Tag Archives: Shakespeare
Shakespearean Scandals
Although William Shakespeare is central to our cultural canons, his plays are full of the worst sort of social ills, including racism and sexism. Stephen Greenblatt talks about these literary scandals. 757 – Shakespearean Scandals
Posted in Episodes, Greenblatt, Stephen
Tagged Gender, Literature, Shakespeare
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Shakespeare’s Stings
From name-calling and caterwauling to general abuse, Shakespeare’s 38 plays include more than 10,000 insults. Wayne Hill and Cynthia Ottchen, authors of Shakespeare’s Insults: Educating your Wit, provide a livlely and colorful sampling. 738 – Shakespeare’s Stings
Posted in Episodes, Hill, Wayne F., Ottchen, Cynthia J.
Tagged Shakespeare
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Reading for Difference
A discussion of the sonnets of William Shakespeare. 558 – Reading for Difference
Political Shakespeare
Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield discuss their book, Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (1985). 453 – Political Shakespeare
Posted in Dollimore, Jonathan, Episodes, Sinfield, Alan
Tagged Shakespeare
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Two Williams
In separate discussions, scholars speak of William Shakespeare and William Blake. First, Maynard Mack reflects on the influence of Shakespeare on the English language, saying that the wide vocabulary he used drew upon many idioms, and that he wrote about everyday people. … Continue reading
Posted in Episodes, Mack, Maynard, Ward, Aileen
Tagged Humanities, Shakespeare, William Blake, William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare’s “Green-ey’d Monster”
Lynda Boose and Margreta de Grazia discuss Othello, which is often considered to be the most popular of Shakespeare’s tragedies, yet is the object of continuing critical disparagement. Why is this so? How do the themes of human sexuality, love, … Continue reading
Posted in Boose, Lynda E., de Grazia, Margreta, Episodes
Tagged Othello (play), Shakespeare, William Shakespeare
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The Play’s the Thing: Shakespeare Then and Now
April, 1985, marks the anniversaries–dating back to the years 1564 and 1616–of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, the Western world’s most popular poet and playwright. What account’s for Shakespeare’s popularity? Why is Shakespeare a cultural reference point? Lynda … Continue reading
Posted in Boose, Lynda E., de Grazia, Margreta, Episodes, Mack, Maynard
Tagged Shakespeare, William Shakespeare
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From Plautus to Tootsie: Italian Renaissance Comedy
Louise George Clubb talks about Italian Renaissance comedy, which began with classical writers Plautus and Terence and was rediscovered by sixteenth-century Italian writers of comedy including Ariosti, Bibbieno, and Machiavelli; the influence of the Italian form on Shakespeare; and its … Continue reading
Posted in Clubb, Louise George, Episodes
Tagged Comedy, Literature -- Italian Renaissance, Shakespeare
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(1) The State of the Language, Part 2 of 5; (2) Commentary on Sexuality, “Back to Nature”
Ronald Butters, Margreta de Grazia, Connie Eble, and Michael Montgomery mull over the richness and fluidity of written English in the age of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, before the language moved toward standardization a century later with the … Continue reading
Posted in Butters, Ronald R., Dannhauser, Werner, de Grazia, Margreta, Eble, Connie, Episodes, Montgomery, Michael
Tagged English language, English literature, Sexuality, Shakespeare, Women's Liberation Movement
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(1) Energy from a Cultural Perspective; (2) Shakespeare Today; (3) The Education of Journalists; Review of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; (4) Commentary on Ambition
John Opie talks about the conflict between risk and security in the way Americans think about the energy crisis in the 1980s. He comments on the meaning and value of humanism, and suggests that a historian’s perspective might contribute to … Continue reading
Posted in Agresto, John, Bennett, William J., Eastland, Terry, Episodes, Holman, Hugh, Mullikin, Kent, Opie, John, Royster, Vermont, Sisk, John
Tagged Shakespeare
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