Shakespeare for Every Night of the Year E-Book

Colin Salter

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 393

Beschreibung

Immerse yourself in the sublime words of the Bard with this sumptuous anthology of Shakespeare, with one entry for every night of the year. Chosen especially by a Shakespeare fanatic to reflect the changing seasons and daily events, the entries in this glorious book include: Romeo and Juliet on Valentine's Day. A Midsummer Night's Dream in Midsummer. The witches of Macbeth around their cauldron on Halloween. Also featured is one of Shakespeare's only two mentions of football for the anniversary of the first FA cup final.  Beautifully illustrated with favourite scenes from Shakespeare's best-loved plays, this magnificent volume is a fun introduction to the well-known work and lesser known plays and poetry and is designed to be accessible to both adults and curious children. Keep this book by your bedside and luxuriate in the rich language of the greatest writer the world has ever known, for entertainment, relaxation and timeless wisdom every night of the year.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

INDEX OF PLAYS

INTRODUCTION

No other author has had such an impact on the cultural life of a nation, or indeed the world, as William Shakespeare. His plays remain staples of the theatrical repertoire, in English and in translation and have inspired works in other media, from paintings of beloved characters to entire operas. His 154 sonnets, most written to an unidentified ‘fair youth’ or a ‘dark lady’, are bywords for the poetic expression of love. Turns of phrase coined by him are so embedded in the English language that most of us don’t even realise that he invented them. The course of true love never did run smooth. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. All the world’s a stage. All that glitters is not gold.

What’s so great about Shakespeare? First of all, we still speak the language Shakespeare wrote in. Some of his vocabulary is a little unfamiliar to twenty-first century readers, and some of his grammar can be a bit upside down and back to front, as he shoehorns his dialogue into strict lines of iambic pentameter. Essentially however, he writes in an English that is still comprehensible today. Compare him with Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the celebrated Canterbury Tales, who was living and working two hundred years before Shakespeare; those Tales are foundational works of English Literature, but quite difficult to read in the original medieval text.

Shakespeare shaped the way that the English see themselves, and the way the world sees England. He is still a central attraction for tourists visiting Great Britain. He also has much to say about England’s relationship with the other countries that are now part of the British Isles. By the time Shakespeare was born Wales had long been a principality of England; and Wales and Welshmen are frequently a source of comedy in his plays (1 March).

Ireland had historically been an enemy of England, and it is hard to find a good word about the Irish in the Shakespearean canon. Shakespeare lived to see the union of the English and Scottish crowns under James VI of Scotland and I of England, and his tone towards ‘north Britain’ changes notably after the event. Scotland had always been an enemy of England – and worse than that, an ally of England’s other old enemy France. But after James – who was of Scottish descent – ascended the throne, Shakespeare’s tone softens. In Macbeth, written after James became king, the Scots are honourable warriors and only Macbeth himself is a villain.

A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona | Act II, scene 4

It is still possible, not only to read Shakespeare, but to be dazzled by his virtuosity with words. He can be richly descriptive: many of his plays use introductory speeches or prologues to set the scene with such vivid imagery that the audience is transported to another place and time (23 March). This so-called ‘suspension of disbelief’ is vital for the performance of theatre; theatregoers to a production of Hamlet know perfectly well that they’re not on the battlements of Elsinore Castle in Denmark, and that the characters they’re watching are only actors, and that it’s not really a ghost emerging from the fog. They pretend to believe it for the sake of being entertained; and Shakespeare makes it easy, even with the scenic limitations of theatrical production in Elizabethan England.

His descriptive powers are immense. But, more than description, he sees patterns of behaviour and parallels of circumstance. His imaginative development of metaphor and simile is unique. He suggests that inner beauty enhances outer beauty in the same way that the invisible scent of a rose adds to its pretty appearance (25 April) and compares Macbeth’s ferocity in battle to that of eagles attacking their prey (2 October). He seamlessly elevates ideas and turns words into pictures.

All this verbal dexterity would be mere waffle if it weren’t for Shakespeare’s remarkable grasp of the human condition. Shakespeare knows what makes us tick, and in showing us what makes his characters act as they do, he holds up a mirror to our own vices and virtues. The lines he writes for his characters not only describe their intentions and emotions but illustrate their inner workings. Juliet’s nurse, for example (6 November) is more than a plot device to deliver news and move the story on: her lines show that she is flustered, she is breathless, she is unhurried, she cares for Juliet, she is teasing. Macbeth and his wife (14 August), speaking just after he has killed the king, show by their fragmented speech how shaken they are by the act of murder, despite their earlier bravado. It is this capacity to understand humanity, and capture it, that make Shakespeare’s works universal and timeless.

