I often forget that Shakespeare was apparently born (1564) and died (1616) on the same date – St. George’s feast day, in fact.
If I were in London today, I would pop into the National Portrait Gallery for a quick salute to the so-called Chandos portrait, named for the dukes who owned it. It is far more vital than any reproduction; the luminous eyes pick you up when you enter the room and keep a curious watch until you exit stage left (or right). He is watching you, as he observed the mortals in his world, as he made artistic deductions about the people of his time and the myths of the past. There is always something to learn about Shakespeare – considering that some people think he is an amalgam, a composite, an alias. Fact is, he was a living, breathing presence – an actor and playwright who walked the streets of London. Then there is Marie Mountjoy. I recently picked up a terrific book, “The Year of Lear,” by James Shapiro, published in late 2015, about the tumultuous year of 1606, a year of near revolution, a year of intrigue, a year of creativity. One thing is documented: the playwright who had real status with the court and playgoers alike, when day was done, trekked back to Silver St. on the north bank of the Thames, and resided in the home of the Mountjoys, Christopher and Marie. Never heard of them before, even though my life is forever enriched by my exposure to the great Shakespearean tradition at Hofstra University. According to Shapiro’s book, Marie Mountjoy and her husband – from a Huguenot family escaped from France -- apparently did not get along; but she could converse with the star boarder who wrote in his room. There was a dispute over a dowry to a Mountjoy daughter; Shakespeare, not a lawyer but an entitled property-owner from Stratford, counselled his landlady. That is all Shapiro, a renowned scholar, wrote on the subject. But with a name like that and an active imagination, one could imagine that the friendship went beyond that – particularly with the landlady’s name straight out of Wycherly’s 1675 play, “The Country Wife” (Mistress Fidget, Harry Horner, Mistress Squeamish and, in one recent version, Margery Pinchwife, played by, be calm, my beating heart, Helen Mirren.) Speaking of dirty minds, the tabloid, the Daily Mail, speculated about Shakespeare and Marie Mountjoy in 2007: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-494478/Much-ado-Mrs-Mountjoy.html On Shakespeare’s birthday and death day, my wife turned up the all-day program on WQXR-FM – music with mostly Shakespearean themes: Delius, Beach, Gounod, Mendelssohn. In this barbaric epoch, could Shakespeare have fun with a Trump, a Bannon, an Ivanka, a Pence, a Palin, a Flynn, a Kellyanne, a Spicer? You betcha. Happy birthday, dude.
Brian Savin
4/23/2017 10:28:14 pm
Whether he was or whether he wasn't, we will never know. Neither will we know the politics of the author of those wonderful plays. But perhaps, just perhaps, there may be human qualities in the defamed as there were in almost all Shakespearean characters. Perhaps there is a Cordelia in Marine Le Pen and a Lear in Nigel Farage. It's 1848 all over again, George, and perhaps this time it will be different, and maybe better. Let's see.
George Vecsey
4/24/2017 08:19:49 am
Brian:
bruce
4/24/2017 08:23:35 am
george,
George Vecsey
4/24/2017 10:10:57 am
Bruce, we currently have Sirius on our new car....with a classical station, the BBC, a Grateful Dead station, NPR, etc. But I like the local feel, as we drive through.
bruce
4/24/2017 11:22:50 am
george,
Joshua Rubin
4/24/2017 12:41:39 pm
Re; "could Shakespeare have fun with a Trump, a Bannon, an Ivanka, a Pence, a Palin, a Flynn, a Kellyanne, a Spicer?"
George Vecsey
4/24/2017 05:07:57 pm
Josh: we've seen Coriolanus twice -- once with Ian McKellan, live in London. I think he got machine-gunned. Recently, with Tom Hiddleston, live in the Kew Gardens Cinema, Queens, from one of the small theatres in London. Coriolanus is a hero, a soldier, but has a low opinion of the masses. (His mother goads him on, as I recall.) It seems to have been written after the failed revolution of November, 1605. GV
Joshua Rubin
4/25/2017 11:27:20 am
George, if the McKellan production was around Dec. '84-Jan'85 (National Theater, I think), then we saw the same production. Senators dressed in a mix of roman robes and business suits.
George Vecsey
4/25/2017 02:12:42 pm
Josh: sounds about right. I wish I had kept all our playbills and those one-page cast lists from RNT.
bruce
4/25/2017 03:26:01 pm
george,
George Vecsey
4/25/2017 05:47:34 pm
Bruce, I never kept much....life was moving too fast. Gave it to friends, family, charity.
bruce
4/25/2017 05:55:54 pm
george,
George Vecsey
4/25/2017 08:53:43 pm
I once heard Frank Robinson say, when he was managing (Orioles?) that the greatest record he knew was DiMaggio's 361 homers vs. 369 career strikeouts. He just shook his head. And that was before today's swing-from-your-butt-at-every-pitch spectacle.
bruce
4/25/2017 09:12:00 pm
george,
Josh
4/25/2017 06:07:15 pm
George,
George Vecsey
4/25/2017 08:49:52 pm
Some things one tends to remember.
Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |