This year the Shakespeare session in April was well-attended on Zoom and featured readings from the Plays, the Sonnets, and one of his long poems, The Rape of Lucrece. In addition, we had two gifted singers, Thommo and Geetha, who gave a beautiful rendition of Sonnet 31, which was recorded and is included in this blog. This session was a lovely bouquet for William Shakespeare on his 457th birthday.
William Shakespeare’s statue on Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon
In the past year we have come across new discoveries about Shakespeare which are worth setting down. The Shakespeare grave effigy by Nicholas Johnson in Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon is now believed to be a definitive likeness, commissioned by WS during his lifetime. The evidence gathered by Prof. Lena Cowen Orlin, professor of English at Georgetown University buttresses this. See:
Did you know that William Shakespeare carved his name into the wooden panelling of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, alongside the names of Ben Jonson, Richard Burbage and others? This came to light in a podcast by the Folger Shakespeare Library under the title Shakespeare and The Tabard Inn. See:
https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/tabard-inn
William Shakespeare carved his name into the wooden panelling of the Tabard Inn in Southwark
The reference to it was spotted in Edinburgh University Library by Martha Carlin, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. See:
https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/shakespeare-roisterer-tabard-inn
Shakespeare was long thought to be a solo artist but he collaborated to a fair degree. In fact, five of his ten last plays involved collaborators. At the beginning of his career, and especially at the end, he had many who worked with him, although it is his name that stands on the famous First Folio Edition of 1623, brought out seven years after his death. It contains 36 of his plays.
First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Plays
Ben Jonson’s commentary on the picture engraver Droeshout, is on the left, the most famous words being:
As well in brass, as he has hit
His face; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass:
The text was collated by two of Shakespeare's fellow actors and friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who edited it and supervised the printing. They appear in a list of the 'Principall Actors' who performed in Shakespeare's plays, alongside Richard Burbage, Will Kemp and Shakespeare himself. See:
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/shakespeares-first-folio
Shakespeare’s income came not from the sale of his plays but his investment with others in a joint-stock company of actors who performed the plays at the Globe Theatre, or delivered command performances for a fee at the royal court. Shakespeare invested in the Globe Theatre when it was rebuilt after a fire, and later in the Blackfriars Theatre. He retired a wealthy man, and went back to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he had bought several properties.
Swan by the river Avon with Trinity Church in the background
Full Account of the Shakespeare Reading on Apr 23, 2021
It was decided that May 21, 2021 will be the date for reading Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence.
GGAP
The session began with GGAP (Geeta, Gopa, Arundhaty and Priya) doing parts from King Lear
Priya said, “We’re going to present a pandemic version of King Lear. Gopa plays Cordelia. Arundhaty and Priya are King Lear in different roles in the play. Geeta is Edmund, the main antagonist in the play. He is the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, and the younger brother of Edgar, the Earl's legitimate son.
Everyone knows the story of King Lear. The king divides his kingdom keeping nothing for himself, (thus rendering himself a pauper), among the two daughters, Goneril and Regan, who flatter him. He banishes the youngest third one, Cordelia, who really loves him but makes no show of her attachment. Goneril and Regan both then turn Lear out of their homes, and he goes mad and wanders through a storm on the heath. The daughter he banished for lacking outward show of affection, Cordelia, returns with an army, but they lose the battle. Lear, all his daughters, and more, die.
Priya shared her screen to show Jonathan Pryce as King Lear in the Storm Scene – Act 3, Scene 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMezgn9QL-M
King Lear:
Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man;
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ’gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ho! ’Tis foul.
FOOL
The codpiece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse:
So beggars marry many.
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe,
And turn his sleep to wake.
For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
Enter Kent disguised as Caius.
LEAR, KING OF BRITAIN
EARL OF KENT
Who’s there?
FOOL
Marry, here’s grace and a codpiece—that’s a wise man and a fool.
EARL OF KENT
Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard. Man’s nature cannot carry
Th’ affliction nor the fear.
