The Third Part of King Henry The Sixth- John Mutford's 1st Pick for The Shakespeare Challenge

I have a pretty rigid cycle of reading to which I've dedicated myself:

1. A Canadian novel
2. A non-Canadian novel
3. Non-fiction (from anywhere)
4. alternate between a book of the Bible or a Shakespeare play
(all the while working through a book of poetry)

My wife teases that I'm way to anal about it, but I've grown accustomed to the cycle by now, and for the most part, find that it has more flexibility than it first appears.

Anyway, when I first saw this challenge, I thought "no problem." Afterall, every 8th book I read is one of Shakespeare's plays anyway. Then I got bogged down in a couple 400+ page books and I've already missed a month of the challenge.

Finally though I've gotten around to reading the third part of King Henry the Sixth, and this marks my first of four plays for the Shakespeare challenge. I've treated the parts as three separate plays and my first two reviews appear here and here. This is my review of the third part as it appeared on The Book Mine Set:

Classy cover, don't you think?

Shakespeare was one of those rare breeds to make the third installment of a trilogy the best.

Unlike the first two parts, the third seems more streamlined. The plot still revolves around challenges to King Henry's throne, but all the subplots of earlier have pretty much subsided. Instead there seems to be much more interest in exploring themes of male roles in the family, especially in terms of inheritance and power.

Not to make it entirely a masculine story, Queen Margaret almost steals the show once again with her wickedness. After giving the Duke of York the news that his son has been murdered, she offers him a napkin stained with the son's blood to wipe away his tears. Then she has the duke decapitated and sticks his head upon the gates of York so that "York may overlook the town of York."

While that last line might seem like a throwaway, really not all that clever when you consider he was only named the Duke of York after the town, making the wordplay not all that playful, it was clever as a symbol. While Margaret is delighting in her own sinfulness, Shakespeare seemed to be toying with the idea of a sinister, or at least doomed, reflection. Fathers pass down legacies of revenge to their sons, brothers plot against one another, all the while having the same blood. He takes this up more blatantly later on in the play having two briefly appearing characters simply named A Son That Has Kill'd His Father and A Father That Has Kill'd His Son.

While the King Henry The Sixth trilogy ends here, I'm relieved for the first time that there'll be more to the story. King Richard the Third takes up where this one left off (fortunately with Queen Margaret still alive and kicking).

The Soundtrack:
1. Hand Me Down World- The Guess Who
2. Off With Your Head- Sleater-Kinney
3. Evil Woman- Electric Light Orchestra
4. Brother Down- Sam Roberts
5. Kings and Queens- Aerosmith

Shakespeare's Global Globe

Shakespeare's Global Globe

This just came over the ex-Libris Mailing list. You DO need the latest FLASH to see this.
I have an old version of IE which is blocking me, but I have no problem using Mozilla Firefox browser.

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new website -- Shakespeare's
Global Globe (www.orbismundi.org) -- that provides an instantaneous
visualization of all self-reporting readers of Shakespeare's plays on
the planet, viewable by region, genre and play. Upon arrival at the
site, visitors are asked to indicate which Shakespeare play they are
currently reading and where they are on the planet. The site then
locates that reader and play at a particular point on the globe, which
remains illuminated for two weeks. Site visitors can also explore
what other readers of Shakespeare are doing in different cities,
regions or continents using a range of display options.

The site was designed to explore regional reading habits in an
informal way, with an emphasis on ease of use and intelligibility. It
can be accessed from any location where there is an internet
connection, and the map of global readers is constantly updated, so
users can see new readers appearing on the map in realtime.

Please do take time to visit the site and, of course, if you are
reading a Shakespeare play at the moment, please go ahead and place a
digital pin on the global map!

This seems to be based out of Carnegie Mellon University in USA.

Shakespeare's Influence

Shakespeare also invented many of the most-used expressions in our language. Bernard Levin skillfully summarizes Shakespeare's impact in the following passage from The Story of English:

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise - why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare;

if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare;

even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut! for goodness' sake! what the dickens! but me no buts - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

(Bernard Levin. From The Story of English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. Viking: 1986).

The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original. At the below SOURCE is a chart listing some of the words Shakespeare coined, hyperlinked to the play and scene from which it comes. When the word appears in multiple plays, the link will take you to the play in which it first appears.

Source

If you are looking for more words invented by Shakespeare be sure to read the wonderful book Coined By Shakespeare by Jeffrey McQuain and Stanley Mallessone. Each entry in the book comes with a history of the word.

My First Book for the Challenge

I've finished my first book for the challenge and put the review on my blog. It wasn't on my list - I stumbled across it on the New Books shelf at the library. Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell is a murder mystery linked to the possible discovery of a work by Shakespeare that was rumored to exist but had been lost. The concept was intriguing, the execution less than satisfying to me.

I'm half way through Will in the World, How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare and I've found it more interesting and a better read.

Lots of Laughs

My review of The Taming of the Shrew is up at my blog, Educating Petunia.

Of course, the humor of the play is undeniable. The lesson that goes along with it is eloquently put at the end by Katherine, whether you agree with what she says or not. I had a great time with it.

Me and Shakespeare - Herman Gollob - Book Review

I read my first Shakespeare book for the Challenge. Me and Shakespeare.

44 Fascinating Things about Shakespeare

There's this blogger who recently finished reading 592 pages of Shakespeare the Autobiography by Peter Ackroyd. Never mind that there is NOT 592 pages worth of documentary evidence for Shakespeare's life, Peter Ackroyd certainly does well to make the attempt.

Now I haven't read this biography yet, but in the meantime, this fellow I mentioned, has just finished reading it, and he has listed 44 Fascinating things about Shakespeare that he didn't know. It might be possible that you don't know them either.