Banky’s ghost
Sidney James as Banky’s ghost. From Joe MacBeth (dir. Ken Hughes, 1955).
The rest is silence, I hope
No sound on C-SPAN for Donald Trump’s rally in Wellington, Ohio.
Theater of War via Zoom
Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Mothers of the Movement.
Minneapolis and Denmark
A friend in the city and lines from Hamlet.
Shakespeare as Dickinson
William Shakespeare’s sonnet 73 in the manner of Emily Dickinson, something I wrote in 2003 for a poetry class I was teaching.
Made to order
It was mid-afternoon, and King Lear was raging on the heath. All at once, the Bronx sky darkened.
Milton’s Shakespeare
“Scholars believe they have identified the early owner of one copy of the text, who made hundreds of insightful annotations throughout: John Milton.”
Fools
The Shakespearean fool speaks truth to power. He speaks wisdom in the form of deeply sensical nonsense. Giuliani speaks mere nonsense, a fast-paced double-talk whose purpose is merely to befuddle. He’s really no Shakespearean fool at all, though he does play a fool on TV.
Shakespeare, revised
“My country for a hotel.”
What Biden was paraphrasing
“’A was a man, take him for all in all, / I shall not look upon his like again.”
Beginning King Lear
I was about to teach the first class after a long break. I’d given the students no assignment. So we were going to begin King Lear by reading the play aloud in class. Did the students know that was coming? I don’t think so.
“The ſhrill Trumpe”
As seen in the Bodleian First Folio.
“The man that hath no music in himself”
“The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”
A little invective in the morning
“A Knaue, a Rascall, an eater of broken meates,” and so on.
What’s relatable
Ira Glass gave teachers of lit an odd little gift with his fleetingly infamous comment that King Lear is “not relatable.” Oh yeah?
Movie recommendation: Much Ado About Nothing
Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing — now there’s a string of words I never thought I’d type.
Department-store Shakespeare
In 1965, a suburban department store’s book department carried at least one work of Shakespearean criticism.
Sharking up
Clearly, the time has come to revive this phrasal verb.
Toddler recites Shakespeare
Summer’s lease hath all too short a date: this video is now gone from YouTube.
“Act V”
From This American Life: inmates in a Missouri prison rehearsing and performing the final act of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Hamlet in Klingon
Like it says.
Lear cover-up
No nudity in PBS Lear