tagged w/ Shakespeare
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A review of the dramatic thriller Coriolanus, which is essentially a modern retelling of a Shakespearean play. Starring and directed by Ralph Fiennes and co-starring Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox, Gerard Butler, and Jessica Chastain.A review of the dramatic thriller Coriolanus, which is essentially a modern retelling... more
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To see or not to see, that is the question about the new conspiracy movie Anonymous that asserts William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him. As a NY Times magazine piece by Stephen Marche puts it:
“Was Shakespeare a fraud?” That’s the question the promotional machinery for Roland Emmerich’s new film, “Anonymous,” wants to usher out of the tiny enclosure of fringe academic conferences into the wider pastures of a Hollywood audience. Shakespeare is finally getting the Oliver Stone/“Da Vinci Code” treatment, with a lurid conspiratorial melodrama involving incest in royal bedchambers, a vapidly simplistic version of court intrigue, nifty costumes and historically inaccurate nonsense. First they came for the Kennedy scholars, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Kennedy scholar. Then they came for Opus Dei, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Catholic scholar. Now they have come for me.
Professors of Shakespeare — and I was one once upon a time — are blissfully unaware of the impending disaster that this film means for their professional lives. Thanks to “Anonymous,” undergraduates will be confidently asserting that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare for the next 10 years at least, and profs will have to waste countless hours explaining the obvious. “Anonymous” subscribes to the Oxfordian theory of authorship, the contention that Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Among Shakespeare scholars, the idea has roughly the same currency as the faked moon landing does among astronauts.
The good news is that “Anonymous” makes an extraordinarily poor case for the Oxfordian theory.
Yes, Shakespeare scholars, like climate scientists, must now suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and decide whether or not to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
Readers know that I am a long time Shakespeare buff — see “William Shakespeare special: Why deniers out-debate smart talkers.” Indeed, a quarter-century ago I even published a journal article on Hamlet, and I have an unpublished manuscript that explores how Shakespeare uses rhetoric and the figures of speech to communicate his meaning. So I’m well aware of the snobbish myth that Shakespeare was supposedly too uneducated to have written so many diverse masterpieces.
That merely reflects a complete lack of understanding of basic grammar school education in Shakespeare’s day — where students were taught rhetoric, the figures of speech, and Latin poetry and grammar hour after hour after hour year after year. That’s why they called it grammar school. The book I am intending to publish next year on messaging devotes a page on this very subject, how Elizabethans like Shakespeare and the authors of the King James Bible came to their mastery of the English language. Understanding how they did it is key to understanding how you can do it.
This new movie goes one step further and ascribes the plays to a person who simply could not have written them. I haven’t seen it yet — I’m quite conflicted since I’m confident it will be as head exploding as your typical denier movie. Marche actually makes a direct connection in his piece between Shakespeare deniers and climate science deniers. But first he briefly explains why no serious Shakespeare scholar buys the Oxford theory:
… the liberties with facts in “Anonymous” become serious when they enter our conception of real history. In scholarship, chronology does matter. And the fatal weakness of the Oxfordian theory is chronological, a weakness that “Anonymous” never addresses: the brute fact that Edward de Vere died in 1604, while Shakespeare continued to write, several times with partners, until 1613. “Macbeth” and “The Tempest” were inspired by events posthumous to the Earl of Oxford: the gunpowder plot in 1605 and George Somers’s misadventure to Bermuda in 1609. How can anyone be inspired by events that happened after his death?So, enough. It is impossible that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare. Notice that I am not saying improbable; it is impossible. Better scholars than I will ever be have articulated the scale of the idiocy. Jonathan Bate in a single chapter of “The Genius of Shakespeare” annihilated the Oxfordian thesis. If you want to read the definitive treatment, there is James Shapiro’s more recent “Contested Will,” although that book is nearly as absurd as its subject, because using a brain like Shapiro’s on the authorship question is like bringing an F-22 to an alley knife fight, and he kind of knows it. He ties his argument into the larger question of art and its relationship to the artist’s life, but even so the whole business is evidently a waste of his vast talent.
