#Shakespeare

#Shakespeare

Not so much for the carnal stuff, but for the way every word he utters is taken to be as beautiful as he is. Intoxicated by their admiration, his admirers leap headfirst into the still waters of his pronouncements apparently certain of hidden depths thereunder. So it has been with the reaction to how he comforted his director when she confessed, in so many words, that she couldn't always grasp what Shakespeare was on about.

This week's quote comes from Duke Senior's speech in Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1. Let's enjoy the hidden experience that attentive time in nature reveals. It can unlock wonder, awe, and insight. "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

The Hathaways are farmers, in the English county of Warwickshire, with close ties to the land-some would say too close, at least in the case of Agnes, a young woman so eccentrically at one with nature that she is rumored to have been born of a forest witch. The Shakespeares are led by a glover, whose business has seen better days. His eldest son-William, of course, though he is not immediately identified as such-defrays his father's debts by tutoring Agnes's younger brothers in Latin,

My last week in overlapped with the first week of rehearsals for . I've done that before, but I'm 45 now, and it's harder than it was even two years ago when I did it for . And that was really hard: two musicals. So I'm a little tired. But it's good. This bounty of work is something I've always been trying to get; being able to go between varying roles was the dream when I was getting out of school.

If you close your eyes and picture an artistic genius, chances are that the portrait will be framed by a Romantic ideal that took shape 200 years ago: an artist dedicated solely to his (almost always his) muse and transgressive appetites, breaking his era's rules both moral and artistic, remaking society with his art. But this vision of genius is a poor fit for many great artists, and it tends to obscure what makes them and their work special.

Maggie O'Farrell's lauded 2020 novel Hamnet is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare's family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world. It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O'Farrell's so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloe Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.

a bad bitch,

The ability to write a lot all the time is one I never take for granted, but speed often comes at the expense of beauty, care, and intention.

Nicholas Hytner's new production brings A Midsummer Night's Dream into the 20th century with modern references, including characters using phones to engage with the audience.