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Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Ducks and cover

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann Galley Beggar Press, £14.99, pp1020 . Why, I asked some months back, in these pages, do the protagonists in American fiction these days seem so lost? What is it they’re all so het up about? Well… everything. At least according to the narrator of Ducks, Newburyport. Lucy Ellmann’s monster novel […]

NEWS AT A GLANCE #5

Of arshins, poods, and workplace happiness. A whole new week’s worth of the news where you aren’t. — For Queen Mob’s Tea House

A moment of indexision

On Bram Stoker, #indexday, and the weird and wonderful history of the hapax legomenon. — For The Spectator

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. The telephone has a tendency to render the girl operators left-eared. — The Nelson Evening Mail, July 4 1908 . Eight wickets for eight runs is the worst batting collapse in Twenty20 international cricket. St Blaise is the patron saint of sore throats, and of knitting. Estonian literature suffers from a dearth of stories […]

Good show(?)! – Mozart Undone

His circus-like extravaganzas have sliced and diced The Beatles, played fast and loose with Bob Dylan, and spawned successful imitations across the theatre scene in his native Denmark. Now the gleefully wilful director-cum-ringmaster Nikolaj Cederholm brings his trademark ‘theatre concert’ to London’s Barbican, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s temporary residence in the British […]

Cymbeline (in Arabic)

Yesterday’s Globe theatre retelling of the Cymbeline story opened – or at least appeared to open – with the entire cast contributing their 2p-worth on the issue of what the story of Cymbeline actually was. And fair dos. A ‘late’ and abnormally tortuous Shakespearean number, Cymbeline seems not only to have been constructed out of […]

A younger Shakespeare hedges his bets

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and/or temperate…

The life and times of Sir Jonathan Miller

BBC2’s Arena on one of the last remaining Renaissance men. — For theartsdesk