Scientists don’t generally use the world “impossible” — though they do use “unequivocal” and “settled fact” — but then this guy was a Shakespeare professor. He does draw compelling analogies between Shakespeare deniers and climate science deniers:
Besides, no argument could ever possibly sway the Oxfordian crowd. They are the prophets of truthiness. “It couldn’t have been Shakespeare,” they say. “How could a semiliterate country boy have composed works of such power?” Their snobbery is the surest sign of their ignorance. Many of the greatest English writers emerged from the middle or lower classes. Dickens worked in a shoe-polish factory as a child. Keats was attacked for belonging to the “cockney school.” Snobbery mingles with paranoia, particularly about the supposedly nefarious intrigues of Shakespeare professors to keep the identity secret. Let me assure everybody that Shakespeare professors are absolutely incapable of operating a conspiracy of any size whatsoever. They can’t agree on who gets which parking spot. That’s what they spend most of their time intriguing about.
Well, it’s certainly apparent that no argument and no fact can sway the hard-core disinformers — see Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Does “Confirm the Reality of Global Warming.”
And climate scientists are even less capable of operating a conspiracy than Shakespeare scholars. After all, they’d need to enlist all the major science journals and every major science organization and every member government of the IPCC….
Marche himself notes:
The original Oxfordian, the aptly named J. Thomas Looney, who proposed the theory in 1920, believed that Shakespeare’s true identity remained a secret because, he said, “it has been left mainly in the hands of literary men.” In his rejection of expertise, at least, Looney was far ahead of his time. This same antielitism is haunting every large intellectual question today. We hear politicians opine on their theories about climate change and evolution as a way of displaying how little they know. When Rick Perry compared climate-change skeptics like himself to Galileo in a Republican debate, I dearly wished that the next question had been “Can you explain Galileo’s theory of falling bodies?” Of all the candidates with their various rejections of the scientific establishment, how many could name the fundamental laws of thermodynamics that students learn in high school? Healthy skepticism about elites has devolved into an absence of basic literacy.
Precisely.
More at the linkTo see or not to see, that is the question about the new conspiracy movie Anonymous... more
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New York City- MTWorks and playwright David Stallings use theatre as a tool to speak out against censorship which is again in the forefront of the news with the "revised" version of Huckleberry Finn. A magical and dark fictional look into the dangers and consequences of caging innocence, THE FAMILY SHAKESPEARE, a play inspired by the true story of the Bowdler family (publishers of the Complete Censored Works of William Shakespeare, and whose family name later replaced "expurgation" and "castration of text" with "bowdlerization") delves into the psyche of a family who thinks has the right to cross out and modify words with the supposed aim to protect youth and purity.
Written by award-winning playwright and MTWorks' Artistic Director David Stallings and directed by founding member Antonio Miniño. THE FAMILY SHAKESPEARE will play a 3-week limited engagement at the June Havoc Theatre (312 West 36th Street, 1st Floor, Abingdon Arts Complex, Midtown). Performances begin Wednesday, April 13th through Saturday, April 30th .
Henrietta has always been enraptured by the works of William Shakespeare. When she dangerously invites an innocent boy into her magical world, she discovers her family has not only censored the Bard, but also kept her from one of his most scandalous tales. Will their actions crush her imagination, make it spin out of control, or will they join her in a land of Ophelias, Calibans and Kings?
The cast includes Eric C. Bailey, Sarah Chaney, Jason Emanuel, Diánna Martin, Frankie Seratch, Peter B. Schmitz, Corey Tazmania* (NJ Rep’s The Housewives of Mannheim) and Cotton Wright* (Flux Theatre Ensemble’s Pretty Theft & Angel Eaters).
THE FAMILY SHAKESPEARE plays the following schedule through Saturday, April 30th:
Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7pm
Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm
Tuesday performances are followed by a talk-back.
Tickets are $18 and are now available online at www.MTWorks.org or by calling 212-352-3101. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the theatre’s Box Office 30min prior to the show.
For more information visit www.mtworks.orgNew York City- MTWorks and playwright David Stallings use theatre as a tool to speak... more
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Bradley Cooper sobs loudly.
Last night, Inside The Actor’s Studio on Bravo featured Bradley Cooper, you know that thespian who is dating Renee Zellweger. In one of the weepiest episodes ever, Bradley whose layered performances in such classics as The Hangover and Wedding Crashers, proved that behind that handsome smile is a deep, almost Shakespearean actor, whose emotional range goes from A to B. James Lipton was also getting teary eyed as he introduced Bradley as one of the graduates of the program.
Read more: http://imeanwhat.com/blog/canyoubelieve/bradley-cooper-sobs-uncontrollably#ixzz1GgfFf1vGBradley Cooper sobs loudly.
