Shakespeare for the Soundtrack of Your Life

This is the Earl of Essex Galiard. The Earl of the title was Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, who was the politically ambitious nobleman known to be a "favorite" of Queen Elizabeth I.

Obscure Mysteries with Shakespeare Themes

I love mysteries. I've been reading them since I was a child and I love them all--cozies to Nordic noir and everything in between. If someone's getting murdered and someone's trying to find out why and who did it, I'm there. So it's fair to say that I've read a LOT of mysteries in my time. And yet--how can this be--I have never read a Shakespeare-themed mystery. Not one. So I turned to Goodreads, my source for all things listicle. The site did NOT let me down. (I find Goodreads a PITA to deal with in terms of uploading books and changing covers and things, but the readers are spectacular resources.)

There are 60 books on the list--one a day for the next two months!! And the one that caught my eye was Interred With Their Bones. It's set in modern day, themed to Hamlet, and features a character who goes on to headline a series. My kind of book. And bonus, it's available used for a penny and postage, so $4,

For the TBR pile...We Are Not Such Things

I'm not a big fan of most true crime, but this book by Nadine Justine Van Der Leun caught my eye in my Net Galley newsletters. I remember reading about this south African murder case and wondering, "How did this happen?" I've read the author's magazine pieces and she's a fine writer, so I look forward to reading this book.

Anonymous--a star-studded riff on the Shakespeare authorship question

It's always fun to read the articles about who "really" wrote Shakespeare's plays. In one of the only fan letters I ever wrote in my life, I asked Isaac Asimov (whose two-part guide to Shakespare is terrific) if he had an opinion on the issue. He did not. (Yes, he answered my fan letter with a typed index card reply. Which I still have somewhere. Yes. Isaac Asimov!!!!) But I digress.

I'm a fan of British costume dramas. They're often a little on the slow side but they almost always make up for it with fantastic acting. Anonymous is the perfect example. It's an Elizabethan romp starring mother/daughter actresses Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave as Elizaabeth One at various stages in her life.The premise of the movie is that Shakespeare's work was really written by an aristocrat and that Shakespeare himself was a nasty little man who acted as the aristocrat's "front" and killed Christopher Marlowe because he was about to out him.  (Speaking of fronts, if you love good acting, check out Trumbo.  The movie about the Hollywood Ten's most famous member is a feast of fine acting, with Louis C.K. and John Goodman outstanding in supporting roles and Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren at the top of their game.)

Saturday Shakespeare Meme

I would believe you Morpheus!

If you've never seen Laurence Fishburne in the 1995 film version of Othello (with Kenneth Branagh as Iago), it's worth looking for. At the time, Fisburne was the first black actor to play the Moor in a major American movie; up to then, the role had always been played by actors in black face, including both Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Olivier.

Shakespeare Earrings

The last time I browsed Cafe Press it was all about the clothing--t-shirts and hats and tote bags and such. Also mugs. I didn't realize they'd gotten into Etsy territory with hand-made jewelry items until I saw these earrings for sale. You can buy them here, but be warned, they come with a warning that the earrings are not for sale to, or use by, anyone under 12.  I'm not sure why that is. I can see they'd be a choking hazard for very young children but surely kids grow out of that phase by the time they start going to school?

Feminist Friday and Shakespeare

Over at the Conversation, a website that celebrates "Academic rigor and journalistic flair," there's an essay on how Shakespeare helped writer Germaine Greer shape her feminist masterpiece, The Female Eunuch. It's a long-ish piece and if you're someone who tags blog posts with TLDR, then you'll want to skip down past the photo of Greer speaking at Sydney University in 2005 for the good stuff. My favorite takeaway from the article was this quote: "Greer cites Shakespeare’s poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, as an example of the fullest expression of the ideal of love “as a stabilizing, creative, harmonizing force in the universe'."

I don't even remember that poem--my knowledge of Shakespeare's poetry is mostly limited to a few of his well-known sonnets. So I looked it up. Wikipedia, bless their hearts, has an entry on the allegorical poem.  they call it one of Shakespeare's "most obscure works" (making me feel better for not having remembered it), and one that is open to multiple interpretations. The one thing I do remember is that the "turtle" of the title is the "turtledove," not the reptile everyone used to have as a pet before fears of salmonella made ownership of turtles a health risk.

The "Phoenix" portrait of Queen Elizabeth I

Some scholars have identified "the Phoenix" as Queen Elizabeth 1 and the turtle as John Salisbury, who was a married courtier from a powerful Welsh family.

The language of the poem is gorgeous:

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence

but you'll need footnotes all along the way. The Conversation essay makes a persuasive case for a Shakespearean influence on Greer's work, and it's just one more example of how Shakespeare's work continues to resonate almost half a millennium later.