Which Shakespeare play best captures Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds? Julius Caesar, perhaps, for pathos, Othello for the cold-blooded way it was done.
Tag Archives: William Shakespeare
“Et Tu, Brute!”–Betraying the Kurds
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Julius Caesar, Kurds, Macbeth, Othello, Syria, Turkey Comments closed
Which Literary Conman Is Trump?
To understand Trump as conman, I compare him to the King and the Duke, Mac the Knife, Melville’s Confidence Man, Satan & Iago.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beggar's Opera, Confidence Man, conmen, Donald Trump, Herman Melville, Huckleberry Finn, John Gay, John Milton, Mark Twain, Othello, Paradise Lost Comments closed
Couples Fighting: It Must Be Love
Tuesday I read plays all day yesterday with an eye toward an upcoming class on “Battling Couples in Theatre and Film (the Comic Version).” The September course is part of Sewanee’s “Lifelong Learning” series. As the course runs for four weeks, I will teach four plays and four movies, pairing a play with a film […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aphra Behn, couples comedy, Edward Albee, George Bernard Shaw, His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Much Ado about Nothing, Pillow Talk, Pygmalion, Romantic Comedy, Rover, screwball comedy, Taming of the Shrew Comments closed
Old Friends Recall the Midnight Chimes
Monday When Julia and I reunited with my senior Carleton roommates recently, I found myself thinking of the reunion that concludes Henry IV, Part II. To be sure, our memories didn’t involve loose women we had encountered in our youth. Nevertheless, there was an elegiac feel to our gathering as there is in the play. […]
Cataract Surgery: See Better, Lear
Thursday I am undergoing a second cataract surgery today and so am reposting the essay I wrote following my first (successful) surgery. I don’t expect to re-experience the same mixed feelings that I described two years ago, but dramas that feature sharp objects poked into people’s eyes still seem relevant. This essay is not for […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Black Leopard Red Wolf, cataract surgery, King Lear, Marlon James, Oedipus, Sophocles Comments closed
Same-Sex Desire in the Sonnets
Wednesday If you want a one-stop article about the same-sex desire expressed in Shakespeare’s first 126 sonnets, Sandra Newman’s recent Aeon article is the place to go. Newman neatly summarizes the historical debates over the sonnets and pretty much puts the matter to rest: they really are expressions of homosexual love from Shakespeare to a […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Sonnet 20", As You Like It, LBGTQ community, Same-Sex Intimacy, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Twelfth Night Comments closed
Are We Watching Shakespeare or Beckett?
Friday When assuring my English majors that they will find jobs in the world beyond college, I sometimes point out that they are experts in narrative. Increasingly we are learning how much we process reality through stories, and political operatives talk ceaselessly about “controlling the narrative.” How you organize facts (or for that matter, lies) […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, Donald Trump, Endgame, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Mueller investigation, narrative, Richard III, Samuel Beckett, Unnamable, Waiting for Godot, Westword Ho! Comments closed
Caution against Purity Policing
Monday One of my conservative readers wrote me recently asking me how I felt about leftist insistence that Virginia governor Ralph Northam resign for having posted a racist picture in his medical school yearbook years ago. After all, hasn’t Northam lived a fairly exemplary life since then? The reader also sent me a Quillette article […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aphra Behn, Henry Fielding, Merchant of Venice, Oroonoko, purity policing, Tom Jones Comments closed
