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Tag Archives: William Shakespeare
“Never write from your head; write from your cock.” — Wystan Hugh Auden
W.H. Auden was born on this day in York, England, 1907. I first encountered Auden in my “Humanities” class, senior year in high school. I got a lot out of that class, and I remember we analyzed Auden’s famous most-anthologized … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, England, George Orwell, Hamlet, Harold Bloom, Hugh MacDiarmid, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord Tennyson, Louis MacNeice, Marianne Moore, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden, William Shakespeare
23 Comments
2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Comedy of Errors
My progress: Shakespeare Reading Project Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III Two Gentlemen of Verona The Taming of the Shrew Titus Andronicus The Comedy of Errors My aunt Regina was in a production of The Boys from … Continue reading
Posted in Theatre
Tagged comedy, Harold Bloom, W.H. Auden, William Hazlitt, William Shakespeare
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“For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth…” — Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine
Maybe this is him. I’m armed with more than complete steel, The justice of my quarrel. — Christopher Marlowe, Lust’s Dominion. Act iii. Sc. 4. Playwright, poet, prodigy, agent in Her Majesty’s secret service: the incomparable Christopher Marlowe was born … Continue reading
2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Titus Andronicus
My progress: Shakespeare Reading Project Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III Two Gentlemen of Verona The Taming of the Shrew Titus Andronicus This is body horror at its most horrible. This is the play featuring the following … Continue reading
Posted in Theatre
Tagged drama, Harold Bloom, W.H. Auden, William Hazlitt, William Shakespeare
4 Comments
2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Taming of the Shrew
My progress: Shakespeare Reading Project Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III Two Gentlemen of Verona The Taming of the Shrew A popular one, but a tough one! There are elements in Petruchio and Katherina’s dynamic which we … Continue reading
Posted in Theatre
Tagged Harold Bloom, romantic comedy, W.H. Auden, William Hazlitt, William Shakespeare
8 Comments
2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Two Gentlemen of Verona
To continue: Shakespeare Reading Project Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III Scholars have been trying to justify and/or explain or even make SENSE of the last two pages of The Two Gentlemen of Verona for 400 years. … Continue reading
Posted in Theatre
Tagged comedy, Harold Bloom, W.H. Auden, William Hazlitt, William Shakespeare
2 Comments
2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Rose Rage
… or: the three Henry VIs and Richard III Life is very very hard right now. Unprecedentedly hard on all fronts. And so I wanted a “hard” reading project this year. By hard, I mean, something involved that requires a … Continue reading
Posted in Theatre
Tagged Harold Bloom, historical drama, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, W.H. Auden, William Hazlitt, William Shakespeare
6 Comments
2025 Books Read
I ended last year with a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s short stories, declaring I’d read all the plays in 2025. I mean, there were only five, sadly, due to the homophobic violence of his own society. I know these plays … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Austria, books read, Charles Lamb, children's books, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, David Lynch, Dubravka Ugrešić, England, essays, fiction, France, Frankenstein, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hungary, Ireland, Jane Austen, Janet Malcolm, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mark Danielewski, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Memoirs, nonfiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Roald Dahl, Robert Kaplan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Russia, sci-fi, Scotland, scripts, Spain, The Beatles, Twin Peaks, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
12 Comments
“I take it to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong propensity of nature, to leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.” — John Milton
Milton was born on this day in 1608. Although he left Oxford without completing his degree, he remained a thinker, a propagandist/pamphleteer, a scholar till the end of his days. The isolated poet, focused on self and personal emotion, would … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Alexander Pope, Camille Paglia, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, John Dryden, John Milton, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Robert Burns, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, Walter Savage Landor, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth
12 Comments
“Look in thy heart and write.” — Sir Philip Sidney
“[The poet] doth grow in effect another nature, as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclopes, Chimeras, Furies, and such like: so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely, ranging only … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, England, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, Michael Schmidt, poetry, William Shakespeare
2 Comments