Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

Dreaming of Travel during Covid

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2020

A very smart Covid poem circulating on social media at the moment references 11 poems, all about longing to travel.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Lake Isle of Innisfree", "Sea Fever", "Green Eye of the Yellow God", "Mandalay", "Milford Haven", "Rolling English Road", "Skye Boat Song", "Upon First reading Chapman's Homer", A. E. Housman, COVID-19, Crown, G.K. Chesterton, J. Milton Hayes, John Keats, John Masefield, Kenneth Grahame, Loveliest of Trees, Michael Drayton, Midsummer Night's Dream, Outlanders, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Henry Boulton, W. B. Yeats, William Wordsworth, wind in the willows | Comments closed

A Wretch Concentered All in Self

By Robin Bates | Published: December 7, 2020

Look to Sir Walter Scott, not to Shakespeare, to sum up Donald Trump’s exit.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "My Native Land", 2020 election, Donald Trump, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Richard III, Sir Walter Scott | Comments closed

In “Crown,” Philip Gets Auden, Not Keats

By Robin Bates | Published: December 1, 2020

“The Crown” makes productive use of poetry to move the action. In three Season #3 episodes, we encounter Kipling, Shakespeare, Keats & Auden.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Mandalay", "Moon Landing", British royal family, Crown, Endymion, John Keats, Richard II, Rudyard Kipling, W.H. Auden | Comments closed

Lear Also Doesn’t Step Down Gracefully

By Robin Bates | Published: November 9, 2020

We could have anticipated how Donald Trump would respond to losing by reading “King Lear.” All the stages are the same.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Donald Trump, Election 2020, King Lear, narcissism, Presidential transition | Comments closed

Trump & Covid: Tragedy or Farce?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 4, 2020

Was the Rose Garden event for Trump’s new SCOTUS pick–which became a Covid superspreader event–a Shakespearean tragedy? How about a farce?

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged COVID-19, Donald Trump, Game of Thrones, George Martin, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Masque of the Red Death, Richard III, Sophocles | Comments closed

Birthday Wishes at 95

By Robin Bates | Published: September 28, 2020

For my mother’s 95th birthday, I turn to Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73” to express my continuing love.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Sonnet 73", Aging | Comments closed

Does Lit Lead to Illicit Sex?

By Robin Bates | Published: August 25, 2020

Dante’s beautifully tragic account of Paolo and Francesca captures–as many great works do–the dangers of total absorption in a relationship.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Adultery, Charlotte Bronte, Christopher Marlowe, Dante, Doctor Faustus, Goethe, Inferno, Jane Eyre, Paolo and Francesca, passionate love, Romeo and Juliet, Samuel Johnson, Sorrows of Young Werther, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight | Comments closed

Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun

By Robin Bates | Published: August 4, 2020

I lost a dear friend two days ago, one who was practically family. I turn to Shakespeare’s “Fear no more the heat of the sun” for solace.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Fear no more the heat of the sun", Cymbeline, death and dying, William Boyd | Comments closed

To Memorialize, Turn to Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: August 3, 2020

John Lewis’s mentor James Lawson read a Czeslaw Milosz poem at Lewis’s funeral, showing how deeply he understood social activism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "I Dream a World", "Invictus", "Meaning", Czeslaw Milosz, funerals, Hamlet, James Lawson, John Lewis, Langston Hughes, Romeo and Juliet, William Ernest Henley | Comments closed