what a day today must be destined to be ( Read more... )

two things ( Read more... )

we are watching the richard burton hamlet (1964) and with all due apologies it's one of the worst productions of shakespeare i've seen in my life. burton himself horribly overacts, in kin with the shatnerian style, but nowhere near as charming, and mostly simply poorly acts. surprisingly, the 'to be' soliloquy finds him at his most muted thus far ( Read more... )

it has been out since 2004 so i may be the only laggard, but i think this interview is required reading : http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291516/hamlet-poem-unlimited-by-harold-bloom/9781573223775/.

i love that he uses phrases like "couldn't write his way out of a paper bag."

and the book. where have i been all these years?

the words of hamlet bring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, plato's world of ideas. all the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

watched the 1948 laurence olivier hamlet (again?). nice that it won an oscar and i have to believe that pauline kael was right in saying that despite "the omissions, the mutilations, the mistakes" (which are plentiful) "the rest of the play (had) been done so well." i could believe that at the time it was "the most exciting and most alive ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

zero world problems ( Read more... )

and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

again, when you have married your wife, you would think you were got upon a hilltop, and might begin to go downward by an easy slope. but you have only ended courting to begin marriage. falling in love and winning love are often difficult tasks to overbearing and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love is also a business of some importance, to ( Read more... )