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This week’s Shakespeare news review includes Mind-Blowing Facts, Original Pronunciation, the stage adaptation of Kill Shakespeare, and announcements of various 2015-16 seasons. PLUS our usual recap of this week’s daily highlights in Shakespearean history.
In the play Hamlet, I always thought Polonius’s son (and Ophelia’s big bro) pronounced his name LAYerTEES.
Not so.
Throughout the play, when the name appears in a poetic line, to maintain the scansion of the iambic pentameter, it’s got to be layAIRtees.
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This week’s podcast continues our three month-long discussion of Hamlet with the third and final segment of a three-part plot summary.
A question to be pondered, but not answered today:
Is Hamlet mad?
Pretending to be but not?
Not to begin with, but pretending to be pushes him over the edge?
Or is Hamlet mad?
just askin’
Happy birthday to my lovely wife Lisa, the love of my life.
I know it’s not Bard-related (‘cept for the fact she teaches at Richard BARD Elementary school), but I’m kinda on a break right now, as we are both in the greater Houston area watching our son Kyle swim in the NCAA Division 3 Swimming and Diving Championships (Go, Kyle!).
Then again, if we find ourselves with an extra night, there is a Midsummer nearby…
On Thursday, April 9, I’ll be delivering a presentation entitled “What’s the matter with Shakespeare? Words, words words…” at the monthly meeting of the Ventura County Reading Association.
I’ll be providing teachers with the tools they need to confidently introduce Shakespeare to their students. The centerpiece will be a scansion workshop and lesson (the plan for which will be one of the takeaways for the afternoon, so that they can replicate the lesson for their own students), focusing on how character and action are revealed in the rhythm of the poetic line.
Thursday, April 9, from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm at the Ventura County Foundation Building, 4001 Mission Oaks Blvd., Camarillo.
For more info or to RSVP, vcrareading@gmail.com.
Download the flyer.
When we last left Hamlet the play, Laertes had returned, Ophelia had drowned (herself, or at least allowed herself to drown), and Hamlet the prince was ready to make his re-entrance into the play. And now we are ready to complete the Hamlet plot summary.
When Act Five, Scene One begins, it’s with two “clowns, one a gravedigger” (V.i. opening stage direction), discussing the propriety of “a Christian burial when (the deceased) willfully seeks her own salvation” (V.i.1-2). It seems that because she was not common–a “gentlewoman” (V.i.24)–certain allowances have been made.
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This week’s Shakespeare news review includes the US Senate congratulating Oregon Shakespeare Festival for its 80th anniversary, recreating the Globe theater with old shipping containers, Shakespeare Week in England, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s PROJECT 38 Festival, and a boatload of reviews of Cymbeline, the new Ethan Hawke Shakespeare biker mash-up.. PLUS our usual recap of this week’s daily highlights in Shakespearean history.
When we last left the Hamlet plot summary, we were at the end of Act Four, Scene Four, with our melancholy Dane watching the approach of the Norwegian army under Fortinbras, waiting to be taken to his death in England by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and deciding to make his own thoughts “bloody” (IV.iv.66). As we enter Act Four, Scene Five, we’re back into the palace at Elsinore, with Queen Gertrude refusing to see someone.
If it was only so easy as to be Claudius… but it isn’t.
It’s the now “indeed distract” (IV.v.2) Ophelia, despondent over the death of her father.
Continue reading “Hamlet: Act Four, Scenes Five through Seven”
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This week’s podcast continues our three month-long discussion of Hamlet with the second of a three-part plot summary.
