Reconstructed Globe Theater – Image from the Herald Sun (Link below)
2014 is an auspicious year for any Shakespeare blog, this being the 450th anniversary of the Bard’s birth in 1564. Celebrations will commence all over the world around April. Check your local listings for events in your area.
William Shakespeare may have been born and died in England, but his works are a global phenomenon encompassing the breadth and depth of the human spirit – and with it the entire world. People everywhere will want to join in on the festivities.
NOTE: I will continually update the blog as I become aware of new events. For now, here are a few links to get you started:
HERALD SUN: JOIN THE BARD’S BIRTHDAY BASH!
These, naturally, are but a few examples.
Keep in mind that both 2014 and 2016 will each mark anniversaries in the life of Shakespeare, with 2014 being the 450th year after his birth and 2016 the 400th since his death.
In a way, the whole three-year span will be filled with news, notes and celebrations of some kind; that is, a step beyond the usual. I wlll be alerting you and posting links as I come across them.
Some readers may assume that I planned this oh-so-well. But, alas, I deserve no feather in my cap since you can clearly see that I first attempted this blog in 2010, subsequently aborting it for various personal reasons.
My stated goal here is to begin anew the project I had started, this time bringing it to a rightful and fitting conclusion. Once the cycle is finished, a future reader may climb aboard at any time that personally suits them and design a year-long program of their own. In theory, you shall have myself and any comments to accompany you.
For that to happen, of course, the job at hand must be accomplished. There is much work to be done!
My reward/incentive will be a literary tour of the UK in 2016 (knock on wood), spanning from mid April in Stratford through mid June in Dublin so I can be on hand for Bloomsday. Heady times, indeed.
In the meantime, I have only finished Othello, but have added an extra week in order to reread it and watch as many of the movie adaptations as I can. At the top of my list are the versions with Orson Welles, Lawrence Olivier — and the opera starring Placido Domingo.
For those of you keeping score at home, I am reading the No Fear Shakespeare translation of Othello this time round, a text with both the original on one side and a modern language “update” on the other, mostly to disentangle certain thorny passages that confounded me upon first try.
Footnotes, unfortunately, have been of little or no help. Since I am a bear of little brain (from the Tao of Pooh), I am going to employ the handy dandy text that you can see for yourself HERE.
As for the “translations” themselves, more on that as I break down the relevant passages over the next few days.
A Year of Shakespeare 