Nay, then, God be wi’ you, an you talk in blank verse.

As You Like It | Act IV, scene 1

Shakespeare writes using the conventional format of the time, in lines of iambic pentameter – a five-beat rhythm of ‘da-DAH da-DAH da-DAH da-DAH da-DAH’ – for example, ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ (28 March). A sonnet consists of fourteen rhyming lines of this rhythm, and although it is not a naturalistic way of speaking, he uses it in his plays to great effect. It is more useful than a four-beat rhythm, which is too musical and rigid. Five beats are flexible: the fifth beat often contains the important word of a line and Shakespeare will regularly conclude a scene or a significant speech with a rhyming couplet – two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter – to indicate the end.

Shakespeare exploits iambic pentameter to the full. An audience accustomed to the convention can be deliberately caught off-guard by a change in the rhythm; for example, in the line ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’ (26 July). Breaking the rhythm draws attention to a line. Interrupting the rhythm, by dividing a line between two speakers (30 June), has a similar effect. And just to keep an audience on its toes, every now and then Shakespeare will slip in a short line, forcing a pause (19 July).

Not all of Shakespeare’s speeches are in iambic pentameter. He makes a distinction between high-born characters (kings and queens and nobles) and low-born ones (tradespeople and figures of fun). For the latter, who are usually played for laughs, comic timing is more important than adherence to convention and their scenes are often written in straightforward prose (8 November).

The restricted format of iambic pentameter gives Shakespeare challenges in getting his message across. It sometimes forces him into unconventional grammatical constructions, the most frequent source of complaint among students trying to understand him. It’s often the case that hearing actors speak the lines, or reading them aloud for oneself, can clarify their meaning. The same constraints sometimes force Shakespeare into his most imaginative and dextrous use of language.

My library was dukedom large enough.

The Tempest | Act I, scene 2

Shakespeare’s preeminence is assisted by the large number of publications of his work during, and of course after, his life. Many of his plays were printed while he was still alive, and seven years after his death two actor friends of his drew together a compendium of most of them, now known as the First Folio. There are variations between the First Folio and other editions of his works, but it is considered the most authoritative single text, being based on either shorthand transcriptions of actual performances or on the stage manager’s books of each script.

It’s four hundred years since the First Folio was printed. It contains thirty-six of his plays, only nineteen of which had been previously published. A further three – Pericles, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward III – are derived from other sources, while two more – The History of Cardenio and Love’s Labours Won – are lost, their existence known only from contemporary references to their performance. Seven hundred and fifty copies of the First Folio were printed, and 235 survive, eighty-two of them in the highly respected research facility of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Further copies of the First Folio are still discovered in dusty corners of libraries from time to time.

Shakespeare’s sonnets were collected during his lifetime and first published in 1609, in a volume which includes the longer poem A Lover’s Complaint. Shakespeare’s published career began with two other long poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece – works were written out of necessity when epidemics forced the closure of London’s theatres in 1593–4. The Passionate Pilgrim appeared in an unauthorized anthology of his poetry in 1599, and there are doubts about its status as an authentic work of Shakespeare. I’ve included one or two examples here from which readers can make their own minds up. His last extended verse work, The Phoenix and the Turtle, was published in 1601.

So full-replete with choice of all delights.

Henry VI, Part 1 | Act V, scene 5

I hope that I’ve captured some of Shakespeare’s infinite dexterity in this book. It includes sonnets, verses from the long poems, and extracts from plays. Famous soliloquies are interspersed with less well-known speeches and sections of dialogue which convey either the comedy or the tragedy of the scene. Purists may be upset to find that some of the material from the plays has been shortened for brevity. This is certainly a liberty; but the purpose of this book is to give its readers a taste of Shakespeare on every night of the year, not to tell all his stories in full. I hope I may be forgiven.

How does one choose a mere 366 examples from such a vast body of work? Shakespeare’s sonnets alone could fill almost half the book. I have used daily anniversaries as prompts for the selections. This approach works most obviously on dates which are mentioned in the works – 1 August and 10 August for example. But on most days of the year I have cast my net a little wider: births and deaths of great Shakespeareans, dates of great events, Saints’ Days, annual festivals – and on one occasion the invention of sliced bread. If some of the excuses for quoting Shakespeare seem a little flippant or obscure, the important thing is that it has led to the quotation in question. Nevertheless, I urge you to learn more about some of the events which caught my eye. They’re all interesting in their own right.

There’s no one quite like Shakespeare. You probably use many original Shakespearisms already and if, after a year of reading this book, you are working a few more into your daily conversations, then my work is done.

