The play’s the thing
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Fifteen miles downstream of Exeter, Powderham Castle faces over the estuary of the River Exe, having originally risen “from the ashes of the Great Plague, but that wouldn’t be its last brush with adversity”. At the beginning it was a true castle, set in 50,000 acres. Alas, after weathering wars, sieges and other troubles, it has…
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This play is to be performed in a latino theatre in New York on 18th and 19th December and streamed online those evenings (EST). The dialogue is partially in Spanish, although the English part will explain a lot. The new playwright (Norman Briski) has used Shakespeare’s parody as a departure point before making it more…
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Well, while it seems the Queen wants awkward bones to be left tucked up in their urn in Westminster Abbey, Prince Charles is more curious about the whole “Princes in the Tower” mystery. Maybe he’ll even probe enough to reveal the truth at last. I do hope so! To read more, go to This Express…
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The caption of the above illustration gives a mild flavour of what follows in this review and this one and of the BBC’s The Hollow Crown series. The reviews are the work of Hello Tailor, and really had me giggling. They’re sharp and witty, but naughty too, so be warned. They’re also the work of…
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Well, it just goes to show that although the past may now be buried far underground, now and then it still comes to light to thrill us all. Now it seems they’ve discovered the site of the Red Lion, “the earliest known attempt to build a playhouse in the Tudor era, a precursor to the…
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This Times article has a quaint way of describing Henry VII : “Tall, with striking blue eyes, Henry was the only child of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and Margaret Beaufort…” Striking blue eyes? Well, yes…except that they looked in opposite directions. Which I suppose counts as striking! I’m not so sure about the blue,…
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There is an increasing appetite these days for audio versions of books. Whether just sitting at home, driving your car, or even out in the garden, listening to a famous actor reading to you, or even the author, is a great pleasure that sometimes beats reading the book for yourself. Which makes me reconsider…
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Well, the Penny Dreadfuls, a comedy group, may only be having fun and poking fun at Shakespeare’s Richard, but they’ve actually come closer to the truth than may be realised. Their version of Richard is more accurate than the Bard’s parody!
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Panorama of Old London. The Old Bridge stood to the west of the new one. https://www.britain-magazine.com/features/inspiration/shakespeares-london/. Of course Shakespearean London is post Ricardian but most of the streets and buildings covered in this interesting article would have been there in Richard’s time. For anyone visiting London, this article would be an excellent referral point…
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We have already shown how Shakespeare was inadvertently influenced by contemporary or earlier events in setting details – names, events, badges or physical resemblance – for his Hamlet, King Lear and Richard III. What of Romeo and Juliet, thought to have been written between 1591-5 and first published, in quarto form, in 1597? The most…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 