The Hobbledehoy often wonder what William Shakespeare sounded like. Unfortunately, we remember what our high school teacher sounded like while reading Macbeth.
Williams Shakespeare
Hedgehogs in Shakespeare’s plays and the early modern imagination
What did people in Shakespeare’s time think about hedgehogs? See where his plays reference them, and check out a 17th-century recipe for hedgehog pudding.
While the global population of European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) is stable, their numbers have been rapidly declining in the UK for decades, especially in rural areas. This has led to a huge upswell of conservation efforts as people try to protect the UK’s only spiny mammal, and one of these efforts is centered in Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, which has dubbed itself a Hedgehog-Friendly Town.
Stratford’s most famous resident paints a less-than-flattering picture of the humble hedgehog, however. In Richard III, for instance, Richard goads Anne about her father-in-law, King Henry VI, whom Richard has killed (according to Shakespeare, at least). Richard denies it until Anne, fed up, asks him the direct question:
ANNE
Didst thou not kill this king?RICHARD
I grant you.ANNE
Dost grant me, hedgehog? Then, God grant me too
Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed.
O, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous. (1.2.108-111)
The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as an example of an obsolete
Ophelia review – tragic no longer
Ophelia is one of Shakespeare’s most iconic yet underdeveloped dramatic roles. A sweet and naïve girl, she’s driven mad by Hamlet’s wavering affections and her father’s death. She was often the subject of paintings, yet rarely of novels until the 21st century. Ophelia, starring Daisy Ridley, is an adaptation of Lisa Klein’s 2006 book of the same name, and does a valiant job at not only filling in the blanks but bringing some flair of its own.Ophelia is a precocious child of the Danish court, handpicked by Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts) to join her ladies-in-waiting. She soon becomes the Queen’s confidant, reading her stories and fulfilling errands. This access lends her privy to the royal family’s failing marriage and the machinations of the King’s brother, Claudius (Clive Owen). When Prince Hamlet (George MacKay) returns from university, she becomes entwined in the rise and fall of a dynasty.
Ophelia has a tough act balancing loyalty to the source material and finding its own rhythm. Key to what works is Daisy Ridley, who brings guile and fidelity to Ophelia without ever betraying the original role. She undoubtably looks the part, immediately bringing to mind John Everett Millais’s masterpiece (which is referenced in the cinematography), but adds an agency that’s sorely lacking in the play.
Semi Chellas’s script does a good job at expanding the women’s roles. Pivotal moments from Hamlet, such as the Queen’s remarriage or Ophelia’s mad singing, are no longer mysteries of the woman’s mind but logical steps to advance in a man’s world. Ophelia sees the folly in the men’s violent distractions, while the Queen numbs herself to them. In the end, they both reap what they sow.
Not everything works so well. It’s rather apt that Ridley stars, as at times it feels like watching one of Disney’s Star Wars films, shoehorning Shakespeare references with knowing winks. Some land neatly, such as Naomi Watts playing siblings like Claudius and the King are traditionally cast, and some come screeching in, such as a potion that mimics death. There’s also an attempt to mirror Shakespeare’s language without committing to new prose, which proves distracting.
Ironically, at times it feels like the Hamlet scenes are getting in the way of Ophelia’s story, bending it out of shape to fit the pre-existing narrative. Scenes such as “The Mousetrap Play” are admirably staged, but Hamlet’s constant disappearances makes his relationship with Ophelia difficult to invest in. You can’t help but wonder why she doesn’t sack the unstable emo off altogether.
Still, it’s easier to forgive such inconsistencies when the film looks this good. Director Claire McCarthy and cinematographer Denson Baker rinse every drop of beauty from each frame. In an interview with theartsdesk earlier this week, McCarthy revealed the look is a tribute to Pre-Raphaelite art. It’s an apt comparison. Scenes feel tangibly historical but sumptuously composed, creating images that bely the likely small budget.
How well Ophelia works depends on what you’re expecting from it. As a partner piece to Hamlet, it’s an interesting twist on the traditional roles. As a standalone film, it somewhat suffers from its parent script. But particularly strong performances and beautiful imagery make it worth catching.
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Shakespeare gets a sitcom in ‘Upstart Crow’
Upstart Crow
The popular film “Shakespeare in Love” seemed to unleash a wave of fictional imaginings of the English writer: the plays “Equivocation” and “The Beard of Avon,” the films “Anonymous” and “All Is True,” the short-lived TV series “Will.” But 1999’s frothy Best Picture winner was hardly the first rendering of Shakespeare as a fictional character.
The Bard of Avon made periodic appearances in novels throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, from a trilogy by Robert Folkestone Williams in the 1840s to Anthony Burgess’s 1964 book Nothing Like the Sun. And his first recorded stage appearance as a character is from 1679, some 60 years after the playwright’s death, when “the Ghost of Shakespeare” emerged to give a prologue to Thomas Dryden’s version of “Troilus and Cressida.”
There is nothing ghostly about the Shakespeare we meet in “Upstart Crow,” a delightfully cheeky BBC sitcom comprising three short seasons, available in the United States through the on-demand service Britbox as well as via Amazon. As played by the acerbic David Mitchell, one half of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, this Will Shakespeare is a mildly schlubby and insecure if well-intentioned striver, dividing his time between a bustling family hearth in Stratford and a rooming house in London from which he is building his playwriting career. The show’s title comes from an epithet hurled at Shakespeare in 1592 by a jealous poet, Robert Greene, in a pamphlet.
A fictional Greene is on hand as the show’s mustache-twirling villain to pound home the familiar theme of Shakespeare’s low birth and insufficiently fancy education. In a typical pithy putdown, he dismisses Shakespeare as “a country bum-snot, an oik of Avon, a town-school spotty-grotty.” The show’s Greene also functions as a literal nemesis, positioned (ahistorically) as the Master of the Revels, the impresario and censor through whom all staged entertainment must pass muster [ . . . ]
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