Pictures of the Globe

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During some search engine browsing I stumbled across this page containing a zillion pictures of the Globe Theatre that somebody obviously took during a trip. They’re from all sorts of angles, inside and out, distance and close up. Nice to have a fresh look at this sort of thing.

Also posted because it comes from Gweepnet, which is the brainchild of some of my fellow alum at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Great Shakespeare program, given that it’s an engineering school. I saw “The Tempest” while there. Hi, Professor Vick!

Shakespeare and the Players

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Shakespeare and the Players

Wow. I’m not even sure what to make of this, I’ve just begun going through it. From the front page: “Shakespeare and the Players is a survey through postcards of the many now unfamiliar English and American actors who played Shakespeare’s characters for late Victorian and Edwardian audiences.” The images are just fascinating…

Tag: shakespeare

Quiz time again. Last words.

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

http://shakespeare.about.com/library/bllastwordsquiz.htm

Have I posted this one before? It just showed up in my mailbox today, so if I have, that means that About.com is rotating through them. Anyway, enjoy. I like “last words” because it’s come to be the sort of thing that people know about their Shakespeare. I always thought a good category on Jeopardy would be “first words / last words” where during the first round all the questions were about famous first lines, and in the second half it would be all famous last words.

I realize the point about “These quizzes don’t prove anything about your knowledge of Shakespeare”, and you’re right. But they’re still entertaining. I got 8 out of 10, and I’m pleased with that. Gotta work on my Othello, apparently.

Shadowplay : Shakespeare as secret political rebel?

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Here’s an interesting story for a Sunday morning. In her new book “Shadowplay”, author Clare Asquith presents the case that Shakespeare was writing coded political messages into his plays. Asquith claims to be the first person to have discovered the code, as well as crack it.

A little sample, from the article…

Sunburn:

The sun represented divinity, and so sunburn denotes closeness to God. Shakespeare described himself as ‘tanned’ in Sonnet 62.

Turtle dove:

A traditional image for the apostles, used to signify those who remained faithful in the face of persecution.

Nightingale:

The story of Philomela, who was turned into a nightingale, was an image of the desecrated church and its covert protests.

Red rose:

A term used by Catholics for their ‘old, beautiful’ religion.

Dark:

The new, Protestant religion, associated with black print and sober dress.

Five:

Devotion to the five wounds of Christ led to patterned emblems on the banners borne against the new regime. Shakespeare uses it in the form of flowers, birthmarks or heraldic blazons as a marker of Catholicism.