Shakespeare is certainly more alive, in the enduring life that he breathed into his work, than the dead and dying ideas of his critics. It is, therefore, a delightfully apt conceit on Dr. David A. James’ part to bring him to life to sit in jocular judgment. Joseph Pearce in Conversation with Film-Maker, David A. [...]
The beauty of art comes in many forms, shapes and sizes. It is rendered in metal, stone, sound, movement, oils, watercolours and words. It ranges in scale from the majestic splendour of the great cathedrals to the diminutive glory of the finest crafted jewellery, from the grandeur of the greatest epic poems to the sonorous [...]
William Shakespeare (baptized April 26, 1564, died April 23, 1616) is arguably the greatest writer in any language. Shakespeare’s classical poetry is not only one of the most exalted examples of what an immortal sense of creative identity can accomplish, it is a symbol of the artist’s immortality, and timelessness itself. As today’s coronavirus crisis [...]
It’s always exciting whenever a missing piece of the puzzle of William Shakespeare’s life comes to light. One such piece was discovered recently in a London archive by Lucy Munro, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at King’s College London. In doing research on the location of London playhouses, Dr. Munro stumbled upon a [...]
The default position with Shakespeare is to favor bold revisions over the poetic wisdom in the plays themselves. Why not let Shakespeare be what he is? In a recent piece for the New York Times, Drew Lichtenberg, the artistic producer at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, laments the closing of the California Shakespeare Theater [...]
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII Is the world a stage? And are all of us merely players [...]
Heeding Shakespeare’s insistence that we need to heed the wisdom of the fool, it shocked me that a recent production of "King Lear" at a local Christian university had excised most of the key speeches of Poor Tom, which enunciate radical Christian wisdom, thus eviscerating Shakespeare's profound moral vision. For the wisdom of this world [...]
In the decades and centuries following his death, the pieces of the puzzle connecting Shakespeare to the Catholic faith were lost, or were forgotten or set aside. But there is little doubt that Shakespeare’s contemporaries heard the words spoken from the stage with the eyes that saw what he was saying. If we look back [...]
Should honor and fame no longer be ends of ambition in such a world? The ancient philosophers doubted the ultimate merit of fame, but they also looked for the most spirited students, those most inclined to “undertake extensive and arduous enterprises." In response to my essay about baptizing ambition, a friend from Boston College recommended [...]
Who would have thought that so much philosophy could be found in such little poetry? Who would have thought that so much could be said in so few words? Next time you read Shakespeare, read carefully, and you may find more philosophy than first meets the eye. We have recently celebrated the feast of Corpus [...]
If pride might be said to be the making of God in our own image, a lesser form of pride is the making of our gods, our idols, into our own image. This latter form of pride, what might be called pride in the lower key, is made manifest in the multifarious ways in which [...]
Joel Coen’s "The Tragedy of Macbeth" reminds us at a visceral level that the supernatural and the natural worlds are interwoven in a matrix of good and evil. When Macbeth dabbles in the occult, he lets loose the lords of darkness. A stark, new cinematic take on Macbeth is Joel Coen’s 2021 adaptation The Tragedy [...]
The first spark of genuine engagement with great writers most often comes from a teacher, and the ever-fresh immortality of the great work has its ironic contrast in the aging and death of those who made the introduction. So it is for me with Shakespeare, who was first truly impressed upon my imagination during my [...]
The whole “woke” agenda has become a delightful farce, warranting not so much bemusement as amusement. Take, for example, the recently announced decision by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to flagellate Shakespeare for his alleged role in promoting “white supremacist imperialism”. The SBT, which manages historical properties in Stratford-upon-Avon, has promised to “decolonize” its museum collections [...]