After Good Tickle Brain‘s brilliant Mya Gosling released her Titus Andronicus death clock, it got me thinking what a Titus timeline might look like. While hers definitely conveys the over-the-top-to-the-point-of-nervous-laughter-ness of Titus Andronicus, I thought she had left off a few things.
I don’t have her artistic flair, but mine’s got more death (and rape)…
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[sorry for the delayed release of this, but hey… everyone deserves a vacation!]
This week’s Shakespeare news review includes some previews and reviews, and a Trevor Nunn controversy. PLUS our usual recap of this week’s daily highlights in Shakespearean history.
On vacation in Palm Desert with my wonderful wife Lisa… so today’s podcast is gonna be a little late… tonight sometime.
But since I never want to leave you completely empty-handed…
Here’s something cool sent to us by one of our audience members, Roslyn Willson. It’s a cool infographic concerning Shakespeare in pop culture, and is published over at SuperScholar.org
The action of All’s Well That Ends Well moves from Rossillion in the south of France, to Paris, to Florence in the Tuscany region of Italy, then to Marseilles, back in France, before returning to Rossillion. With allusions as well to the cities of Narbonne in France and St. Jaques in Spain, the Savoy region of southern Europe, and the nation of Austria, geography plays an important role in the play.
Check out our geographic map breakdown as an infographic!
[updated 5/2/16]
[pdf available for purchase at Teachers Pay Teachers]
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This week’s podcast kicks off our two month-long discussion of All’s Well That Ends Well with an introduction and a plot synopsis.
Continue reading “Podcast 109: All’s Well That Ends Well: Introduction and Plot Synopsis”
Occasionally, when situations merit, I like to take a look at the names used in the plays, to see if there are any deeper meanings or character insights to be gleaned by Shakespeare’s choice of monikers. With a play like Troilus and Cressida, it’s pretty much a non-starter (as it’s based on quasi-history or established Canon, thus unlikely to include any Shakespeare-created names). But what about All’s Well That Ends Well? What do we find there?
Actually, not a whole heckuvalot. Let me ‘splain…
Continue reading “Names and Meanings (this could be a spaghetti western)”
Unlike many of Shakespeare’s plays, All’s Well That Ends Well doesn’t seem pilfered from multiple sources. No, it looks like Willy only stole from one author here.
In the mid-fourteenth century, Italian writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote what is considered to be his masterpiece, The Decameron, a collection of stories, told from the perspective of ten characters who each told ten stories apiece (deca is the Greek root for the number 10, natch). Think of The Decameron as the Italian Canterbury Tales… before there was The Canterbury Tales.
When we left the All’s Well That Ends Well plot summary at the end of Act Four, Helena had put out a story that she was dead, but was able to stand in (or is that “lie down”?) for Diana as she was bedded by Bertram, who was now returning home. As the fifth and final act begins, Helena, the widow, and virgin Diana, arrive in Marseilles, where they had hoped to meet with the king.
Continue reading “All’s Well That Ends Well: Act Five plot synopsis”
A couple of weeks back, I took my wife Lisa and son Jack to Los Angeles’ Griffith Park to catch some free outdoor theater (#ShakespeareSetFree) by the Independent Shakespeare Company, for the first of their two summer productions, Romeo and Juliet. If you were around for that one, you know I found it to be very enjoyable. I wasn’t the only one: that production will be returning after the current production, Much Ado About Nothing, runs its course at the end of this month. But I digress. This past weekend, Lisa and I headed back to the woods for a little Nothing, or Much Ado.
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[archive]
This week’s Shakespeare news review includes some previews and reviews (a surprisingly small amount). PLUS our usual recap of this week’s daily highlights in Shakespearean history.
