Blogging Shakespeare

Most of Shakespeare’s aristocratic patrons would be intimately familiar with the arts of swordplay. Furthermore, Shakespeare as a trained actor would have studied fighting accurately to replicate it onstage. This is why Shakespeare takes many opportunities to mention duelling culture in his plays, especially within the comedies.  Shakespeare uses duel references to comic effect in [...]

Taking up from where the recent Sonnets for Advent series finished comes this post by painter Richard Lance Russell: This painting, “Number All Your Graces,” was inspired by these lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 17: “If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces” I love creating paintings [...]

Pericles has a claim to be Shakespeare’s most overlooked play. Nonprofessional Shakespeareans are likely never to have seen, read, or even heard of it. It is among the last plays to have entered the canon. The text is notoriously corrupt. And the consensus that it is a collaboration is among the firmest for any of [...]

This is the final post in my three-part series on the Shakespeare scene in South Florida.  Click for part one and part two. Perhaps the most eccentric of the local Shakespeare companies is a little group called Shakespeare Miami.  I saw their production of Macbeth which was performed on a big grassy green in Coconut [...]

One of the most exciting Shakespeare events in the South Florida area occurred earlier this year with the presentation of Carson Kievman’s Hamlet opera at his Sobe Arts Studio on Miami Beach.  I had the privilege of speaking with Mr. Kievman to ask him a few questions about the production of Hamlet as well as [...]

South Florida is truly about as far from Elizabethan London as you can get, and the tropical atmosphere certainly doesn’t seem like the ideal setting for producing and experiencing the Bard’s works. I’m a 17 year-old who has lived in South Florida for my whole life and I’ve been seeking out the best local Shakespeare [...]

The discovery of skeletal remains in a Leicester car park that may be those of King Richard III makes a new view of King Henry VI Part Three especially timely. For this is the play in which Richard comes on like an express train. The first words of Richard III are deservedly among the most [...]

Grasping the attention of today’s children is an increasing frustration for teachers today. As more and more children are constantly exposed to a steady stream of quickly-changing images from a very early age, conditions are ripe to breed increasing problems with focus and attention. Attention-Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are becoming more prevalent [...]

Heavens to betsy! No sooner do I announce that I’m going to write a series of posts on Shakespeare’s neglected plays, starting with the Henry VI trilogy, than these three plays get more attention than they have in decades. First, the Balkan productions at the World Shakespeare Festival were hits, sometimes revelatory (click for reviews [...]