Every year on November 2, I create an altar of pictures and memorabilia of family and friends who have died, many of whom I wrote about in my book, 99 Girdles on the Wall:My parents, my Aunt Frances,  Meghan, Dennis, Hazel, John.  I sit at the piano and sing two songs during this week of  Read the Rest…

Let me say up front that a sonnet is nothing to be afraid of.  Sonnets were the Sudoku and the crossword puzzles of their day, that is to say, of the late 16th century.  People enjoyed writing them and figuring them out at whatever level they were capable. If sonnets were featured in the New  Read the Rest…

I started the project of reading the works of Shakespeare in late June, 2012, as a whim, really.  I thought one of two things would come of it.  Either I would peter out after a half dozen plays or I would take years to get through them all.  I was not prepared to become so  Read the Rest…

The Tempest is Shakespeare’s final play.  He’d written the histories, the comedies and the tragedies.  Then he wrote four romances–more what we would call fantasies—that slowly warmed up to this farewell to the stage and no doubt to the life he’d led in London.  Like a lot of us have discovered in our later years,  Read the Rest…

Seattle GreenStage did a Shakespeare in the Park production of Henry VIII this summer.  Most folks aren’t aware Shakespeare wrote a Henry VIII.  I thought the same thing.  When I started reading it this summer, I saw that I had read it in college.  Or at least underlined a bunch of stuff in the preface.   Read the Rest…

This is the play that contains the famous line “All the world’s a stage.”   It’s the beginning of a speech by a melancholy poseur named Jacques, which the text says is pronounced “Jakes.” I enjoyed saying Ja-queeze to myself because Jacques just barely avoids being a Peter Sellers character, so seriously does he take himself.   Read the Rest…

Nobody knows you when you’re down and out. Shakespeare’s psychological insight in this play interests me more than some obvious parallels with what goes on in our political and religious discourse so I am going to stick to that and leave the cheap shots to someone else.   In the fourth act, Timon says “I am  Read the Rest…

My first thought was “oh god, not another Roman war play.”  But like every other Shakespeare play, it found a home in me. I read it and watched two different productions of it.  It’s striking how many different aspects an actor or director can choose to amplify. The play opens with the citizens of Rome  Read the Rest…

Pericles, Prince of Tyre takes the form of a hero’s journey—actually it takes the form of an exceptionally bad B-movie—but Shakespeare makes it work somehow.  There were a few stops along the way that left me reeling in their rawness. Right out of the gate, 25 lines in, we are told by Gower, the narrator  Read the Rest…

There are women’s names in only three of Shakespeare’s titles: Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida.  I think this play should be called Imogen.  Cymbeline, the king is a dolt whereas his daughter Imogen shimmers with courage, imagination and integrity.  It’s a long play which tries to encompass the doings of  Read the Rest…