“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
You Can Listen Here Hamlet is intoxicating. It may be the most disorienting of Shakespeare’s great plays for the Son is the most accomplished shapeshifter of all his great characters. He is so powerful that for one actor he came into real life outside of the lines: “ Daniel Day Lewis withdrew from the part in mid-run in 1989 after he [said that he had begun to see] his recently deceased father on stage at the National Theater (5).”* Hamlet is intimate. Who else […]
read more
You Can Listen Here After four years away from him and in spite of his actions, by the end he reclaims my sympathy. After four years of not reading or teaching this play, and of not listening to the voice of its lead, and in spite of Hamlet being a killer and guilty of acting so badly towards Ophelia, and of having lost his better nature for much of the play, I cannot turn on him. […]
read more
You Can Listen Here In the winter of 1989, overwhelmed by work, I prepared Hamlet one day ahead of my classes by reading the play while listening to Paul Scofield’s version on Caedmon tapes — stopping, rewinding and restarting a small tape recorder in a back room whose big window looked out over snow and woods. I wore headphones. One small light shone on the desk. Sometimes, to rest my eyes and to let go […]
read more
You Can Listen Here This image remains insistent: sometime early in 1969 during his first year in office, a state dinner was held at the White House. The President was either still at the dinner or had again gone into seclusion in the Lincoln Bedroom to read books about de Gaulle and Churchill, his two salient heroes (well before Watergate he had begun to isolate himself more and more). Later that night his daughter Julie looked down […]
read more
