Monday, September 26, 2011

Monday, September 26, 2011


No new play posted this week. I've spent the morning frantically finishing the rough draft to my essay about The Comedy of Errors, which Hal and I finished reading this week. So now three plays are fighting for my attention in my head, Henry VI Part One, Richard III and The Comedy of Errors. I'll deal with them properly, one at a time, in coming weeks.

  • Shakespeare sightings –
    • In the novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, two of the high school characters discuss Shakespeare, seeing his plays, and studying him in English class.
    • In a crossword in Dagens Nyheter the clue was “Shakespeare king”. A common enough occurrence in Swedish crosswords as elsewhere.
    • Careful readers of my Monday report will be aware of my current nostalgia for the musical “Hair.” In the book order mentioned below was a book of easy piano versions of some of the songs from “Hair”. Even easy versions are too advanced for my pathetically bad playing but I enjoy it. One of my favorites has always been the last medley “Flesh Failures/Let the Sunshine in.” Imagine my surprise when I saw in this book that the text of “Flesh Failures” is adapted from Romeo and Juliet”! However, even upon looking closely I couldn't find any of the song's text in Romeo's last soliloquy. Am I blind or what? Feel free to help out on this!
  • Now reading aloud with Hal: Having just finished The Comedy of Errors, nothing, but we hope to start Love's Labour's Lost this evening or tomorrow.
  • Shakespeare movie watched this week: BBC's The Comedy of Errors.
  • Book order received:
    • Materialist Shakespeare
    • Shakespeare's Words
    • The Daughter of Time (a detective book about RIII)
  • Just finished reading half an hour ago: Contested Will by James Shapiro. Don't wait for me to start my book reviews. Read it now!
  • Also read this week: The Daughter of Time by JosephineTey (the detective book – more comments when I post the RIII text).
  • Text posted: None

2 comments:

  1. If you don't have time to read this week but still want some good clean Shakespeare fun this is what to do: Buy some frozen goods from a home delivery shop. They use dry ice to keep your broccoli cool. Put the veggies in the freezer and carefully empty out the dry ice in the sink. Add water and you have your own instant smoking cauldron! Start reciting!

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  2. double double toil and trouble - see today's report to see the connection between dry ice, Harry Potter and Shakespeare

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