LEAR, KING OF BRITAIN
That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads,
Find out their enemies now.
Gopa
According to my bond; nor more nor less.
The King expects a greater show and tells her if she does not come forth in fulsome speech,
… it may mar your fortunes.
but she merely declares:
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Geeta
She recited a passage in which Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester claims his superiority to the legitimate Edgar:
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue?
His confidence grows as he speaks his monologue and by the end he has decided to topple his half-brother:
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Arundhaty
Lear delivers this speech in Act 2, Scene 4 after being driven mad by the cruelties of Goneril and Regan. He rages against them; they took away his knights and servants
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
He cries out that humans would be no different from animals if they did not need more than the bare necessities of life. Clearly, Lear needs knights and attendants to reinforce his identity as a king. Goneril and Regan are also driving him out of his mind, as the close of this quotation indicates, since he is unable to bear the realisation of his daughters’ terrible betrayal. He swears he’ll get his own back on them:
I will have such revenges on you both,
Lear vents his rage and but holds back his tears as unmanly:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep.
Priya
The two ungrateful daughters have conspired to humiliate Lear, who has begun to lose his reason – madness plays a large role in the play. Lear storms out of his daughter’s house and goes out on the moor. There he confronts a thunderstorm and this speech is addressed to the storm. The ageing king curses the weather in the well-known speech:
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
and laments his frailty:
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
He calls down imprecations on his daughters who have treacherously abandoned him and cries out against the storm that seems to have sided with his daughters:
You owe me no subscription. Why then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand, your slave—
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters joined
Your high engendered battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. Oh, ho! 'Tis foul.
You can listen to the fine actor Ian McGarrett giving a performance of the storm speech that will move you to great empathy for Lear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOk6-2yufzQ
King Lear, you realise is not a play for the faint of heart. The play requires great stamina from the actor of Lear, and involves treason and murder, adultery, sibling rivalry, civil war, extreme weather and, of course, madness.
Sam Mendes, the director of many a James Bond movie, took over the director’s role in a famous modern production. He set the action in an authoritarian state, with black uniforms.
Simon Russell Beale – King Lear. Photo Credit: Mark Douet
Simon Russell Beale, the Shakespearian actor was well-prepared for the demanding role. The Fool too has a role as in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Edmund the bastard son is full of duplicity and ambition. Goneril is a nasty piece of work and Regan transforms from a bimbo into an absolute monster. The production at the National Theatre, was broadcast live to cinemas worldwide through NTLive, and later released as a film in 2014. You can see a trailer that will thrill you at
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4159226137?playlistId=tt3704248
It will inspire you to see the full film. You can see a good 6-min introduction to the film that serves as an excellent analysis of the complexities of the play at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnYInEJ1-v0
Russell Beale researched dementia in preparation for the role, and concluded that Lewy body dementia, in which hallucinations occur along with motor disorders, seemed to offer the best ‘fit’ with Lear’s so-called madness. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933830/
Talitha
The passage was from Act 1, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are three pairs of lovers. One is the aristocratic Theseus, and Hippolyta who is an Amazon. Then you have the four lovers, Lysander, Hermia, Helena and Demetrius who are cross-partnered by Puck, the mischievous fairy messenger. The third pair is Oberon and Titania, the Lord and Lady of Fairyland. Then you have Bullybottom and his merry men who play Thisbe and Pyramus, which is really hilarious.
Talitha chose this passage because it has a reflection on the brevity of love:
…
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
It also contains a convention from Greek poetry called stichomythia, alternate lines of dialogue spoken by two people, quite effective on stage.
Devika
She chose a few stanzas from the ending The Rape of Lucrece, a long poem of 1,855 lines, divided into 265 stanzas of seven lines each. The meter of each line is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is ABABBCC, a form known as ‘rhyme royal,’ which has been used by poets like Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Milton, and in modern times by John Masefield.
