Criticism
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She’s White: Skin in Antony and Cleopatra
Readers sometimes forget that the modern obsession with tanning is relatively recent.
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Red Right Hand: Hands in Macbeth
Macbeth? The play of blood. And black. And birds, too. But today, let’s talk about hands.
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From the Archives: 03.09.2018
Reading is an ongoing conversation between the writer and the reader.
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Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Education in As You Like It
A confession: every time I watch the play – and no matter who is playing the part – I fall in love with Rosalind all over again.
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From the Archives: 23.08.18
Never mind Romeo’s chat-up lines – can you be a great writer if you’re not at least a good reader?
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Sharp Dressed Man: Costume in King Lear
I’ve learned to embrace my own scruffiness, but at the same time I HATE the idea that my students live in a world where, increasingly, appearance equals personality or worth. When you put the right clothes on the wrong person … ?
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The Boys of Summer: Holidays in Much Ado About Nothing
As a student, are you / were you ever bored during the summer holidays? If you’re planning a holiday, how long would be ‘too long’? What, then, IS a holiday?
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From the Archives: 10.08.2018
Capulet’s party? A ‘meat-market’?! That’s what I called it eight years ago this week …
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Sylvia Plath – Spinster
in PoetryThis final stanza is horribly defensive with its ‘barb and check’. Suddenly we’re in a war-zone, under attack, fighting for our lives.
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09.08 Philip Larkin
I remember the first time I really noticed “spring-woken tree”. Honestly, I just thought: wow. I stopped reading … … and that is the biggest compliment I can pay any author