Shakespeare - in context

To wit, or not to wit, that is the question...

'Shakespeare made little changes'

You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shakespeare knew that it's much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letters. It doesn't matter what it's about. It can be the exact depth in the sea to which a chap's corpse has sunk; hardly a matter of universal interest, but if you say, 'Full fathom five thy father lies', you will be considered the greatest poet who ever lived. Express precisely the same thought any other way - e.g. 'your father's corpse is 9.144 metres below sea level' - and you're just a coastguard with some bad news.

- Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence

[with thanks to Sam Leigh, for the splendid - signed! - gift]  

William Shakespeare makes silver-screen debut!!

The Last of the Haussmans

National Theatre

Release date: 11 October 2012
Running time: 180 mins
Director: Howard Davies

Starring: Rory Kinnear, Julie Walters, Isabella Laughland, Helen McCrory, Matthew Marsh

Julie Walters returns to the National Theatre for the first time in more than a decade in this funny, touching and savage portrait of a family that's losing its grip.

High society drop-out Judy (Julie Walters) is the aging hippy matriarch of the Haussman clan. The spirit of the 1960s still infuses her anarchic lifestyle in a dilapidated Art Deco house on the Devon coast. Recovering from an operation, Judy welcomes her wayward adult children Nick (Rory Kinnear) and Libby (Helen McCrory). Also joining the party are her granddaughter Summer, local doctor Peter, and Daniel - a troubled local teen. Lubricated by alcohol in the sweltering heat over the next few months, infatuations, festering resentments and disappointments bubble to the surface. Stephen Beresford's new play is a blackly comic portrait of the consequences of being raised by the revolutionary 'free love' generation - with a peach of a role for much-loved Julie Walters.

Screenwriter: William Shakespeare

You should see it because: Julie Walters is reunited with director Howard Davies for the first time since her Olivier Award-winning performance in 'All My Sons'.

See it if you liked: All My Sons, Collaborators, One Man, Two Guvnors

[verbatim from the Cineworld website]

Shakespeare and I

This 'morning' (c.2pm), in a bleary moment, I used the phrase '[my brother] and I' when I - of course - meant 'me'. This afternoon ('...' = 11pm), I read that

Usages frowned on today were once common. (Dr. Johnson split infinitives; Shakespeare wrote “between you and I,” and just about anything else he wanted.)

- Joan Acocella, New Yorker

Which just goes to show that Shakespeare had bleary moments, too.

Hamlet - in context

To die, to sleep;
to sleep, perchance to go on Amazon
a bit...

Ralph Fiennes dissects the meaning of drama

I feel [Coriolanus] is like some magnificent beast or animal; like a horse that has always been trained to be this pure thing. Then suddenly the trainer — his mother — turns around and says, “Can you actually be this entirely other thing?” So he tries but then suddenly it all fucks up and goes crazy.

- Ralph Fiennes, interviewed in The Spectator

Touching bottom

Those lucky enough to get a ticket for A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose in Kingston last year will have been treated to his Bottom...

- Helen Hawkins, in The Sunday Times Culture

Literary realities: 1

[We are a] couple of long-time English profs, both of whom routinely included bits of the Bard in their undergrad lit-survey courses (George mainly the plays, Amanda the sonnets, neither of us with scholarly authority, but both with the appreciative awe of fellow language-fiddlers).

- John Barth, Every Third Thought

Shakespeare wrote for money

A genius is also a man who needs to eat.

- Hilary Mantel