BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: SHAKESPEARE

THE IDES OF MARCH

" March 15 is too important a day to ignore. As the man who taught me to use a chainsaw said, it is immortalized 
by Shakespeare’s famous warning: “Cedar! Beware the adze of March."

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
MAR 16,2024
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WALTER MATTHAU AT AGE 7 

" He became a voracious reader, and when he was young as seven years old he began reciting Shakespeare. He may not have comprehended what he was saying but was transfixed by the by the beauty and fluidity of the language and its contrast to the Lower East Side dreariness. Often, he recited out loud for hours at a stretch, in the privacy of the bathroom. 'There'd be one for four families,' he recalled, 'and I'd be in there until someone threw me out.'"

Rob Edelman and Audrey Kupferberg.  Matthau: a Life (New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2002)
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VIRGINIA WOOLF & SHAKESPEARE

" In a letter to Thoby, she (WOOLF) writes, “I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightn’t be more in the great William than I supposed. And I was quite upset! Really and truly I am now let in to the company of worshipers — though I still feel a little oppressed by his — greatness, I suppose.” That tone again: worshipers, the oppression of greatness. One thinks of the mock-religious deference in Woolf’s “Orlando” when the heroine resists taking the divine name in vain: “Or was it Sh — p — re? (For when we speak names we deeply reverence to ourselves we never speak them whole.)”

from :"The curious connection between Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf" Marjorie Garber’s ‘Shakespeare in Bloomsbury’ traces the playwright’s powerful influence on Woolf and her circle.
Review by Dennis Duncan in THE WASHINGTON POST (September 30,2023)
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CHARLES MACKLIN AS SHYLOCK

The eighteenth-century audiences were used to seeing a comic Shylock.y Samuel De WildeMacklin wanted a different path to playing this character. While Macklin did not return to Shakespeare's script exactly as it was written, he did make his own edits to his script that were much closer than Granville's text. Instead of portraying Shylock as the usual comic pantolone, he played him as darkly villainous, serious, and highly satirical. Next, rather than dress Shylock as a clown, Macklin researched his role. He studied Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, and in the old testament. He learned that Italian Jews, especially from Venice, were known to wear red hats, so he took that as a basis for his costume. In seeking to portray Jews exactly how they looked, Macklin emphasised the notion of historical accuracy in costuming, which would later become an inherent feature of realism in the 19th century. Macklin did not merely "study" the Jews. According to Appleton, "he actually interacted with them in marketplaces and learned to gradually adapt their way of speech"

Wikipedia
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HAMLET, the 1937 Version at the Old Vic

“In 1937, Olivier played Hamlet at the Old Vic.

“At one performance the most ‘dreadful’ thing happened during the duel . Laertes fell splendidly on his back, legs akimbo, but his codpiece burst open. He raised a downstage knee to hide his manhood from the audience and the play continued. The problem was next evening’s performance the very first scene on the battlements of Elsinor when the soldiers were expecting the ghost to appear.
“’What’ Marcellus asked , ‘Has this thing appeared again tonight?’ it was no good. The actors’ convulsed laughter brought the curtain down, long before the Crowing of the Cock.”

Tarquin Olivier. My Father Laurence Olivier (l992)

Gyles Brandreth. The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
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THE ONLY THING THAT PAYS IN THE THEATRE 

"Shakespeare found that the only thing that paid in the theatre was romantic nonsense, and that when he was forced by this to produce one of the most effective samples of romantic nonsense in existence -- a feat which he  performed easily and well -- he publicly disclaimed any responsibility for it pleasant and cheap falsehood by borrowing the story and throwng it in the face of the public with the phrase As You Like It." 
                              George Bernard Shaw
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"To this dayI can't read King Lear, having had the advantage of studying it occasionally in school."
                               Alfred North Whitehead
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TEEN-AGE BOYS IN WILLIAM GOLDMAN'S NOVEL
TEMPLE OF GOLD DISCUSS HAMLET

"Quite right," Zook said. "Yes. We have Man coming to grips with the one force he is unable to combat." 
  "What force is that?" Few asked.
  "The Air Force," I butted in, slapping my knee. "Get it? The..."
   They ignored me. "You see ," Zock went on, "Hamlet is equipped to handle almost every situation. He is brave; he is strong; he is brilliant. But then, whammy, comes this one problem he can't handle, and he's done for. How's that?"
   "Great," I said."Marvelous. It stinks."
    "What's wrong with it?"
   "Jesus Christ," I told him. "If you believe that, who do you put the blame on?"
 "Set me down," Zock said. Fee did. "Now," he continued, "Why
 do you have to blame somebody?"
 "Forty people are murdered in this play, for chrissakes. That's why."

William Goldman. Temple of Gold (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957)
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          EVERYDAY MY ARIEL       

Everyday, my Ariel.        
I put the world behind me, but it shoot back,        
With one generation & the next,        
Light as sunlight thrushing,        
As thru the Spanish Cedars flash        
Comorants magnetic with their hooked beaks.       
Always a fitful cornucopia        
To take the breath away.        
I press my life to the jumping dayshine.       
What do I demand?        
More space? More freedom?        
Freedom to do what?
Hungering for magic,        
I stand on Prospero's Isle.        
Could I have been so wrong about my life?        
Far out on the ocean,        
Replenished & green,        
One anonymous sailor        
Fastens his shrouds.

Louis Phillips