Welcome to Litsy!

Random book from our home library:

📖 This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright by Emma Smith

#Netgalleybingo
Got around to reading some more ARCs! And more importantly,reviewing. I cannot recommend This is Shakespeare enough.To paraphrase the tagline of Barbie: If you can't get enough of Shakespeare, this book is for you.If you've had a surfeit of Shakespeare,this book is for you.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5781346962

Emma Smith is glorious. This book makes you read Shakespeare so differently,and with so much new insight

A fun & fascinating audiobook. I wouldn‘t usually pick up a lit criticism book, but heard Val McDermid rave about it on a BBC podcast and couldn‘t resist. I love how Oxford prof Smith looks at how each play is so open to interpretation, how they ask more questions than give any answers, and she discusses each play in both the context of the day, and of today‘s world. I learnt so much about the ambiguities and about dramaturgy and creative choices.

#bookspin and #doublespin picks for March are also both for challenges #booked2021 #pop21 !!! Yay! I do love a #doubledip 💕

Thanks for the tag, @TheSpineView !

1. I just finished the tag, and overall I liked it. You can see my full review by searching the title, but I‘d recommend it to anyone interested in a meatier Shakespeare criticism.

2. Wow! This is a great question! Imagine the mashup of Mr Darcy and Jane Eyre...

3. I like multiple POVs, especially in historical fiction.

#WondrousWednesday

Smith takes an in-depth look at various plays by Shakespeare and showcases how the plays have been interpreted over the past hundreds of years, as well as places the plays in the context of Shakespeare‘s time. The result is an academic, with occasional humor, account. I‘m not a complete Shakespeare aficionado, but I appreciate the Bard‘s genius. Some of the book was way over my head, but I fully appreciate what she has written.

“Did you see Part 1 and can you remember where we left things? Asks the Prologue to Henry IV; bear with us as we try to depict grand battles within the limits of the stage, says the Prologue to Henry V; welcome to olde-world storyland, says the Prologue to Pericles.”

“No man with any decency of feeling can sit it [Taming of the Shrew] out in the company of a woman without being extremely ashamed of the lord-of-creation moral implied in the wager and the speech put into the woman‘s own mouth.” — George Bernard Shaw, saying things that make me like him.

"Come off it!" This isn't the Shakespeare you read in high school, ?

Yes. Let's explore these works as frameworks, not masterpieces. "I don't really care what he might have meant, nor should you."

"So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true or just not relevant." Looking forward to digging into this one!

Really enjoying this audio on my walk. This morning I first heard of Hamnet, Shakespeare‘s son who sadly died at 11... and how Freud ( and others ) see a link to Hamlet , being Shakespeare‘s grieving play for his son .... I was moved to hear this
And then , I turned on the radio to hear that Maggie OFARRELL‘s new book HAMNET is all about just this ... ❤️💔 what a link & all in one day

Romeo ..... “ I fear too early for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin .... “

I forgot to post my Audible #BookReport #Weeklyforecast I‘m really enjoying this one on my daily allowed exercise/walk ✨

Professor Emma Smith reads her own #audiobook and it‘s obvious she‘s used to lecturing. Also obvious that she loves her subject: it‘s infectious. She says the unanswered questions are the reason Shakespeare‘s plays have such a continued hold on our imaginations. Also: “We tend to find the meanings we need to in Shakespeare‘s plays.” Lots to think about in this engaging work. (Also, expect fancy vocabulary like teleological, bathos and apposite.)

I‘ve been untangling and re-rolling my bits of leftover yarn into centre-pull balls. An easy, time-consuming task while listening to an audiobook. #knittersofLitsy

I‘m not where I had planned—which was to be at a dyeing workshop in Vancouver—but I can still do crafty things at home. Like tie yarn skeins in preparation for the next steps: washing, then mordanting, then dyeing. #audiocrafting

Jean Anouilh‘s chorus [in his version of Antigone] argues that tragedy is restful, because there is no need to do anything; it does itself, like clockwork set going since the beginning of time. I‘m always rapt by watching those unfurling patterns of dominoes set off by a single tap. Like these, Anouilh suggests, tragedy just needs the flick of a finger.

(Image source: search online for “cats and dominos video” —it‘s mesmerizing)

A second point about spoilers is more specifically generic: can tragedy even have a spoiler? If we know the play is called The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, are we really ever in any doubt about how things will turn out? Renaissance tragedies were performed on a stage draped with black, which would have had the same giveaway quality.

Great survey of Shakespeare plays which presents them more as asking questions than giving us answers. I really hope we get more books from Emma Smith in Shakespeare.

This is the best book I‘ve read on Shakespeare in so long! So refreshing, unpretentious, thoughtful, teasing out all the beautiful odd ambiguities that make Shakespeare so fascinating. I‘ve never read anything that captures so perfectly why I love Shakespeare, and breaks down a lot of barriers to people finding it relevant and interesting in the 21st century. THIS is how good literary criticism can be and I recommend it so much

I think Vienna might be the best place to read. I had dinner in this cafe last night and had to come back today the coffee and cake were so good. This is the cafe Freud had his morning coffee in - at least I believe so. I wonder if he had the cake that is now their speciality cake - almond sponge with apricot and cherry jam and the best cake I‘ve had in my life so far.