Synopsis
One evening, at the town of Ardea, where a battle is being fought, two leading Roman soldiers, Tarquin and Collatine, are talking. Collatine describes his wife, Lucrece, in glowing terms – she is beautiful and chaste. The following morning, Tarquin travels to Collatine's home. Lucrece welcomes him. Tarquin entertains her with stories of her husband's deeds on the battlefield.
Tarquin spends the night, and is tormented by a desire for Lucrece. His lust overcomes him, and he goes to Lucrece's chamber, where she is asleep. He reaches out and touches her breast, which wakes her up. She is afraid. He tells her that she must give in to him, or else he will kill her. He also threatens to cause her dishonour by murdering a slave and placing the two bodies in each other's arms, and then he would claim that he killed her because he discovered them in this embrace. If she would give in to him, Tarquin promises to keep it all secret. Lucrece pleads with him to no avail. He rapes her.
Rape of Lucrece – Tarquin and Lucretia by Titian
Full of shame and guilt, Tarquin sneaks away. Lucrece is devastated, then becomes furious, and suicidal. She writes a letter to her husband, asking him to come home. When Collatine gets home, Lucrece tells him the whole story, but doesn't say who did it. Collatine demands to know. Before she tells him, Lucrece gets the soldiers, who are also there, to promise to avenge this crime. She then tells her husband who did it, and she immediately pulls out a knife, stabs herself and dies. Collatine's grief is great – he wants to kill himself, as well. His friend, Brutus, suggests that revenge is a better choice. The soldiers carry Lucrece's body through the streets of Rome. The citizens, angered, banish Tarquin and his family.
Dead Lucrecia (1804) sculpture, by Catalan sculptor Damià Campeny. Barcelona- Llotja de Mar
The part that Devika read comes after she calls her husband and her father and tells them what has happened. She then kills herself and they cannot get over the shock. Brutus, one of the senior senators, urges Collatine:
And by chaste Lucrece' soul that late complain'd
Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife,
We will revenge the death of this true wife.
The poem ends carrying Lucrece’s body through the street to parade the crime, and then they proclaim that for his sins Tarquin should be banished:
To Tarquin's everlasting banishment.
KumKum said it was a lovely poem; she had never read it before and made a mental note that she should read it. She thanked Devika who said she enjoyed doing it. Joe also chimed in with gratitude for Devika’s reading of this poem from Shakespeare’s youth.
Geetha and Thommo
Thommo was going to read Sonnet 31 first and then both of them would sing it.
The poem is a long conceit founded on the idea that all who loved him (Shakespeare) ultimately transfer their affections to the Fair Youth – the object of the initial spurt of sonnets; yet all is not lost. How so? In this manner:
Shakespeare tells the young man that he, the Fair Youth, now has the love and admiration of all the people who used to love him, Shakespeare; because these people have long since ceased to love Shakespeare, and since Shakespeare’s love towards them has also cooled, the poet had assumed those people were dead. All of love, in fact, now resides in the young man – including Love himself, in the form of Cupid, the Roman god of love.
Shakespeare then tells us that when love has died in the past, he has shed many a tear at its passing, as though at a funeral. He likens these tears to ‘interest’ paid to the dead – in a financial analogy – because it’s our duty to weep for those who have died. But these lost loves are not really dead – but they’re ‘out of sight, out of mind’, we might say, since the poet has ceased to have feelings for them. These loves have instead gone to lie in the charnel-house that is the Fair Youth: yes, he’s being likened to a sort of mass grave where all of Shakespeare’s past loves have been buried. This is because everyone who meets the Fair Youth ends up transferring all their love to him, because he is the most lovely and beloved of all men (and, presumably, all women too). And so, by association, the young man also has all the poet’s love too, since everyone he has loved now loves the Fair Youth.
The Internet connectivity was lost when Thommo and Geetha started singing but they later sent a fine recorded version which can be heard by clicking on the link below:
Sonnet 31 Geetha-Thommo singing
When Joe heard it he wrote to Geetha that he liked it very much and so will everyone else.
