These are barren tasks, too hard to keep, not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep! Love’s Labour’s Lost is a romantic comedy that could probably be described as bittersweet – it is about love, but while it doesn’t end in tragedy, it doesn’t have a traditionally happy romcom ending either. And it isn’t particularly … More Shakespeare Saturday: Love’s labour’s lost
Verdi, the Shakespeare of operatic composers, wrote 37 operas (counting second – and, in some cases, third – versions of some of his works), and like Shakespeare the playwright, it took him about ten attempts to achieve the maximum artistic quality (with Macbeth, no less). Nabucco is the attempt number three, and of the somewhat … More My mad summer of opera, Part 2: Nabucco
Until I know this sure uncertainty, I’ll entertain the offered fallacy. And next, a Shakespeare play I knew nothing about until now – in fact, I forgot all about The Comedy of Errors and was ready to leap straight into Love’s Labour’s Lost, until I pulled out my trusty Oxford Shakespeare where it was. The … More Shakespeare Saturday: The Comedy of Errors
On Friday evening, the Cabinet Office released the list of the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and we fans of Penelope Wilton finally had something to celebrate – she had been made a Dame, at long last. It was an honour well deserved, and much overdue. Wilton is one of those actresses who never seem to attract … More In praise of… Penelope Wilton
Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end. If Shakespeare had stopped after Titus Andronicus, he’d probably be like Christopher Marlowe or (more accurately) John Webster – of his plays, maybe Taming of the Shrew and Titus Andronicus would have survived, and we might know that he also probably wrote something about Henry VI, but … More Shakespeare Saturday: Richard III
It just so happens that this summer I’m going to the opera a lot. I’m pretty much seeing every other thing they have on – I have a Nabucco ticket for Saturday next week, and both Werther and Il Trovatore coming up in July. Last Saturday, all dressed up in my fancy new silver loafers, … More My mad summer of opera, Part 1: Oedipe
Warning: this post is heavy on poetry and purple prose. On the Bank Holiday Monday couple of friends and I set off to visit the Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. It was a cold, rather dreary day, the sky hanging low, and no amount of wishing and hoping on out part would make the clouds part. … More England’s song
When will this fearful slumber have an end? Titus Andronicus is, literally and figuratively, a horror show. By its content, it is a fairly typical Elizabethan/Jacobean revenge tragedy, full of murder, madness, cannibalism, rape, blood, severed heads, severed… you get the idea. If 1 Henry VI was for a long time considered not to have … More Shakeare Saturday: Titus Andronicus
Shakespeare for absolute beginners 