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet’s penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Act V, scene 1

JANUARY

Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d

Came to my tent; and every one did threat

To-morrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.

Richard III | Act V, scene 3

1 JANUARY

New Year’s Day, when many traditionally make New Year resolutions for self-improvement

King Ferdinand and three of his noblemen make a pact to give up the distracting company of women for three years, in favour of academic study. One has doubts.

LONGAVILLE

I am resolved; ’tis but a three years’ fast:

The mind shall banquet, though the body pine:

Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits

Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

DUMAINE

My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified:

The grosser manner of these world’s delights

He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves:

To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die;

With all these living in philosophy.

BEROWNE

I can but say their protestation over;

So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,

That is, to live and study here three years.

But there are other strict observances;

As, not to see a woman in that term,

Which I hope well is not enrolled there;

And one day in a week to touch no food

And but one meal on every day beside,

The which I hope is not enrolled there;

And then, to sleep but three hours in the night,

And not be seen to wink of all the day –

When I was wont to think no harm all night

And make a dark night too of half the day –

Which I hope well is not enrolled there:

O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,

Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!

Love’s Labour’s Lost | Act I, scene 1

2 JANUARY

The birthday in 1713 of French actress Marie Dumesnil, whose performance in Voltaire’s tragedy Mérope had the audience in tears for the last three acts, according to the playwright

Juliet is in tears because her father wishes her to marry Count Paris. Her mother refers the matter upwards.

LADY CAPULET

Here comes your father; tell him so yourself,

And see how he will take it at your hands.

[Enter Capulet]

CAPULET

When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;

But for the sunset of my brother’s son

It rains downright.

How now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?

Evermore showering? In one little body

Thou counterfeit’st a bark, a sea, a wind;

For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,

Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,

Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;

Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,

Without a sudden calm, will overset

Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife!

Have you deliver’d to her our decree?

LADY CAPULET

Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.

I would the fool were married to her grave!

Romeo and Juliet | Act III, scene 5

3 JANUARY

The birthday in 1892 of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings is the foundation stone of modern fantasy literature

Mercutio has let his imagination run away with him.

ROMEO

Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!

Thou talk’st of nothing.

MERCUTIO

True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,

Which is as thin of substance as the air

And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes

Even now the frozen bosom of the north,

And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,

Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

Romeo and Juliet | Act I, scene 4

4 JANUARY

The death in 1961 of Austrian scientist Erwin Schrödinger, famous for his thought experiment that a cat held unobserved in a box may be considered both alive and dead before the box is opened

The poet is alive only to his lover, and dead to everyone else.

SONNET 112

Your love and pity doth the impression fill

Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill,

So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all the world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your tongue:

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense

To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

You are so strongly in my purpose bred

That all the world besides methinks are dead.

5 JANUARY

The USA’s National Bird Day

Birdsong lifts the heart.

TAMORA

My lovely Aaron, wherefore look’st thou sad,

When every thing doth make a gleeful boast?

The birds chant melody on every bush,

The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun,

The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind

And make a chequer’d shadow on the ground:

Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit,

And, whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds,

Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns,

As if a double hunt were heard at once,

Let us sit down and mark their yelping noise;

And, after conflict such as was supposed

The wandering prince and Dido once enjoy’d,

When with a happy storm they were surprised

And curtain’d with a counsel-keeping cave,

We may, each wreathed in the other’s arms,

Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber;

Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds

Be unto us as is a nurse’s song

Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep.

Titus Andronicus | Act II, scene 3

6 JANUARY

The day in 2021 when supporters of President Trump attacked the Capitol

Richard of York claims that he is fitter to be king than Henry VI, whom he had promised to protect and serve if the Earl of Somerset were imprisoned.

RICHARD OF YORK

How now! is Somerset at liberty?

Then, York, unloose thy long-imprison’d thoughts,

And let thy tongue be equal with thy heart.

Shall I endure the sight of Somerset?

False king! why hast thou broken faith with me,

Knowing how hardly I can brook abuse?

King did I call thee? no, thou art not king,

Not fit to govern and rule multitudes,

Which darest not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor.

That head of thine doth not become a crown;

Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer’s staff,

And not to grace an awful princely sceptre.

That gold must round engirt these brows of mine,

Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles’ spear,

Is able with the change to kill and cure.

Here is a hand to hold a sceptre up

And with the same to act controlling laws.

Give place: by heaven, thou shalt rule no more

O’er him whom heaven created for thy ruler.

EARL OF SOMERSET

O monstrous traitor! I arrest thee, York,

Of capital treason ’gainst the king and crown;

Obey, audacious traitor; kneel for grace.