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
It’s an acceptance that lovers who once belonged to the poet, have fled to the Fair Youth – but no need to despair on that account. For the friends he thought he’d lost are all recovered in the Fair Youth:
But confessed Joe, he could not have borne the splitting of lovers with such equanimity, if all the girls who were sweet with him, suddenly left to take up with, say, Hrithik Roshan.
Geetha was reassuring in her reply:
‘No girl of yours will go away and to no Hrithik Roshan... (taking liberty to say) no brains there!!’😂😂
Joe
Taming of the Shrew is a comedy of Shakespeare that centres around the elder of two daughters, Kate or Katharine, refractory in nature, and her younger sister who is pliant and sweet-tempered, Bianca. Their father , Baptista of Padua, wants to give them in marriage but insists on finding a husband for Kate first before he will betroth Bianca to any of the suitors lining up for her, including Lucentio. Along comes Petruchio the son of a well-placed merchant of Verona who has heard of Kate and had his curiosity piqued. He decides to woo her, but how to win in the game? Incidentally, the dowries that need to be paid are by the successful suitor to their bride’s father, not vice versa.
Petruchio agrees to marry Katherine sight unseen. The next day, he goes to Baptista’s house to meet her, and they have a tremendous duel of words. As Katherine insults Petruchio repeatedly, Petruchio tells her that he will marry her whether she agrees or not. He exclaims:
I love her ten times more than e'er I did:
O! how I long to have some chat with her!
The passage Joe chose is from Act 2, Scene 1, the first encounter between Petruchio and Kate, turns out to be a bantering exchange in which Kate shows her spirited nature in the barbed responses she gives. Shakespeare in such exchanges is free with sexual innuendoes, and has puns to entertain the audience.
Taming of the Shrew – John Cleese as Petruchio and Sarah Badel as Kate
Petruchio’s strategy is simple:
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale:
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly wash'd with dew:
Further on Petruchio declares:
And now I find report a very liar;
For thou are pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,
But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers:
Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,
The customary speech of Kate that is purveyed to the masses is in the final act Act 5, Scene 2 where Petruchio has completely transformed Kate and invites her at the wedding dinner to instruct the women around the table on the duties they bear to their husbands. She obliges with a speech that would bring a paroxysm of outrage to feminists:
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
…
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
…
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.
A truly cringe-worthy offering of obeisance by a woman to a man. But you can watch Elizabeth Taylor pull it off here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti1Oh9imI8I
Elizabeth Taylor in Kate’s Final Speech – Act 5, Scene 2 of The Taming of the Shrew
Kavita
Kavita chose the passage from Othello, Act 5, Scene 2, where Othello is about to strangle Desdemona. In this scene, love and hate are mixed and Othello is so enraged by the suspected infidelity of his wife that he wants to kill her. If she is let go she will betray more men. KumKum thought it a moving passage that brings out the hateful misguided jealousy that makes Othello commit his atrocious act. He kisses her once more and says:
And love thee after. One more, and this the last:
Othello prepares to strangle Desdemona and asks if she's said her prayers
But alas the true indictment of murder is its irretrievability, that the victim loses every chance in life to make good.
Have you pray'd to-night, Desdemona?
– he doesn’t want her despatched to hell by his hand, unrepentant for her sins. Then Othello admonishes her:
Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,
Solicit for it straight.
She is puzzled and when falsely accused of harlotry she denies it:
Offend you in my life; never loved Cassio
But with such general warranty of heaven
Othello is bent on taking revenge on her too after having Cassio murdered by his treacherous lieutenant, Iago. She protests:
O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!
To no avail. He stifles her.
KumKum called it a ‘beautiful’ passage. Rather, it’s a passage of ill-conceived passion, full of grief.
