Titania (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

[In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon, king of the fairies, plays a trick on Titania, his queen: he plies his sleeping consort with a potion that induces love at first sight. Meanwhile, Oberon’s servant-sprite Puck has mischievously turned the head of a local workman into that of an ass. Of course, it is this monstrosity that Titania sees upon waking….]

Titania

It’s in the script: you’ll never get to choose

A paramour from your exclusive class.

So ask yourself, what have you got to lose?

There’s something visceral about an ass.

Desperate Conditions Call for Desperate Measures

Shakespeare as Black Humorist

By James T. Carney

Since the current administration in Washington sees inequality as a great problem, I have decided to put my lawyerly ingenuity to work to suggest some ways to deal with it.
    First of all, however, one has to focus on the real problem. The real problem is not inequality but poverty. This is unfortunate because inequality is easier to solve than poverty. Inequality could be solved by dividing up everyone’s goods based on market value and having the rich follow Jesus and turn almost all of their goods over to the poor. Of course, to make sure that Kamala Harris’ equity is maintained one must take this action at least once a generation since it is the unfortunate nature of some people to work hard and try to get ahead, which by definition means leaving some people behind.

Sketches from the Twin Cities: Shakespeare’s Songs

By Geoffrey Dean 

Today – Friday, April 23 – I am celebrating the birthday of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) with some of the music that was heard in productions of his plays during his own lifetime. For this purpose I have the valuable aid of Shakespeare’s Songbook, a comprehensive anthology by Ross W. Duffin that is both musically fascinating and visually delightful.
    Throughout his written oeuvre, Shakespeare reveals himself as a savvy scholar of music. In Henry VII and other plays, he refers at length to Orpheus, the most famous musician of Greek mythology, to show the power of music to affect our emotions and behavior. He also mentions “the music of the spheres,” the harmonious sounds emanating from the outer reaches of the universe that the Greek philosopher Pythagoras claimed to be able to hear.

More Dollars than Sense

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

Just when we think rich people might run out of ways to show off how much money they can afford to lose, we mere financial mortals are proven wrong yet again.


Used to be that if you were a rich businessperson who wanted to show off your stunning across the board business acumen, you bought an NFL football team. After all, if you are genius enough to become a billionaire, surely you can assemble a winning team, right?

Shakespeare Again [Eight Years Ago in a Couple of Months]

James Knudsen interviewed about writing for Moristotle

Interviewed by Moristotle

[I’m running this first interview of James Knudsen today because of the happy circumstance that he lauded Shakespeare on Saturday, in a comment on a post by Paul Clark titled “Who identifies with fake stories, fake lives?” in which James said:

My own experience is with [theatrical fiction], “...whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
    I am not nearly as skilled with the pen (quill) as William Shakespeare, and so my pitch to students in my Theatre Appreciation class each semester is, if I, or any other actor of the stage achieves any sort of success, it is when an audience member sees my performance, and quietly thinks, “That’s me. I’m not the only person in the world who thinks, or says, or does that. I am not alone.” To feel not alone, is to be less afraid. To be less afraid, is to live with the sense that there is something greater than ourselves, and we are better creatures for it.

    The original interview was published on December 12, 2012.]

We recently approached James Knudsen about writing a guest article for Moristotle, even possibly doing a regular feature for us. James is a stage actor well-versed in Shakespeare and a teacher of theater craft. Last year at our own high school reunion, which he and his sister attended with their father, who was a teacher of ours and is now an honorary member of our class, James mesmerized us by reciting as his parting gift Hamlet’s uncle Claudius’s attempt to assuage his guilt [Hamlet III, iii].

Goines On: Goines speaks to G

Click image for more vignettes

Goines’ heart sped up the morning he realized that he knew almost as much about his creator as his creator knew about him! Goines, a character in his creator’s fictional portrait, on a par with his creator!…So why had Goines been content to let the author lay out Goines’ thoughts and doings without Goines ever raising his hand to speak out to him?

Correspondence: Wight ring

Freshwater, Isle of Wight

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

Every morning I ask my wife, “Has Trump resigned yet?” and she sadly shakes her head and replies, “No such news.” Moristotle, I know from your right-wing blog and the many ingratiating things you have said about President Trump that you are one of the still tens of millions of American voters who support him. But for the love of God in whom you also ardently believe, PLEASE STOP ENCOURAGING TRUMP. He must be made to accept that he no longer has the love and support of anyone but a handful of awkward individuals – in his own family, perhaps, and among those almost as bad as himself on his staff and in his Cabinet – if they didn’t abandon him the day he betrayed them. Moristotle, if you stop supporting Trump and encourage your right-wing friends to stop as well, maybe this can be turned around, and my wife can give me good news for a change.

