I am not sure about you, but I am constantly curious about how plays get their titles, as some appear to be quite random; think of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or A Streetcar Named Desire or Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. Have your students ever asked you why Miller called his play […]
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‘It’s dollars and cents, nickels and dimes; war and peace, it’s nickels and dimes, what’s clean? Half the goddam country is gotta go if I go,’ All My Sons, Act 3 Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (1947) has been attracting audiences with two major revivals: Sally Field and Bill Pullman star in the acclaimed Old […]
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The lasting popularity of Arthur Miller’s plays is undeniable. As I write this, there are two Miller productions in the West End: ‘The Price’ (1968) and ‘The American Clock’ (1980). Upcoming productions include the hotly anticipated ‘All My Sons’ (1947) starring Sally Field at the Old Vic and ‘Death of a Salesman’ (1949) at the […]
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Banquo – Mr Nice Guy? Banquo, I admit, is a character I have never considered in much detail – any notes, character profiles of him simply present him as loyal, sensible etc. He is Macbeth’s friend, Duncan’s supporter, a sort of all-round good guy who is horribly betrayed and murdered by his bezzie. Rarely is […]
Read moreGraham Elsdon looks at ways literature students can usefully write about drama By the play’s final scene, Macbeth sees life as ‘a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage’. There is a metatheatrical quality to many of Shakespeare’s works, yet some students find it hard to write about plays as plays. […]
Read moreLast month, I was lucky enough to speak at OUP’s For the Love of Reading: Passing on the Passion conference. It was a wonderful occasion that brought teachers, authors and researchers together to talk about reading. I left with my brain fizzing with ideas, inspired to try the raft of new things I’d learnt from […]
Read morebaffle (verb) ‘defeat efforts, frustrate plans’ When people are baffled, these days, they are at a mental loss, unable to work out what is going on – a state of mind that applies as much to frustrated detectives as to crossword-puzzle solvers. It is a sense which developed in the 17th century. In Shakespeare’s time, […]
Read moregender (noun) ‘grammatical class; social notion of sex’ The grammatical sense of this word goes back to the early Middle Ages, but the sociological sense is a 20th-century development. The grammatical use is to be found in The Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i.65), where Evans condemns Mistress Page for having no understanding of ‘the cases […]
Read morejet (verb) ‘spout forcefully; travel by jet’ The sense of speed associated with this word does not arrive in English until the mid-17th century. For Shakespeare, the verb had only one meaning: ‘strut, swagger’ – the original meaning that arrived from Latin, perhaps via French, in the 15th century. This is the sense required when […]
Read morepassport (n.) ‘document authorizing foreign travel’ This word came to be increasingly used in its present-day meanings during the 16th century, as people increasingly travelled abroad. But Shakespeare uses the word differently. When Cerimon opens a chest washed up on shore and discovers Thaisa’s body, he exclaims ‘A passport too!’ (Pericles, III.ii.64). As Thaisa was […]
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