Charlie Rose

finalfantasytown  12/31/2012 05:36 AM Report

The myh of Pandora and Epithemeus is true and real. It has already begun. Pandoras misery is destructive. the flood...

SharkswithfrikingLazers  05/08/2012 02:46 AM Report

Well done. Great ending:

http://youtu.be/OxoUUbMii7Q

Shows "The Three Little Pigs" as if done by Shakespeare with an American ending.

However, incorrectly stated--Shakespeare did NOT have not a working vocabulary of 54,000 words--perhaps half of that.

"Anti-Stratfordians also question how Shakespeare, with no record of the education and cultured background displayed in the works bearing his name, could have acquired the extensive vocabulary found in the plays and poems. The author's vocabulary is calculated to be between 17,500 and 29,000 words.[43]"

The low figure of 17,500 is that of Manfred Scheler. The upper figure 29,000, from Marvin Spevack, is true only if all word forms (cat and cats counted as two different words, for example), compound words, emendations, variants, proper names, foreign words, onomatopoeic words, and deliberate malapropisms are included.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question#Education_and_literacy

Charlie, you probably would have found the Bard too talkative if he was trying to use all those words.

finalfantasytown  03/04/2012 11:56 PM Report

I begin to collect shadow words and particles which are partly belonged to shadow, such as Nyx, Aether, Blame, Death, Deceit, Destinies, Distress, Doom, Dreams, Fate, Nemesis, Old Age, Strife, Sleep, ghost, etc.

finalfantasytown  01/03/2012 09:17 AM Report

I think Charlie got the feeling of deep sadness in the first part interview. Even cannot breathe and the spleen is painful. For me in real sadness, the painful part is kidney, not kidney. I don't know why. maybe the feeling is not pure.

Shakespeares have been in the mythology part of library.

finalfantasytown  01/03/2012 09:15 AM Report

I think Charlie got the feeling of deep sadness in the first part interview. Even cannot breathe and the spleen is painful. For me in real sadness, the painful part is kidney, not kidney. I don't know why. maybe the feeling is not pure.

Shakespeares have been in the mythology part of library.

finalfantasytown  01/03/2012 09:15 AM Report

I think Charlie got the feeling of deep sadness in the first part interview. Even cannot breathe and the spleen is painful. For me in real sadness, the painful part is kidney, not kidney. I don't know why. maybe the feeling is not pure.

Shakespeares have been in the mythology part of library.

REMant  01/01/2012 03:01 PM Report

As I wrote on the 12th, Macbeth clearly involves Shakespeare's patron King James because he claimed to be descended from Banquo, and that lineage is represented at the banquet table. Banquo is absolved of any guilt in the regicide by this play, since Macbeth is the heir to Duncan, and legitimately king. At the same time, it must be a statement deploring regicide. IMHO the lines "tomorrow and tomorrow" simply reinforce the idea that better she would have died in battle, and then Macbeth continues his previous thought that he has become inured to fear by life's meaninglessness. I think it is important that he says creeps, not creep, but I think in any case it could have been written better. Aside from making far too much of this stuff, I really think the pace these days is much too slow. I suppose we think the tragedies and histories must be taken terribly seriously, because we are less accustomed to death, or worse that we no longer see honor as more important. But it will always be poetry, not prose. Actora might take a cue from the consideration of tempo in Renaissance and early baroque music, which is clearly much faster, tho less mechanical than once rendered. One can be expressive and quick.

I really would try to consider Lear in the historical context of England at the time it was written. Tillyard placed it in the context of the "great chain of being." That would certainly appear true, but I think there are probably historical parallels, if not of the characters.

Lear makes the mistake of taking flattery for devotion. Cordelia is dutiful, but no flatterer. It was plain to me when I first encountered the play as an undergraduate, and I am astonished to find ppl who don't see this as central to it. This essay does a nice job of elucidating the point: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/01-1/schnlear.html altho I think his idea of Stoicism somewhat misinformed. Stoics were not fatalists precisely because they didn't believe in fortune, not because they did. A skeptic is always a fatalist. The Stoics were not. But his point that their world was envisaged as one of mutual obligations is no less James' perspective.

As I wrote on Nov 14, the play may have meant to identify Lear's with the situation of Elizabeth, and the two Protestant factions which sought to succeed her, Essex's and Robert Cecil's, the former including the Bacons, nephews of the elder Cecil and "projectors" akin to our liberals and neocons, and the latter allied with the republican "commonwealthmen," neither compatible with James' notions, and Cordelia may have been intended to represent precisely that. In any case, susceptibility to flattery would seem to have been one of Elizabeth's shortcomings, especially in later years. And it should be noted that James had constantly to defend his attempt to unite Britain.

Interestingly, there is an immense difference between the 1608 Quarto and the posthumous Folio versions of Lear, affecting the characterization and import, which I doubt would have happened if it did not have a political rationale, altho it is uncertain what, if anything, Shakespeare had to do with their publication, and it might well have been done just with an idea of improving the action. A lot of stuff is dispensed with altogether. But clearly Albany and Kent are made weaker and Edgar more important. And of all the characters besides Cordelia, Edgar is the most Stoic. He is made representative of the future, which is certainly suggestive of James.

Incidentally, the fool here is no fool, but the only one allowed to get away with telling the truth, apparently not unusual and no doubt tied to celebrations of misrule and the like. It is entirely possible that the play is meant to be taken in that vein. The Protestants beginning with Henry VIII abolished the celebration. Mary and the Catholics restored it and Elizabeth abolished it again. They may, of course, only had in mind only to curb popular excesses. It is not as though no one was allowed to instruct princes, books on the subject were in fact plentiful, and one should not, I think, compare Lear with a dictator.

It won't do as Mr Branagh seems to, to consider Shakespeare some sort of transcendent figure, anymore than to consider the past unintelligible. Any period is now, if you truly understand it, and vice versa. The other thing I would mention is that ppl centuries ago worked a lot harder than we do today. Life was shorter, and they didn't give much credence to theories of childhood or adolescence. On the other hand much of what we today have trouble understanding was all around them then, taught in schools, and preached from the pulpit. Too, I would point out that this was the age of Renaissance men, and women. Besides chopping off heads and running ppl through, Elizabeth translated Boethius, and Sir Walter Raleigh was a theologian. James was no mean thinker or writer, himself.

wordsmith  01/01/2012 08:37 AM Report

To balance the almost exclusively male perspective of your Shakespeare (and program) interviewees, invite Tina Packer, founder of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., to discuss her scholarship of and lifelong passion for the Feminine in Shakespeare’s works. Her 35 years of presenting the Bard on stage at S&Co as both director and actor along with her internationally acclaimed five-part lecture/performance series “Women of Will” amply qualify her as a compelling interview subject of matchless insight on this subject.