Archive for October, 2011
Why Does Shakespeare Still Compel Us?
by Adam Leipzig
Four hundred years after his death at the age of 52, Shakespeare still intrigues, transports, mystifies, frustrates and beguiles us as no other writer, before or since. In an age where all of us want to stay young forever, W.S. seems to have found the secret. “I have immortal longings in me,” he wrote in Antony and Cleopatra. What about his wor More...
“Anonymous” Blows Up, But Shakespeare Survives
by Garner Simmons
Conspiracy theories are epidemic. Depending on whom you believe, Pearl Harbor was part of FDR’s plot to draw us into World War II; Truman Capote wrote To Kill a Mockingbird; Castro killed Kennedy; and the Bush administration blew up the Twin towers. From Obama’s birth to Stieg Larsson’s death there seems to be a need to find some nefarious ha More...
Shakespeare’s Theatre Through Max Waldman’s Photos
by Daniel Rolnik | Argot and Ochre
The best productions of William Shakespeare's plays were arguably done during the swinging 1960s. And the only person who was able to capture their essence in photographs was Max Waldman. His stunning black and white picture enhanced the drama of A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear and Merchant of Venice - all of which were being radically a More...
The Shakespeare Conspiracies
by Hoyt Hilsman
The Shakespearean authorship controversy has spawned its own genre of books, films and plays, most recently the movie Anonymous, which dramatizes the theory that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the author of the Shakespearean canon. I haven’t yet seen the movie, and the “Oxfordian” theory is just as weak as any of the other a More...
Talk Like Shakespeare Day
by Dennis Baron | The Web of Language
Editor's Note: Although this piece was written in 2009, it remains as wonderful today.
Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr., has proclaimed April 23, William Shakespeare’s 445th birthday, Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Or should that read, “Mayor Richard II hath proclaimed”?
Recent ship hijackings in the Gulf of Aden suggest that this year’s Talk More...
First Date with Shakespeare
by Charity Hume
Is Shakespeare someone you’ve always wanted to know, but you’ve never had the time to get involved? If so, consider this a literary first date. Our plan is to meet with him in Sonnet 73, and see where things will go. It’s just fourteen lines, not too much of a commitment—Why not give it a try?
On a first date with the sonnet, I’d say t More...
Can Art End Wars, or Start Them?
by Adam Leipzig
“Some art depicts war. Some art ends it,” declares a sign outside the Art Institute of Chicago, beckoning visitors to experience two moving exhibits that close on Sunday. The first is a gigantic display of strikingly large-scale propaganda posters that appeared in the windows of Moscow’s TASS News Agency during the Second World War. The pos More...
“Dirty Hippie Lit” Triumphs Today
by Levi Asher | Literary Kicks
I often hear people complain about "dirty hippies". Well, cleanliness is a virtue. But I've never understood why anybody would hate hippies. Is it that their exuberance is embarrassing? I like hippies, and I also like several writers identified with the post-Beat/hippie literary tradition of the 1960s and 1970s, many of whom are still active (or be More...
