Well, I moved house almost two week ago. I'm still living in a world of boxes, of course, partly because unpacking them is a lot of work, partly because I'm still in two minds about where to put their contents (mostly books). The day of the move coincided with the beginning of the semester, always a busy time, but especially in a year when I'm in ( Read more... )

Plots involving the restoration of a True Heir and the concomitant dislodging of a usurper are staples of high fantasy and historical romance. It's usually a given in such stories that the usurper is evil, and that the heir is a good egg. But of course there's no reason why either of these should be the case. True, the usurper is by definition ( Read more... )

My dad dragged me to the first performance of Hamlet yesterday. I wish he hadn’t bothered. It was so “blocky”, so full of overacting, and the bald guy playing the ghost looked about as scary as a pancake. The lighting didn’t help, either: in fact it rained. As for the OST, it was drums and trumpets! So 1580s. So predictable. So Chamberlain’s Men ( Read more... )

Oh, Hamlet. It always comes back you to you.

calimac and I have been having a conversation (interesting to me and I hope to him) about Shakespeare’s historical sense, or lack of it. This post isn’t really a contribution to that discussion, but it grows from it at a tangent ( Read more... )

This is well worth a look - Hamlet in 198 programmes and films (but less than 15 minutes):

Click to view

Amazing how many times you can read a much-loved text, and still miss the obvious. I refer of course to the opening paragraphs of The Wind in the Willows:

THE Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of ( Read more... )

Oh boy, am I glad to be shot of Hamlet for another year. Not Hamlet, mind - I do like the play, for all its manifold faults - but Hamlet himself. Today we were concentrating on Act 5, which shows the bratty prince acting badly from beginning to end. Viz ( Read more... )

Okay, I admit it's hard to see it holding the stage at the Globe, but one can dream.

The Tragedy of Claudius, Prince of DenmarkSince raw youth hath young Claudius been mocked full sore by his contumelious elder brother, the Prince Hamlet, for his honest love of Rhenish and his "Handles of Cupid". He hath borne all patiently, even the loss of his ( Read more... )

I’m not a regular theatre-goer, but I’ve been to quite a few productions of Hamlet over the years. I don’t recall seeing one where the protagonist was noticeably overweight, though. (Kenneth Branagh has the potential but he never quite realises it.) It’s a shame because, the more I read that play, the more convinced I am that Hamlet’s insecurity ( Read more... )