Henry VI, Part 2 | Act V, scene 1

7 JANUARY

Feast Day of St André of Montreal, whose preserved heart – kept in a reliquary in the church which he helped to build – was stolen in 1973

Lysander and Hermia love each other; but under a spell Lysander has fallen in love with Helena.

HERMIA

What, can you do me greater harm than hate?

Hate me? Wherefore? O me! What news, my love?

Am not I Hermia? are not you Lysander?

I am as fair now as I was erewhile.

Since night you loved me; yet since night you left me:

Why, then you left me – O, the gods forbid! –

In earnest, shall I say?

LYSANDER

Ay, by my life;

And never did desire to see thee more.

Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt;

Be certain, nothing truer; ’tis no jest

That I do hate thee and love Helena.

HERMIA

[To Helena] O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom!

You thief of love! what, have you come by night

And stolen my love’s heart from him?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Act III, scene 2

8 JANUARY

The birthday in 1865 of socialite Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, heiress to the Singer Sewing Machine family fortune

The ability to sew was considered a virtue in women, and it is one of the items in an assessment of one woman’s good points.

LAUNCE

[Pulling out a paper] Here is the cate-log of her condition. ‘Imprimis: She can fetch and carry.’ Why, a horse can do no more: nay, a horse cannot fetch, but only carry; therefore is she better than a jade. ‘Item: She can milk;’ look you, a sweet virtue in a maid with clean hands.

[Enter Speed]

SPEED

How now, Signior Launce! What news with your mastership?

[…]

LAUNCE

The blackest news that ever thou heardest.

SPEED

Why, man, how black?

LAUNCE

Why, as black as ink.

SPEED

Let me read them.

LAUNCE

Fie on thee, jolt-head! thou canst not read.

SPEED

Thou liest; I can … Come, fool, come; try me in thy paper.

[…]

LAUNCE

There; and St. Nicholas be thy speed!

SPEED

[Reads] ‘Item: She can sew.’

LAUNCE

That’s as much as to say, Can she so?

SPEED.

‘Item: She can knit.’

LAUNCE

What need a man care for a stock with a wench, when she can knit him a stock?

SPEED

‘Item: She can wash and scour.’

LAUNCE

A special virtue: for then she need not be washed and scoured.

SPEED

‘Item: She can spin.’

LAUNCE

Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living.

SPEED

‘Item: She hath many nameless virtues.’

LAUNCE

That’s as much as to say, bastard virtues; that, indeed, know not their fathers and therefore have no names.

SPEED

‘Here follow her vices.’

LAUNCE

Close at the heels of her virtues.

SPEED

‘Item: She is not to be kissed fasting in respect of her breath.’

LAUNCE

Well, that fault may be mended with a breakfast. Read on.

SPEED

‘Item: She hath a sweet mouth.’

LAUNCE

That makes amends for her sour breath.

SPEED

‘Item: She doth talk in her sleep.’

LAUNCE

It’s no matter for that, so she sleep not in her talk.

SPEED

‘Item: She is slow in words.’

LAUNCE

O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue: I pray thee, out with’t, and place it for her chief virtue.

[…]

SPEED

‘Item: She will often praise her liquor.’

LAUNCE

If her liquor be good, she shall: if she will not, I will; for good things should be praised.

SPEED

‘Item: She hath more hair than wit,’—

LAUNCE

More hair than wit? It may be; I’ll prove it. The cover of the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt; the hair that covers the wit is more than the wit, for the greater hides the less. What’s next?

SPEED

‘And more faults than hairs,’—

[…] ‘And more wealth than faults.’

LAUNCE

Why, that word makes the faults gracious. Well, I’ll have her…

The Two Gentlemen of Verona | Act III, scene 1

9 JANUARY

The death in 1598 of Jasper Heywood, a contemporary of Shakespeare who translated the plays of Roman playwright Seneca

Polonius praises the talents of a visiting theatre company for their versatility.

POLONIUS

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral; scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.

Hamlet | Act II, scene 2

10 JANUARY

The death in 1971 of Coco Chanel, designer of high fashion and expensive perfumes

Venus muses on the role of the senses in invoking passions.

‘Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love

That inward beauty and invisible;

Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move

Each part in me that were but sensible:

Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,

Yet should I be in love by touching thee.

‘Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me,

And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,

And nothing but the very smell were left me,

Yet would my love to thee be still as much;

For from the stillitory of thy face excelling

Comes breath perfumed that breedeth love by smelling.

‘But, O, what banquet wert thou to the taste,

Being nurse and feeder of the other four!

