Stella, Stencils, and Sacred Spaces
Plus: McKellen does More & Maggie mudlarks
This newsletter has footnotes.1 If you prefer not to scroll down, click on the email headline to read in-browser and they will appear when you click on them. I use open access and gift links whenever possible, however you may still encounter paywalls. There are options. If you enjoy this newsletter, please share it and consider pledging a future subscription.
A double dose of Shakespeare News for your long weekend – one today and one tomorrow.
Quick Links
The Shakespeare stencil in King’s Lynn is not a Banksy. (and no longer exists)
Ian McKellen does Thomas More on Colbert + John Oliver’s middle name is “William” because he was born on The Birthday.
Macbeth in the King’s College Chapel.2 (more, photos by Paul Ashley)
…this is a sacred space and you’ve just, you know, murdered someone on stage…
Your annual reminder that you can buy props from Shakespeare’s Globe including a bike “ridden by Alfred Enoch in the performance [of Romeo and Juliet] and comes complete with stage blood on the tires from the performance.”3
Shakespeare in China sidebar:
“[Xi] spoke about the cultural revolution and how he wanted to read broadly, so he broke the rules and had to walk 10 miles to get the books he wanted,” said Peter Kyle, the business secretary, who was sitting across the table from him. “One of them was the complete works of Shakespeare.”
A (white) Othello in a Shanghai shopping mall.
It briefly had problems when it printed fliers for “Othello” that showed a Chinese Desdemona, Othello’s wife, leaning on the shoulder of her foreign husband. This prompted angry warnings from a Shanghai culture impresario that spotlighting romance between a foreign man and Chinese woman was offensive.
Gotta love Oliver as “a corporate schemer with slightly Draco Malfoy energy.” (archive / it is his year)
Shakespeare in the Bardo. (yes, more Hamnet.)
More “real history” behind Hamnet.
“So this is the room where William Shakespeare was born?”
“By tradition, this is what we say…”
I did quite a bit of mudlarking right below where the original Globe Theatre was. On certain tides, you can find Tudor brass pins that were used in the theatre to pin costumes and hair…I kept them because it’s so exciting that they were very likely from the Globe Theatre costumes. I gave some of them to Paul [Mescal] when we started shooting and told him that I wanted him to have it because, while we can’t know for sure, they may well have been worn by Shakespeare himself.
The floor was known for having lots of broken nuts and apple cores, rubbish that the audience just threw on the ground. I remember eating apples and throwing them down for texture. Now I look back and think, “Why did we go to the trouble?” because that floor was always going to be covered by hundreds of people.
“‘Maybe I’ll commit suicide, maybe I’ll write the greatest line in English literature, who can say?’ And, like, it… [profound sigh]”
Mark Strong started his career playing the “juvenile leads” Ferdinand and Romeo. (archive)
Let’s Talk About..."Julius Caesar" with Dr. Will Tosh via SF Shakes.
“When the director called me to talk about the role, I really loved the queer angle that he was going for with Prince Hal and Poins.”
“Creative practitioners” can join the British Shakespeare Association for free. (do it!)
The Compagnia de’ Colombari Lear was lovely. An excellent reminder that the Fool doesn’t need solving. He can simply be an incredible weirdo.
Jonathan Pryce gave his drama school Hamlet to Paul Mescal. (via Ben Broadribb)
A picnic-themed season announcement from Shakespeare Dallas.
“I would have liked to have played Hamlet.”
“That train has left the station.”
“Oliver played him when he was 42.”
“Olivier was a better actor than you.”
A truly terrible Richard III poem via Helen Castor.
by murtherynge the innocentes, that he him selfe myght raygne
Yet lyke a noughty false traytour, at Boseworth was he slayne
Recommendations
The Yale prof in “One Battle After Another”& “Marty Supreme.”
“To make any worthwhile comments about someone’s work, you have to have at least some sympathy with it…But I remained on the outside of your plays.”
Space travel selection criteria via James Pitt.
Like this one.
Very pretty and the chapel is older than the play by 90-odd years.
Richard III in the space would be interesting given that he was keen to have it finished:
Richard gave instructions that ‘the building should go on with all possible despatch’ and to ‘press workmen and all possible hands, provide materials and imprison anyone who opposed or delayed’.
The director’s next project is working for the largest brewer in the world. (Anheuser-Busch)
Other available items include a Rylance-ridden horse and a Shrew shrew.