September 29th, 2012 → 8:24 am
“He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time;
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice
As full of labor as a wise man’s art.” – Twelfth Night
I went with my friend Karen to a performance of The Improvised Shakespeare Company last night. I was very curious to see what it was about – a Shakespearean improv comedy troupe?? I have to hand it to them, they were funny. And it has got to be hard to do improvised rhyming in Shakespearean English like that. I know I could never do it. So here’s to the art of comedy, which Shakespeare as well appreciated in the quote above.
(Note ‘haggard’ is an untrained hawk. And ‘check at’ means follow after.)
Filed under: Blog & Literature/Theatre/Art
September 27th, 2012 → 5:54 am
I was alerted yesterday to this silly quiz which purports to tell you which Shakespeare heroine you are most like. My score put me between Titania and Viola which, after rounding up, makes me most like Viola. Yeah, I am sort of “boyish, mischevious, and inventive,” I’ll go with that.
Filed under: Blog & Literature/Theatre/Art & Self/My Life
September 25th, 2012 → 6:31 am
“A kind
Of excellent dumb discourse.” – Tempest
Shakespeare said this about the dancing creatures that bring a banquet to the shipwrecked king in the Tempest. It reminds me of the one, precious hour of TV I get at night after my son goes to bed and before I fall off into helpless sleep myself. In the last few weeks I’ve caught up on Homeland and Dexter and am looking forward to the new seasons beginning at the end of the month. Here’s to relaxing with excellent dumb TV at the end of the day…
Filed under: Blog & Literature/Theatre/Art & Self/My Life
September 23rd, 2012 → 5:51 am
“Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.” – Julius Caesar
When Nelson Mandela was a prisoner in South Africa’s notorious apartheid-era Robben Island prison, a Complete Works of Shakespeare was surreptitiously passed around under the guise of a bible. Many prisoners picked out favorite passages and signed their names by them. Nelson Mandela signed his name by this one on December 16, 1977.
Filed under: Blog & Politics/Politicians
September 21st, 2012 → 6:38 am
“Was ever woman in this humor wooed?” – Richard III
In July, 1942 the Germans announced that all the Jews in Warsaw would be “resettled” to Treblinka. There were, however, a few categories of exception and if you fit into one of them you, your wife, and you kids were all exempted. Marcel Reich-Ranicki fell into one of those categories. He was not married at the time but he had a girlfriend, whom he immediately (like that day) married. As he faced the rabbi during the shotgun wedding, the Nazis just down the street, the words of Shakespeare rang in his ears: “Was ever woman in this humor wooed?”
Filed under: Blog & Literature/Theatre/Art
September 12th, 2012 → 6:45 am
“Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny,
Shall here inhabit, and this land be call’d
The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls.” – Richard II
I kept taking breaks at work yesterday to read about the 9/11 remembrance ceremony taking place at Ground Zero (or should I now say the 9/11 Memorial plaza?). It still feels to me like it all just happened yesterday. I can’t imagine how immediate and visceral it continues to feel to the ones who were more directly affected.
September 10th, 2012 → 6:29 am
“O, what may [child] within him hide, though angel on the outward side!” – Measure for Measure
My beautiful child has definitely entered the terrible twos. He runs off towards the street and won’t stop when you yell after him. He says he’s eaten his chewable vitamins, but I find them licked and stuck on the underside of tables. He throws his books down and when I say that makes me sad he throws them harder and asks eagerly “Is Mommy sad?” Sigh. What’s a mother to do??
Filed under: Blog & Self/My Life
September 8th, 2012 → 8:50 am
“I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.” – As You Like It
Author and performer David Rakoff died last month, and after listening to all the tributes to him on radio and in the news I bought his last book, Half Empty. I was familiar with David from his This American Life contributions, but I’d never read one of his books before. Half Empty is a paean to negativity and melancholy, which is a perspective that is often right up my alley. While the book is more raunchy than I expected (and at times liked), so far it has been a fun read. And I wholeheartedly sympathize with the joy of being a pessimistic cynic, especially in the face of some people’s candied optimism.
Filed under: Blog & Literature/Theatre/Art
September 4th, 2012 → 8:08 am
“Fortune, that arrant whore,
Ne’er turns the key to the poor.” – King Lear
When I was a graduate student in L.A. years ago, I used to volunteer at a shelter for run-away teens. It was an enormous eye-opener for me, that people could exist that dirty, poor, and without options. Not dirty and poor like a suburban kid after a soccer game with no bus fare home, dirty and poor like no dental care and clothes so threadbare they’re see-through. I was recently reminded of an old friend from those days – who, sadly, never made it out. It leaves me feeling empty and bleak.
September 1st, 2012 → 9:23 am
The quote today is not from Shakespeare, but about Shakespeare. The British Museum in London is staging a major exhibition of Shakespeare and his world right now – if I were wealthy, the trips I’d take! As I am not independently wealthy, however, and can’t just hop on over to London for a random weekend of fun, I did the next best thing and ordered the books published in conjunction with the exhibition. One of which is called Angels & Ducats: Shakespeare’s Money & Medals. It is from there that the following quote is taken. It claims that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the reward of gold. I never really thought of that as Shakespeare’s motivation before, which I guess is ironic since I am an economist after all.
(Note when reading below that Will Summers was Henry VIII’s jester.)
“Did not Will Summers break his wind for thee?
And Shakespeare therefore write his comedy?
All things acknowledge thy vast power divine
(Great God of Money) whose most powerful shine
Gives motion, life.” – Thomas Randolph, Hey for Honesty, 1627
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money & Literature/Theatre/Art