Such crimes go by the name, crimes of passion (crime passionell, in French) and traditionally have been looked upon leniently. In the French Penal Code lighter sentences were given for crimes of passion. Article 324 gave licence for the murder of an unfaithful wife and her lover at the hand of her husband, though only “at the moment” when the wife and her lover were “[caught] in the act” by the husband in the matrimonial home. This law has undergone changes since 1975. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion
KumKum
KumKum recited Hermione’s speech from The Winter’s Tale – Act 3, Scene 2. Jealousy also figures in what KumKum was going to read. It is a common enough feeling. In the kingdom of Sicilia, King Leontes is being visited by his childhood friend King Polixenes of Bohemia. After spending some time Polixenes wants to return home. Leontes begs him to stay longer. His Queen, Hermione pleads with Polixenes to stay on and he is easily convinced. Meanwhile Hermione is pregnant with Leontes’ child, but he starts suspecting the true father was Polixenes. Leontes condemns Hermione to death, and this speech is Hermione’s defence in court. But since the play is listed among Shakespeare’s comedies, we are sure Hermione won’t meet the fate of Desdemona! But we are wrong …
Leontes jails Hermione without evidence, based only on his suspicions. In captivity she gives birth to her baby girl. Weak from childbearing, Hermione is brought to trial where her innocence is proven by a message from the oracle of Delphi. But Mamillius, the beloved son of Hermione, dies from the distress of his mother's plight. Hermione collapses and is taken away and dies. When given the news of Hermione's death, Leontes discovers a new-found remorse for his actions.
The play continues in a fairy-tale manner with the infant daughter of the dead Hermione becoming a lovely girl, Perdita, now being brought up by a shepherd. And who should she meet and fall in love with, but the son of Polixenes, Florizel? There is a grand reunion at the court of King Leontes. A statue of the much lamented Hermione is unveiled and, lo and behold! – the statues comes to life and Leontes and his Queen are restored to one another.
The plot of The Winter's Tale is from Robert Greene's pastoral romance Pandosto, published in 1588. Shakespeare's changes are slight, its most distinctive feature being the sixteen-year gap between the third and fourth acts to give time to Perdita to become nubile. As a curiosity, the play contains the most famous of Shakespearean stage directions: Exit, pursued by a bear, presaging the offstage death of Antigonus, a staunch friend of Hermione who is ordered by Leontes to take the infant Perdita away and abandon her in the forest.
In Hermione’s defence speech she lists the things she has lost: the King’s favour, the presence of her son, Mamillius, her infant child condemned, herself proclaimed a strumpet (the very word Othello uses against Desdemona). She throws a challenge to the King:
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die?
She declares that her life may not be worth anything to her any longer, but her honour matters, and she will clear it. She hurls in the King’s face the farce of a trial he is holding, declaring it is an exercise of tyranny (‘rigour’), not law:
Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else
But what your jealousies awake, I tell you
'Tis rigour, and not law.
She invokes the right to oracular proof at the end:
Apollo be my judge.
Pamela
Pamela recited Sonnet 94, the theme of which is the conflict between outward appearance and inner character.
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
The sonnet contrasts virtue with appearance. Apparently referring to the Fair Youth, he is described as cool and detached. In the second quatrain a different kind of youth with a stingy, hoarding nature is portrayed.
The third quatrain, seemingly disconnected, presents an image of a sweet summer flower that that succumbs easily to ‘base infection,’ when forced to compete with noxious weeds. The concluding couplet resolves the contrast:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
That outward appearance does not necessarily correspond to inner worth is one message. Persons who are “the lords and owners of their faces” deceive through false appearances. So too, the summer flower may appear beautiful and animated, but is overcome by ‘the basest weed.’ The entire sonnet is a metaphor to indicate you cannot trust outward appearance – it is inner worth that reveals the true nature of things. It is enough if you remember the last line:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
You can access a fine reading of this sonnet by Samuel West, the English actor and theatre director, at
https://soundcloud.com/user-115260978/557-sonnet-94-by-william-shakespeare
starting at minute 1.13
Pamela called the sonnet ‘deep and profound.’
