William Shakespeare
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Richard III and the Peasants’ Revolt….?
The Rage, a movie drama by Paul Greengrass, about the Peasants’ Revolt in 14th-century England, has received the maximum £2m grant from the regional Bavaria fund FFF Bayern “….and will begin filming in Germany this autumn as a Germany-UK co-production between Munich-based Supernix and London outfit Electric Shadow Company….” Filming will be in Bavaria, but…
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“….There is one line in Josephine Tey’s magnum opus, ‘The Daughter of Time’, that chills to the bone: “Tomorrow, a whisper may destroy you.” In the novel, these words ring true for Richard III, whose reputation is decimated by Tudor propaganda….” Oh, yes, how true, especially when the whispers come in a thunderous stage-managed torrent. Because…
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“The Pretender” takes the same-old attitude to Richard III….
Oh dear… “….The year is 1483 and England is in peril. The much-despised Richard III [who has murdered the boys in the Tower] is not long for the throne, and the man who will become Henry VII stands poised to snatch the crown for himself. But for twelve-year-old John Collan [to be Lambert Simnel, the…
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I’ve seen many old photographs and drawings of past actors who’ve played Richard III (the Bard’s mockery, of course), and I know many actresses have played him as well, but this time I’ve come across something new. Well, new to me. Two child sisters, Ellen and Kate Bateman, who played Richard and Henry Tudor respectively.…
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“…..’Richmond! When last I was at Exeter,The mayor in courtesy show’d me the castle,And call’d it Rougemont: at which name I started,Because a bard of Ireland told me onceI should not live long after I saw Richmond.’…” from Richard III by Shakespeare (Act 4, Scene 2, Lines 103-7) So wrote Shakespeare of Richard III’s arrival at…
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Life wasn’t always a bed of roses for Geoffrey Chaucer. We may laud him today, but in his own time he sometimes got into debt. His works are brilliant, there’s no doubt about that (I rate him above Shakespeare) and he made a fortunate marriage to one Philippa de Roët. Who she? Well, she was…
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I’m afraid that I’m not a lover of Shakespeare’s works. I think the blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of ‘O’ English Literature. I was bored rigid. But when it came to the much earlier Geoffrey Chaucer, which I didn’t read until after leaving school, I loved every word. Maybe if…
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This article Thomas of Woodstock and Shakespeare’s Twisted History | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net) begins as follows:- “….William Shakespeare wrote ten history plays. Of these, one of the most famous is Richard II . The play Richard II , written around 1595, is based on the rule of King Richard II (reign 1377-1399), but one of the main characters in…
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Using software that detects plagiarism in phrases etc, Dennis McCarthy has concluded that Shakespeare adapted earlier plays by “the scholar knight” Sir Thomas North. He sets his reasoning out in a new book entitled simply Thomas North, with the subtitle The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Plays. Is this true? Well, according to this review…
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I had never been much interested in medieval history. I thought of them as backwards and a little too obsessed w the afterlife. However, the “what ifs” of history always intrigued me. What if the Nazis won WWII? What if the north had been defeated in the American Civil War? And so forth. I’d always…
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