A “New Yorker” article on aging turns to literature to debunk the notion that aging is a good thing.
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Tag Archives: William Shakespeare
Is Old Age Becoming Overrated?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Vanity of Human Wishes", "Sailing to Byzantium", "Tithonous", Aging, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Aristotle, As You Like It, Ecclesiastes, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, King Lear, Merchant's Tale, old age, Plato, Rasselas, Samuel Johnson, Ulysses, William Butler Yeats Comments closed
Who’s Afraid of a Feuding Couple?
Is Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” a feuding couples comedy? Perhaps yes if you add the adjective “dark.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aphra Behn, Edward Albee, feuding couples comedy, Much Ado about Nothing, Rover Comments closed
Verbal Combat Trumps Soft Romance
Shaw contributed some great plays to the feuding couples comedy genre, including Man and Superman and Pygmalion.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aphra Behn, C. S. Lewis, feuding couples comedy, George Bernard Shaw, Horse and His Boy, Man and Superman, Marriage, Much Ado about Nothing, Pygmalion, Rover, Taming of the Shrew Comments closed
Desire vs. Law in Shakespeare, Euripides
If a play turns comic or tragic often depends how how the clash between law and desire is negotiated.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bacchae, Comedy, Desire, Euripides, law, Midsummer Night's Dream, tragedy Comments closed
Feuding Beats Shrew-Taming
“Taming of the Shrew” may have set the stage for the far more egalitarian “Much Ado about Nothing,” which launched the feuding couples comedy.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aphra Behn, feuding couples comedy, John Fletcher, Much Ado about Nothing, Rover, Tamer Tamed, Taming of the Shrew Comments closed
Feuding Couples Comedy
I have just begun teaching a “Feuding Couples Comedy” course. “Much Ado about Nothing” remains the quintessential example of the genre.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged couples comedy, feuding couples comedy, Much Ado about Nothing, Romantic Comedy, Taming of the Shrew Comments closed
“Et Tu, Brute!”–Betraying the Kurds
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.
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