Blogging Shakespeare

Of the three “problem plays,” Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure, with their dark cynicism about sex and politics, seem finally to be coming into their own in our darkly cynical time. Not so All’s Well That Ends Well. All’s Well has been called the comic version of Coriolanus; if nothing else, these are [...]

  All’s Well That Ends Well may seem like a simple enough play to stage. It is based upon exotic locations like The Tempest, and it does not require any elaborate representation of the outdoors like As You Like It or A Midsummer Night’s Dream might seem to. However you still need to create distinctive [...]

William Henry Schofield, an early 20th century scholar of comparative English literature, once said, “Shakepeare’s whole face was tanned by the sun of chivalry.” That may seem an odd statement – after all, we think of Shakespeare as a Renaissance playwright, not a medieval troubadour. There are no questing knights, Round Tables, or damsels locked [...]

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   All’s Well that Ends Well, Arpana, dir. Sunil Shanbag, 25 May 2012 at The Globe, London By Sarah Olive, University of York I came to this performance of All’s Well fresh [...]

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   Love’s Labour’s Lost, Deafinitely Theatre, dir. Paula Garfield, 23 May 2012 at The Globe, London By Kate Rumbold, University of Birmingham It was changeover time at Bankside on a sunny May afternoon: clusters [...]

Despite being written hundreds of years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and the characters within these are still easy for many of us to identify with. To demonstrate this, I am going to look at Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Helena is a character who I think most girls can relate to due to the fact [...]

Continuing my series of blogs on Shakespeare’s sources today I turn my attention to All’s Well That Ends Well. Despite it’s title readers or audience members may well feel that the play does not end all that well, leaving us uncertain of the ‘happiness’ of the union between Helena and Bertram who is tricked into [...]

Today I want to explore further that strange speech of Helena’s from All’s Well That Ends Well that I shared with you in my last post. You’ll recall that Paroles says of virginity,‘’tis a withered pear. Will you anything with it?’, to which Helena answers: Not my virginity yet— There shall your master have a [...]

I promised last time to discuss a female character’s fantasies, and the character I had in mind was Helena from All’s Well that Ends Well. In the curious first scene of that play, Paroles (a posturing soldier) asks her with a leer, ‘Are you meditating on virginity?’ Helena’s reply suggests a witty wench on the [...]