Blogging Shakespeare

Shakespeare Out of Europe By Graham Holderness I remember a time when British culture among the educated was thoroughly European. Everyone listened to French music, wore Italian clothes, watched European films, smoked French cigarettes, drank German beer and French and Italian wine. Everyone owned a fondu set, and burned their mouths on hot melted cheese. […]

Sonnet 15 When I consider every thing that growes Holds in perfection but a little moment. That this huge stage presenteth nought but showes Whereon the stars in secret influence comment. When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheared and checkt even by the selfe-same skie: Vaunt in their youthfull sap, at height decrease, […]

Sonnet 76 Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quicke change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keepe invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost […]

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the new Guy Richie film released in the UK this month, will inevitably raise the question foregrounded by his first Sherlock Holmes film: are Holmes and Watson supposed to be gay? The films unashamedly toy with the idea. Discussing Sherlock Holmes on The Late Show with David Letterman, Robert […]

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?”, asks King Lear. It is the Fool who volunteers an answer: “Lear’s shadow”. Identity is defined by its dark alternative. Shakespeare biography suffers from a peculiar historical deformation. The basic materials for a life of Shakespeare were gathered, from Stratford in the 18th century by […]

Shaul Bassi’s fascinating account of ‘Walking Shakespeare’s Venice’ plays with an ambivalence that is as fascinating and dangerous, seductive and treacherous as Venice herself is so often portrayed in literature and film. He acknowledges that there is no evidence of Shakespeare ever having been in Venice. But he still wants Shakespeare to have been there, […]