Saras
Saras read the famous St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V Act 4, scene 3. The feast of St Crispin (or Crispian) is celebrated on Oct 25. This date is the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, believed to be twins, the patron saints of shoemakers, cobblers, currier's, tanners and leather workers. This speech was made by Henry V on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt to rally his troops, outnumbered by the French.
The battle was part of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. Henry had invaded France and laid siege to the city of Harfleur; the battle caused many casualties among the English who lost a large part of their army, though it resulted in a victory. Henry was on his way back to England but could not cross a river because of French defences. He took a roundabout route to reach Calais on the coast opposite England but found his path blocked by a considerably larger French army. Despite the numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English. Agincourt was one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War. For a detailed history of the battle consults the wiki entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt
This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, with the English and Welsh archers comprising nearly 80 percent of Henry's army.
Battle of Agincourt (1415) – a miniature painting on canvas by Enguerrand de Monstrelet
The entire purpose of the speech was to exhort the men to fight though outnumbered; it should certainly figure among the great speeches except that one must remember that it is the rhetorical art of Shakespeare on display, not the oratory of Henry V. To my mind the best rendition is by Kenneth Branagh as Henry V from the 1989 film, which he directed. You can hear the speech by him at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yZNMWFqvM
It was thought a bit impudent of Branagh to take it on, after the great Shakespearean actor Laurence Olivier had played the role in the 1944 film, which he directed. You can listen to Olivier deliver the oration here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x26GN6rQbZI
Henry V - Laurence Olivier in the title role
In my opinion, a) the background music during Olivier’s delivery ruins the drama, b) Olivier pitches his voice a register higher than needed, and c) Branagh’s pauses for dramatic effect and his voice modulation add a significant impact. The speech has fine quotes:
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
Henry V - Kenneth Branagh, – he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother
Everyone appreciated the spirited rendering by Saras and Joe clapped. Saras read from a well-worn volume of the Complete Works that belonged to her grandmother.
Shoba
Everyone congratulated Shoba on her birthday that coincides with Shakespeare’s. But no cake on this occasion as we are all remote on Zoom. Shoba read from Romeo and Juliet, Act 3 Scene 2. Everybody knows the story from the many adaptations on stage and Franco Zeffirelli’s famous 1968 production, starring Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting.
Bollywood too has adapted it several times:
Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone in the 2013 film ‘Goliyon ki Ras Leela Ram-Leela’ based on R&J
It is well-known that William Shakespeare is the single most featured screenplay writer in Bombay talkies. And what connects Shakespeare to Bollywood boils down to one ingredient: masala, says Jonathan Gil Harris in this article:
https://www.thehindu.com/books/romping-with-romeo-shakespeare-in-india/article27157877.ece
It all began, Harris says, with the 1935 Sohrab Modi film Khoon ka Khoon, a Hindi-Urdu version of Hamlet crammed with shayari and no less than 17 songs.
In the passage Shoba chose, Juliet is waiting for Romeo, and wishes that Phaeton the charioteer of the Sun god, Helios, would whip his horses to carry the Sun faster to the distant west and allow night to arrive sooner. For then would
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers don’t need daylight: their own beauty casts illumination enough. In any case, if love be blind, night is the best time for it to prosper.
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
…
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
Shakespeare – Passages from Plays and Poems Read
Excellent blog on KRG's session on Shakespeare on April 23rd, 2021. Our readers selected beautiful pieces from Shakespeare's various plays, a sonnet and a poem were recited, and a sonnet was sung.It was such an entertaining evening.
ReplyDeleteThe blog has more information than being a mere recording of the actual event. A well researched piece. Thank You.
Thank you Joe for this detailed entertaining and informative write up on KRGs Session on Shakespeare. It was good to hear Thommo and Geetha sing Sonnet 31, as on the day we could not hear them due to poor Internet connectivity.
ReplyDelete