The Tempest is Shakespeare’s final play.  He’d written the histories, the comedies and the tragedies.  Then he wrote four romances–more what we would call fantasies—that slowly warmed up to this farewell to the stage and no doubt to the life he’d led in London.  Like a lot of us have discovered in our later years,  Read the Rest…

Seattle GreenStage did a Shakespeare in the Park production of Henry VIII this summer.  Most folks aren’t aware Shakespeare wrote a Henry VIII.  I thought the same thing.  When I started reading it this summer, I saw that I had read it in college.  Or at least underlined a bunch of stuff in the preface.   Read the Rest…

This is the play that contains the famous line “All the world’s a stage.”   It’s the beginning of a speech by a melancholy poseur named Jacques, which the text says is pronounced “Jakes.” I enjoyed saying Ja-queeze to myself because Jacques just barely avoids being a Peter Sellers character, so seriously does he take himself.   Read the Rest…

Nobody knows you when you’re down and out. Shakespeare’s psychological insight in this play interests me more than some obvious parallels with what goes on in our political and religious discourse so I am going to stick to that and leave the cheap shots to someone else.   In the fourth act, Timon says “I am  Read the Rest…

My first thought was “oh god, not another Roman war play.”  But like every other Shakespeare play, it found a home in me. I read it and watched two different productions of it.  It’s striking how many different aspects an actor or director can choose to amplify. The play opens with the citizens of Rome  Read the Rest…

Pericles, Prince of Tyre takes the form of a hero’s journey—actually it takes the form of an exceptionally bad B-movie—but Shakespeare makes it work somehow.  There were a few stops along the way that left me reeling in their rawness. Right out of the gate, 25 lines in, we are told by Gower, the narrator  Read the Rest…

There are women’s names in only three of Shakespeare’s titles: Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida.  I think this play should be called Imogen.  Cymbeline, the king is a dolt whereas his daughter Imogen shimmers with courage, imagination and integrity.  It’s a long play which tries to encompass the doings of  Read the Rest…

A fuss about a trifle?  I don’t think so.  Marjorie Garber in Shakespeare After All lists some of the possible ways of looking at the word nothing.  She points out that a zero is something of a paradox.  It’s also a full circle or in other words, everything.  And she informs us that “nothing” was  Read the Rest…

How about those Macbeths, huh?  They seem like a fun couple.  Actually, as I think other people have noted, they have the best marriage in all of Shakespeare.  They love each other, they have great passion for each other, they understand each other, and they do things together.  It’s this last that’s the problem.  They  Read the Rest…

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven. And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (V, i)   I’ve loved this line since I first  Read the Rest…