Last night, Inside The Actor’s Studio on Bravo... more
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Julie Taymor’s The Tempest Is Your New Late-Night Drunken Pizza Orgy Movie
By Charlie Jane Anders, io9
Shakespeare’s magic thrives in darkness. Many of his most memorable, transformative plays include unfathomable horrors. And The Tempest, perhaps his most overtly magical play, must beguile us but also confront us with madness. Julie Taymor’s version doesn’t quite get there.
I loved Taymor’s movie of Titus Andronicus — called simply Titus — because she managed to find the beauty in the absolute degradation and raw nastiness of one of Shakespeare’s seldom-staged plays. (I have a whole theory about why Titus Andronicus is an underrated Shakespearean masterpiece, which I’ll spare you.)
Titus was one of my all-time favorite movie adaptations of a Shakespeare play, which left me with high hopes for Taymor’s Tempest. And when I saw that Helen “god of acting” Mirren was playing a female version of Prospero, Prospera, the excitement was doubled.
Sadly, Taymor’s Tempest didn’t really work for me, for all the same reasons that I loved her Titus. I think it’s the balance between beauty and horror — filming Titus is all about finding the little flashes of nobility and loveliness in the midst of an incredibly brutal story about mutilation and rape. Filming The Tempest would have to be sort of the reverse — find the darkness in between all of the pretty speeches and fancy magic. In particular, Prospero/Prospera has to be one evil motherfucker, the sorcerer and aristocrat who’s been banished from her home and stuck on an island for years.
And Taymor gets seduced by all the prettiness and goes all-out with the gorgeous imagery and swoony loveliness — in a sense, she falls under Prospera’s spell.
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http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/12/the-tempest-review/?pid=2241&viewall=trueJulie Taymor’s The Tempest Is Your New Late-Night Drunken Pizza Orgy Movie
By... more
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It isn’t acceptable, where a G appears in the sheet music, to sing a G. No, no. Instead, the diva (and everybody is a diva these days) runs a G scale or two, performs a series of vox acrobatica in the general vicinity of G, then moves onto the next note, which also apparently needs a good bit of “interpreting.” Not “arranging” – some actual arranging wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. But arranging and freelance improvisational histrionics are not the same thing.It isn’t acceptable, where a G appears in the sheet music, to sing a G. No, no.... more
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The emergence of an entirely original opera in Klingon, along with recent translations of Shakespeare and the Bible into Klingon, may be forcing us to question whether this has moved beyond fan obsession and into something more significant.The emergence of an entirely original opera in Klingon, along with recent translations... more
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A decade after it was stolen from Durham University, the Shakespeare folio appeared in the US in the hands of Raymond Scott (from Durham) who was trying to sell it to Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.
The staff alerted the British Embassy because of the rarity of the item made them fell it could be stolen. The Shakespeare folio dates from 1623 (Shakespeare died in 1616) and it is said to have been damaged after it was stolen.
"Judge Richard Lowden called the folio "quintessentially English treasure" and said damage to it was "cultural vandalisation". [...]Judge Lowden said that Scott had either deliberately damaged the book himself or was party to its damage. [...] "Your motivation was for financial gain. You wanted to fund an extremely ludicrous playboy lifestyle in order to impress a woman you met in Cuba."-BBC
Raymond Scott was found guilty of handling the stolen goods, but not with the theft. the sentence is eight years.A decade after it was stolen from Durham University, the Shakespeare folio appeared in... more
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Blood Royal is the tale of a young and innocent king betrayed by evil counselors; beautiful Joan of Arc burned at the stake; a battle between the white rose and the red divides a kingdom; and a sorceress walks naked through the streets of London. Add enough warfare, infidelity, political intrigue, blood, and several heads to last a lifetime and you've got Shakespeare like you've never seen him before!Blood Royal is the tale of a young and innocent king betrayed by evil counselors;... more
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Southwest Shakespeare Company is bringing two classic productions to the Arizona Biltmore this week. William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors will be performed, under the stars, in the Cottage Court Theatre and Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit will be presented in the Aztec Theatre for the first two weeks of June. The Comedy of Errors opens Thursday night June 3 and Blithe Spirit opens the following night, June 4. Both plays will continue through June 12.Southwest Shakespeare Company is bringing two classic productions to the Arizona... more
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Hill has fashioned a capricious travesty of one of the Bard's most beloved comedies. The author is completely faithful to Shakespeare's original and serves to prove that the Bard is indestructible. This is A Midsummer Night's Dream as cotton candy, all full of fluff and no substance. You simply cannot get enough of it.Hill has fashioned a capricious travesty of one of the Bard's most beloved... more
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Fountain Hills Community Theater opens its next production this Friday night, May 14, the premiere of a new rock musical Midsummer Dreamin' adapted by Peter J. Hill from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The new musical will continue performances through May 30.Fountain Hills Community Theater opens its next production this Friday night, May 14,... more
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William Shakespeare, now there was a guy who could put pen to paper. So powerful was his Romeo and Juliet that the heartbroken of today still write to Juliet in her home town of Verona, spilling their (real, living) souls out to that most famous of all (fictional, dead) lovers. That could be sad if you're, like, a balding, 53-year-old male composing a missive in your mother's basement while cuddling your 1/4-scale, highly detailed model of Catwoman. However, if you happen to be played by Vanessa Redgrave and your letter is retrieved by Amanda Seyfried, who then takes it upon herself to help you reconnect with your lost love, well, friend, such is the stuff of true romance — and Letters to Juliet.
