Shakespeare Sunday
Shakespeare Sunday began as a weekly response to a community prompt. Each post pairs a quotation, image, and personal reflection, to explore Shakespeare as a living writer rather than a monument. Some are playful. Some are argumentative. All are invitations to read more closely. And to join the conversation …
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‘Baby I’m a Star!’: Defiance in Julius Caesar
When Caesar describes Cassius as having ‘a lean and hungry look’, I don’t think he’s talking about ambition.
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The Times, They Are A-Changin’: Fathers in 2 Henry IV
Can anything sting worse than rejection, when you are a father? Bob Dylan might have warned Falstaff, had he been alive.
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New Life in Macbeth
Every tragic hero must come to understand what they have done. These moments are amongst the most beautiful in the canon.
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‘Fear of the Dark’: The Owl in Macbeth
Centuries before street-lighting, in a mostly agricultural country, the night-time world was a very different place. It’s easy to see how the ordinary could be turned into myth.
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Astronomy in King Lear
If the heavens seem to be against us, should we accept our fate, or challenge it with everything we’ve got?
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Silence In Hamlet
Silence isn’t ‘golden’. It’s unsettling and uncomfortable. Let’s look at how Shakespeare uses it in Hamlet.
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Celebrations in 1 Henry IV
Humans like structure. Chaos and anarchy have a shelf-life. The upending of norms, hierarchies, is only fun when you know it will end. But WHO ends it? HOW? WHEN? They tell us a lot about what’s gone before.
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‘Heads Will Roll’: Kingship in Richard III
You don’t need to wear a crown to be a king – you just ave to act like you have one on your head.
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‘Perfect Day’: Formidable and Fantastic Women in Much Ado About Nothing
Formidable AND Fantastic? Beatrice in ‘Much Ado’ give the lie to any idea that Shakespeare is misogynist.
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‘Under The Sea’ in The Tempest
The sea is always a transformative, liminal space. In The Tempest, Ariel gives us a haunting example of the ‘sea-change’ that awaited those the ocean claimed.