From the monthly archives: June 2011

People Being Stupid About Shakespeare II

By On 25/06/2011 · 37 Comments

If you spend your life working on Shakespeare, sooner or later someone’s going to pop the question: “Did he really write the plays?”

If you are a serious, textual-studies minded Shakespearean, you might respond with something along these lines: “Well. Probably not all of them on his own. He only collaborated on 1 Henry VI, and [...]

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A Necessary Andromache

By On 15/06/2011 · 2 Comments

I don’t really want to write reviews of plays here just for the sake of reviewing particular productions — there are professional critics who get paid to churn such pieces out quickly enough to affect readers interested in shows that will be gone within days. But the Necessary Angel production of Andromache, [...]

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Grayling Hall: Oh, the Humanities

By On 09/06/2011 · 2 Comments

A few days ago, the British philosopher A. C. Grayling announced that he’s set up a private college charging £18,000 a year for preparing students for the University of London’s International degree program. I think that’s a more or less accurate description of what this New College of the Humanities proposes to offer: it’s [...]

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The Power of the Bard: Jane Shaxspere and Ophelia

By On 08/06/2011 · 9 Comments

If The Guardian and around 4000 other Google hits are to be believed, the inspiration for Ophelia’s death in Hamlet has been found: a two-and-a-half-year-old girl who drowned in a pond while picking marigolds in 1569, five years after Shakespeare’s birth, in a Worcestershire village a day’s ride from Stratford.

The [...]

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