Hollywood just loves messing around with Shakespeare, sometimes to such extremes that even learned scholars (and, trust us, we're not lumping ourselves in with that group) can barely recognize the source material. Ready to see how 400-year-old texts can be goosed to meet the entertainment needs of a contemporary audience? Check out our list:
http://www.reelzchannel.com/article/1028/top-10-shook-up-shakespeare-moviesWilliam Shakespeare, now there was a guy who could put pen to paper. So powerful was... more
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A chat with Patrick Stewart, Patrick Stewart interview, Macbeth, Hamlet, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Allow me to begin the introduction to this interview with an unabashed boast: it is a testament to my burgeoning ability to separate my work as a journalist from my sideline as an unabashed fanboy that I was able to sit down with Patrick Stewart for an interview about his work for PBS’s “Great Performances” – first as Claudius in “Hamlet,” then as the title character in “Macbeth – and not fully acknowledge my love of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” until just as I was standing up to leave.
To some, this may seem like a waste of a perfectly good conversation. To me, it felt just right…which, frankly, came as a bit of a surprise. I mean, I’ve got the complete-series set sitting on a shelf in my living room, and I watched every single episode of the show when it originally aired. Surely I’d earned the right to geek out for a bit…and, yet, it just seemed too easy to approach it head on, so I found an easy opportunity to discuss it tangentially in connection with his Shakespearean efforts, and I felt good about it. Beyond that…well, really, when else was I going to get the chance to ask the man about the time he hosted “Saturday Night Live”? That’s not geeking out. That’s just making the most of an opportunity.
I walked into the room just as he was in the midst of regaling his assistant with a tale that had come up during the previous interview. Upon its conclusion, I was introduced as having chatted with Sir Ian McKellen last year. At this, Sir Patrick…he’s been knighted now, you know…grinned widely, greeted me warmly, and we took the very short stroll over to our seats.
Continued--
http://www.bullz-eye.com/television/interviews/2010/patrick_stewart.htmA chat with Patrick Stewart, Patrick Stewart interview, Macbeth, Hamlet, Star Trek:... more
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True to his word, SW Shakespeare Artistic Director Jared Sakren has directed this Richard fulfilling his promise to provide the audience with a humorous, thrilling, fast paced and action packed evening of bloody good theater.True to his word, SW Shakespeare Artistic Director Jared Sakren has directed this... more
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This Friday, April 23 the Southwest Shakespeare Company unveils its final production of the 2009-10 season. Get ready for an epic battle of good versus evil as the SW Shakespeare presents one of William Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, Richard III. The production features Bo Foxworth in the title role and will play in the Nesbitt/Elliot Playhouse in the Mesa Arts Center. Richard III runs from April 23 through May 8.This Friday, April 23 the Southwest Shakespeare Company unveils its final production... more
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The mission of Stray Cat Theatre's is to provoke, challenge and jolt its audience out of conventional response. This past Friday, April 16, Stray Cat Theatre opened 12th Night of the Living Dead, William Shakespeare as re-imagined by Brian MacInnis Smallwood. Mission accomplished!The mission of Stray Cat Theatre's is to provoke, challenge and jolt its audience... more
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On Friday, April 16 the Stray Cat Theatre will open 12th Night of the Living Dead by William Shakespeare as adapted by Brian MacInnis Smallwood, directed by Cale Epps. Among the new/old play's many subtitles is Romero and Juliet. Really, seriously? How can anyone resist the possibility of what would actually happen if George Romero and the Bard collaborated?On Friday, April 16 the Stray Cat Theatre will open 12th Night of the Living Dead by... more
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