Thursday, November 09, 2006

My Favourite Play...

I'm sitting here looking at a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare which my mother gave to me in the Summer. It belonged to my grandfather and it's leather bound, published in 1916 by Oxford University Press and inside my grandfather has written his name and the date, 1918.
Very few family mementoes have survived the years. I do have some porcelain and, most important of all, the photos though there are so many without names....I wonder who they were and their importance...When I touch them I love the feeling I have of connecting with the generations who've gone..

This is my absolute favourite speech from my absolute favourite play, Macbeth. Macbeth gives the speech on hearing of his wife's death. They are the words of a man who risked all and lost all.



Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, V.v.19-28 (Macbeth)

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

While on the subject of Shakespeare, last year we went to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company perform all of the plays in 90 minutes.....Hamlet performed as rap for example and Titus Andronicus as a cooking lesson. I don't know who wrote it but it's wonderfully inventive and hilarious to the point of painful. It was performed at the International School of Nice among other places.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My favorite scene comes from Midsummer's nights dream:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

We actually had it in our wedding.

I really like your blog, btw - good job with the november blogging and all.

tut-tut said...

Hi Angela:

Tried to send you this as an e-mail but it bounced back:

Oh, dear. I didn't mean that poems shouldn't be posted! (see last post
in comments from yesterday).

Since I'm in publishing and Mary Oliver is alive, I couldn't help
sending an e-mail to her publisher, who was very propietary about the
whole business. I'm sure if I had just posted it (which I may anyway)
it would have been just fine.

Please don't let me stop you from posting any poems you want! I was
just writing about my own reticence, not trying to quell you!

Anonymous said...

My Favourite Poem

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I detest Shaykespeere
How about you ?

Anonymous said...

I've just been inspired to open my very well thumbed (and annotated) copy of Macbeth, just to reread that monologue. Oh, the memories...

My favourite Shakespeare, however, is Sonnet 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

A favourite for rather soppy and sentimental reasons, but a favourite all the same.

Good luck with November.