that by 1601, the start of the decade, Shakespeare already [...]
14 May
Is Shakespeare still our contemporary?
The idea of “making allowances” for Shakespeare seems to me some kind of ultimate in benighted presumptuousness. I assume that if we feel something, he felt it too. Shakespeare was certainly learning as he went along, and learning very quickly. But I believe, and thus assume, that he always knew what he was doing. Even [...]
2 May
“This is Illyria, lady”
Captain This is Illyria, lady. VIOLA And what should I do in Illyria? From Twelfth Night, I.ii *** Malvolio is usually played by an actor in late middle age: indeed, the mental picture most of us have of Malvolio is that of a man perhaps in his 50s, declining if not already declined into the [...]
