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Category Archives: Plays and Poems
David Tennant’s Hamlet and screening Shakespeare on TV
Tucked away on the BBC2 TV schedule at 11.20 on Tuesday evening is the last of the Shakespeare Uncovered series, David Tennant on Hamlet. Not only does it feature David Tennant, whose own Hamlet for the RSC in 2008 was … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Plays and Poems, Shakespeare on Stage
Tagged BBC, David Tennant, DVD, Hamlet, Illuminations, Jeremy Irons, National Theatre, recording, Richard Eyre, The Hollow Crown, The Space, video
9 Comments
Peter O’Toole’s Shakespeare
The actor Peter O’Toole has recently announced his retirement from stage and screen, shortly before his 80th birthday. His reason? “The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back.” It occurred to me that it’s unusual … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Plays and Poems, Shakespeare on Stage
Tagged Edmund Kean, Hamlet, Henry Irving, John Gielgud, Lawrence of Arabia, Macbeth, National Theatre, Old Vic, Peter O'Toole, retirement, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Sonnet 18, Sonnets, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, Troilus and Cressida, William Macready
Comments Off on Peter O’Toole’s Shakespeare
Simon Schama and The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare and history
Among the must-see television shows for Shakespeare fans this summer has been Simon Schama’s Shakespeare. Love him or hate him, he’s the UK’s highest-profile historian. His style is individual, even eccentric, one minute generalising about the broad sweep of history, … Continue reading
Julius Caesar on stage and screen
Greg Doran’s production of Julius Caesar breaks new ground. With an all-black cast, set in an unnamed modern African city rather than imperial Rome, the film version has been shown on TV while still being performed onstage at the Royal … Continue reading
Julius Caesar and Shakespeare’s power to persuade
I’ve always thought of rhetoric as a rather dry subject, but in a recent lecture barrister Benet Brandreth, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Rhetoric Coach, zipped entertaingly through some of the principles in an hour. He succeeded in demonstrating how powerfully rhetoric, and in … Continue reading
Posted in Plays and Poems, Shakespeare's World
Tagged Benet Brandreth, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, persuasion, Ray Fearon, rhetoric, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Arte of Rhetorique, Thomas Wilson
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Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare
This year The Queen’s Birthday Honours list has recognised a bumper crop of people in the arts. For me the most pleasing was the knighthood which has been awarded to Kenneth Branagh. His association with Shakespeare goes back to his … Continue reading
Posted in Plays and Poems, Shakespeare on Stage
Tagged Hamlet, Henry V, Kenneth Branagh, Royal Shakespeare Company
6 Comments
The case for Anne Hathaway
Last week I attended a lecture in which the speaker said, with a laugh, that according to Stephen Greenblatt and others Shakespeare left Stratford in order to get away from his wife. I bristled. Why, when it wasn’t relevant to the … Continue reading
Shakespeare and The Space
The Globe to Globe’s seven week Shakespeare festival has just come to an end, and for anyone who hasn’t been able to keep up with it (which must include most of us), but would like a way of catching up, … Continue reading
The Queen ‘s Diamond Jubilee and the elements
I know I’m a bit obsessed with things of Shakespeare’s period, but has it occurred to anybody else that each of the four days of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations has represented a different one of the four elements of earth, air, … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Plays and Poems
Tagged Diamond Jubilee, elements, Henry V, humours, Queen Elizabeth II, Shakespeare's Medical Language, Sonnet 45, The Taming of the Shrew
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The Thames Jubilee Pageant: the royal throne of kings
The Jubilee weekend’s most spectacular event, the Thames pageant, was a bit of a victim of the English weather. The brand new Shard, the tallest building in Europe, disappeared into the mist as the weather worsened. Apparently nowhere in the UK … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Plays and Poems
Tagged Commonwealth, Cymbeline, Diamond Jubilee, King John, King Lear, pageant, Queen Elizabeth II, Richard II, Shakespeare, Thames
1 Comment