Eleven Years Ago Today: 443rd birthday/391st deathday

AIFS Study Abroad

Today it’s his 454th/402nd

By Moristotle

[Originally published on April 23, 2007, but without the image or the second footnote.]

Let us today remember the birthday of William Shakespeare, born on April 23, 1564—so far as scholars can make out. One measure of Shakespeare’s enduring memory is that the Sixteenth Edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations¹ devotes sixty-three 2-column pages to him, while devoting only two-thirds that number to The Holy Bible.

Correspondence: From the King James Bible, to Shakespeare, to composing behind the wheel

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare!

If you were alive today....

By Moristotle

If you were alive today, William Shakespeare, how would you treat Donald Trump? Would you tend toward tragedy, or farce?

Book Review: Nutshell (a novel)

By Moristotle

With a whoop and a slap of my thigh, I finished Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Nutshell, its final act an ingenious, but inevitable turn of plot. What a read! I highly recommend Nutshell, for all those who like their fiction with a flair for invention – in language as well as in setting and narrative voice – and for informed comment on culture, politics, psychology…and, in this case, forensic investigation. For Nutshell involves a murder.

To Valentine’s Day

By Moristotle

[A reader commented yesterday on this poem’s original post, on Valentine’s Day 2015, reminding me I had even written it (and might have republished it yesterday).]

More politics, religion, and (by analogy) sex

From recent correspondence

Edited by Morris Dean

This would be good.“The media have reached a turning point in covering Donald Trump. He may not survive it” [Paul Waldman, Washington Post, June 3]. Excerpt:

Politics, religion, & sex

From recent correspondence

Edited by Morris Dean

Oh, to have been a political writer last month! Mike Webb, an army major drafted by the Repuglicans to run against Don Beyer for Congress in northern Virginia’s 8th District, accidentally posted porn links to his own campaign site [“Politicians, take note: Don’t post screenshots that show your porn tabs,” Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post, May 17].

Oops!

From recent correspondence

Edited by Morris Dean

We named our lock company “SURE-LOCK” so that any houses using our products could be called “SURE-LOCK HOMES.”
    One thing is certain:
Although things aren’t
as they should be,
they definitely are as they are.
    Did you hear about the Vampire Doctor? To repel him, you hold not a cross but an apple in front of him every day.

Shakespeare & Co.

Photo by the editor, April 23

From recent correspondence

Edited by Morris Dean

[“Recent” is relative; some of these items arrived while my wife and I were in Paris celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary.]

The Loneliest Liberal: Where’s the bacon?

By James Knudsen

Finding the right metaphor can be tricky but I think I’ve got it this time: bacon. We’ll get back to that.

Sunday Review: British and American productions of Shakespeare

A problem

By Rolf Dumke

In “Shakespeare in Modern English?” [New York Times, October 7], James Shapiro rightly discusses a main problem in both British and American Shakespeare productions, “that even the best directors and actors...too frequently offer up Shakespeare’s plays without themselves having firm enough grasp of what his words mean.”

Second Saturday's Sonnet

To Valentine's Day

By Morris Dean
 
 

 
 
 
Shakespeare asked whether he should compare "thee,"
and, having considered, decided not.
Than summer's day, he thought that she (or he)
was more lovely and temperate, less fraught

Thor’s Day: Redemption beneath the stars

A Christian reading of Shakespeare’s King Lear

By Kyle Garza

Upon a first reading, King Lear seems like yet another Shakespearean tragedy wherein foolish characters, hanging their faults on their sleeves, lament their undoing in an unjust and cruel world. The characters all seem to fall into two worldview camps: One thinks that cruel higher powers torment us merely for their own sport, and we must endure their harsh torture as petty toys; the other thinks that the majority of evil in the world is the result of human sins, and there is a higher arbiter who orchestrates justice in the natural world. The latter in the play not only capture Shakespeare’s thematic intent more accurately, but they also demonstrate the core elements of the Christian gospel throughout King Lear’s five acts. It is clear by the end of the play that the wicked receive their comeuppances in a world with orchestrated justice, that the wicked cannot justify their wickedness by the predetermination of the stars, and that the characters of Edgar and Cordelia serve as Christ-figures that anchor the play to the Christian gospel.