Tag Archives: drama

By What Criteria Should One Evaluate Shakespeare?

In the Preface to his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765), the literary critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) had some opinions about what makes Shakespeare so good. Here they are. See if you agree (and notice how many of them are … Continue reading

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A New Zealand PSA of Unusual Rhetorical Power

Wow. This works on so many levels. It humanizes the strangers to one another; it points up our liabilities to impatience and misjudgments of risk and distance; and it vividly dramatizes the consequences of casual bad habits, distraction, and inattention. A … Continue reading

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What Makes Shakespeare So Good? (Hint: Mimesis Might Have Something To Do With It)

In the preface to his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765), the literary critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) had some opinions about what makes Shakespeare so good. Here they are (and notice how many of them are grounded in mimesis): Shakespeare … Continue reading

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Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) on the Success and Survival of Shakespeare

Literary critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), in the famous preface to his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765), attempts to address the question of Shakespeare’s genius: why have his plays been so captivating to so many for so long? Johnson offers … Continue reading

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Emer O’Toole Says Shakespeare is Globally Popular Because of Colonialism

If a student were to ask me why people, the world over, read and put on performances of Shakespeare’s plays, I would basically say the following: A difficult achievement is universally recognizable. Shakespeare has done something, aesthetically and imaginatively, very far … Continue reading

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Patrick Stewart on Ian McKellen’s Advice on How to Do Familiar Shakespeare Lines Like “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow . . .”

And here’s Ian McKellen playing Macbeth in 1976:

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Close Literary Reading 101: Some Terms and Ideas for Thinking about Dramatic Structure

I thought it might be fun (at least for me) to lay out, in a series of short blog posts, some of the basic terms and ideas that I present to my students when talking about the “close reading” of literary texts. … Continue reading

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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Jurist?

Dramatist Bryony Lavery has a new play running in London this month. New Stateman interviewed her, and asked her about her creative process: Lavery’s latest play, staged at the Young Vic, is based on the horrific sinking of the Russian … Continue reading

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“Waiting for God”: A Short YouTube Video by Santi Tafarella

Today I made my first foray onto YouTube by setting up an account at XtraNormal.com. XtraNormal.com is a FREE animated video production site where you can mash together scene and character templates to create stories. You can then download them to YouTube. It’s … Continue reading

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“Nothing Staged Can Stay”: A Poem by Santi Tafarella

  before the night’s glittering black curtain   the Father of dung   beatles moves the moon

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