By Alan O’Riordan “Oh shut up, Baldrick – you’d laugh at a Shakespeare comedy.” THAT line, delivered by Rowan Atkinson playing the Elizabethan Edmund Blackadder in the TV comedy, Blackadder, made sense to me as a 14-year-old. At school, we were reading Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 and laughing, not at the jokes, but at … More Shakespeare is a man for all seasons
Many people reckon The Tempest’s island sorcerer formerly known as the Duke of Milan was actually a self-portrait of the playwright. What do you reckon? In this article I’ll be considering the links between Shakespeare and his character, Prospero. But before we begin, would you be able to help me in a small literary investigation? … More A real character: Is Prospero Shakespeare?
When you think of Romeo and Juliet, what first comes to mind: Shakespeare’s play, the 1968 film adaptation or one of the many beautiful paintings featuring the lovers? Or, perhaps, you recall sitting in high school English, Drama or Literature trying to decipher the archaic language while pretending to find the hidden meaning of it … More Versions of Romeo & Juliet Throughout History
Mark Twain’s hilarious (1909) debunking of the myth that William Shakespeare wrote the works of Shakespeare. Adapted and performed by Keir Cutler, Ph.D. at the 2003 Winnipeg Fringe Festival. Listing the handful of established facts of Shakespeare’s life, Twain ridicules the fantasy that an uneducated youth could have wandered into London and, with virtually none … More Mark Twain’s “Is Shakespeare Dead?” with Keir Cutler, Ph.D.
Stage-managing any job means three things (plus one): 1) There will be sweat. 2) There will be tears. 3) There may be blood. +1) The wealth of information you will gain while on the job will surpass anything you could ever be taught in the classroom. Heading into Hofstra University’s production of The Learned Ladies, … More Observations of an Assistant Stage Manager: The Many Ways to Call “Line”
It was once believed that one’s gender determined what was expected, allowed and valued in us. To be a boy or a girl meant behaving in a certain way and possessing certain qualities. But society today is in transition, and people have now begun to question these age-old assumptions. Boys play with cars, trains, and … More Defying Stereotypes
When something bad happens: True is it that we have seen better days. When something REALLY bad happens: O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day! Most lamentable day. Most woeful day That ever, ever I did yet behold! O day, O day, O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as … More A dramatic Shakespearean response to every situation
In Shakespeare’s play, “Julius Caesar,” a soothsayer repeatedly warns Rome’s all-powerful dictator, Julius Caesar, to “Beware the Ides of March,” a date that the soothsayer suggests could be injurious to Caesar’s health. And so, in the morning hours of the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 B.C., that very same Julius Caesar stood outside … More “Beware the Ides of March”
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare invented the idea of the teenager in love. Many of his characters – the thin and anguished Hamlet, the fat a jolly Falstaff, the sexy Cleopatra, the aged King Lear – have associations even for people who have never seen or read his plays, but none more so than Romeo … More “A Pair of Star-Crossed Lovers”
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