BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: SHAKESPEARE #3

SHAKESPEARE ON TELEVISION

“Every single one of Shakespeare’s plays has an organic 
rhythm of its own. I do not think he understood the 
five-act system until mid-career, but he had a practical 
sense of timing and variation, and he was a perfect story-teller. Therefore no commercial programme can ever do Shakespeare properly, because the breaks are never right
 and are never filled with the right music.”

Peter Levi in The Spectator (August 16, 1986)
**

Although William Shakespeare was never appointed Poet 
Laureate of England, Shakespeare’s godson – Sir William
D’Avenant was named to the post in 1637.

**

RAYMOND CHANDLER ON SHAKESPEARE

	Writing to Hamish Hamilton in April 1949, Raymond Chandler, one of  the creators of the “tough detective” 
story, offered the following assessment of Shakespeare:

	Shakespeare would have done well in any generation
	because he would have refused to die in a corner; he
	would have taken the false gods and made them
	over; he would have taken the current formulae and
	forced them into something lesser men thought
	them incapable of.  Alive today he would undoubtedly
	have written and directed motion pictures,
	plays, and God knows what.  Instead of saying ‘This
	medium is no good,’ he would have used it and made 
	it good.

Reprinted in Raymond Chandler Speaking, ed. Dorothy Gardiner 
and Katherine Sorley Walker (Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p.82

**
SHAKESPEARE’S CHARACTERS LAUGH AT
JOKES THE AUDIENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND

“I have noticed that in plays where characters on stage 
laugh a great deal, the people out front laugh very 
little. This is notoriously true for productions of Shakespeare’s comedies .’Well, sirrah,’ says one buffoon, 
‘he did go heigh-ho upon a bird bolt.” This gem is 
followed by such guffaws and general merriment as 
would leave Olson and Johnson wondering how they failed.”
                 
Jean Kerr. Reflections of a Part-Time Playwright
**

**
PRINCE HARRY , THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

“Harry counts himself among the Shakespeare hordes,
‘bored and confused as a teen-ager when his father drags 
Him to see performances of the Royal Shakespeare Company; disinclined to read much of anything, least of all the 
freighted works of Britain’s national author….’I tried 
to change ,’ he recalls. ‘I opened Hamlet. Hmm. Lonely 
prince, obsessed with dead parent, watches remaining 
parent fall in love with dead parent’s usurper…? I 
slammed it shut. ‘No, thank you.’”

Rebbeca Mead. “The Royal Me” in The New Yorker
(January 23, 2023)

**

SHAKESPEARE AND THE WORD LAUGH

	laugh occurs 87 times in 238 speeches within 41 works.
for example:
Isabella in Measure for Measure
[II, 2] line 875


Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

from Concordance of Shakespeare's Complete Works
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org › concordance

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Perfect Film work for Shakespeare  -- Line Producer

**

READING SHAKESPEARE & MAKING KNOTS

The following item appeared in The Saturday Review
on September 3, 1949. It was signed by J.L.

“There was once an American in a hotel in Iceland 
who read Shakespeare and discovered ten thousand 
new ways to tie knots.  “When his discoveries were 
made known,  an American reporter was sent to 
interview him.

“Is it true,” asked the reporter. “that the reading of Shakespeare is the reason for your great discoveries?”

 “ Yes, it is quite true,” answered his fellow countryman. 
“As I read him, I held a spool of twine in my hand. I 
followed his rhythms with the twine and the knots were 
formed.”

“Are there any more knots possible?” asked the reporter.

“Oh I have ceased reading Shakespeare,” said the savant. 
‘ Now I read the comments of different men who have 
read his works and I haven’t made a solitary knot.”
**

IMDB TRIVIA ABOUT THE MOVIE SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

"Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter are married in 
real life, and in this movie, they played the same 
role. Staunton played the Nurse off-stage, and 
Carter played the nurse on-stage."

**
EVERYDAY, MY ARIEL


Everyday, my Ariel,
I put the world behind me, but it shoot back.
One generation & the next,'
Light as sunlight thrushing
As thru the Spanish Cedars flash
Cormorants magnific with their hooked beaks,
Always a fitful cornucopia
To take the breath away.
I press my life to the jumping dayshine.
What do I demand?
More space? More freedom?
Freedom to do what? Hungering for magic,
I stand on Prospero's isle.
Could I have been so wrong about my life?
Far out on the ocean,
Replenished & green,
One anonymous sailor
Fastens his shrouds.

Louis Phillips
from "The Man On Prospero's Isle" a sequence of based 
upon The Tempest, published in The Time, The Hour, The Solitariness of the Place (Norcross, Georgia: Swallow's 
Tale Press, 1985)