Would they not wish the feast might ever last,

And bid Suspicion double-lock the door,

Lest Jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest,

Should, by his stealing in, disturb the feast?’

From Venus and Adonis

11 JANUARY

The Feast Day of St Vitalis of Gaza, patron saint of labourers and prostitutes

Falstaff is unhappy, having made what he considers virtuous, abstemious lifestyle choices. Compass can mean a sense of direction or the measurement of an outline.

FALSTAFF

Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle? Why my skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-john. Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking; I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. […] Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.

LORD BARDOLPH

Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long.

FALSTAFF

Why, there is it: come sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house once in a quarter – of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three of four times; lived well and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.

LORD BARDOLPH

Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.

Henry IV, Part 1 | Act III, scene 3

12 JANUARY

The birthday in 1628 of Charles Perrault, whose retellings of old folk tales were the first modern fairy stories

Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow or Hobgoblin, is Shakespeare’s foremost mischief-maker, but in folklore the character predates the Bard by many centuries.

FAIRY

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery;

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck:

Are not you he?

PUCK

Thou speak’st aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:

And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob

And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,

And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,

And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

But room, fairy! Here comes Oberon.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Act II, scene 1

13 JANUARY

In 1941 Henry Ford patents a project car made of soybeans and flax, and powered by hemp oil

Flax yarn was once used to make wicks for oil lamps, which Clifford refers to after seeing his dead father.

YOUNG CLIFFORD

O, let the vile world end,

And the premised flames of the last day

Knit earth and heaven together!

Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,

Particularities and petty sounds

To cease! Wast thou ordain’d, dear father,

To lose thy youth in peace, and to achieve

The silver livery of advised age,

And, in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus

To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight

My heart is turn’d to stone: and while ’tis mine,

It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;

No more will I their babes: tears virginal

Shall be to me even as the dew to fire,

And beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims

Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.

Henceforth I will not have to do with pity:

Meet I an infant of the house of York,

Into as many gobbets will I cut it

As wild Medea young Absyrtus did:

In cruelty will I seek out my fame.

Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford’s house:

As did Aeneas old Anchises bear,

So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders;

But then Aeneas bare a living load,

Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.

Henry VI, Part 2 | Act V, scene 2

14 JANUARY

The Feast of the Ass in Medieval Christianity

Welsh warrior Fluellen teaches a lesson that every parent has tried to pass on – just because someone else does it, doesn’t mean that you should too.

GOWER

[shouting] Captain Fluellen!

FLUELLEN

So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak lower. It is the greatest admiration of the universal world, when the true and aunchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept: if you would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great, you shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle toddle nor pibble pabble in Pompey’s camp; I warrant you, you shall find the ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it, and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise.

GOWER

Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.

FLUELLEN

If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? in your own conscience, now?

GOWER

I will speak lower.

Henry V | Act IV, scene 1

15 JANUARY

In 1936 the first building to be entirely encased in glass is completed in Toledo, Ohio, for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company – which still makes half of all the world’s glass containers today

The poet considers the passing of the seasons, which nurture the seeds of the future but also destroy beauty. Yet beauty’s essence can be preserved in a bottle.

SONNET 5

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,

Will play the tyrants to the very same

And that unfair which fairly doth excel:

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there;

Sap cheque’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness every where:

Then, were not summer’s distillation left,

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:

But flowers distill’d though they with winter meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

16 JANUARY

In 1362 a tidal surge in the North Sea drowns some 25,000 people in England and northern Europe, and destroys whole towns, including Ravenser Odd in the Humber estuary

Henry IV landed at nearby Ravenspurgh, now also under the sea, in 1399 when he came to challenge Richard II. Henry doubts his son Prince Hal’s pledge to join him in the fight against Hotspur (Percy).

PRINCE HAL

I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord,

Be more myself.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE

For all the world

As thou art to this hour was Richard then

When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh,

And even as I was then is Percy now.

Now, by my sceptre and my soul to boot,

He hath more worthy interest to the state

Than thou the shadow of succession;

For of no right, nor colour like to right,

He doth fill fields with harness in the realm,

Turns head against the lion’s armed jaws,

And, being no more in debt to years than thou,

Leads ancient lords and reverend bishops on

To bloody battles and to bruising arms.

What never-dying honour hath he got

Against renowned Douglas! whose high deeds,

Whose hot incursions and great name in arms

Holds from all soldiers chief majority

And military title capital

Through all the kingdoms that acknowledge Christ:

Thrice hath this Hotspur, Mars in swathling clothes,

This infant warrior, in his enterprises

Discomfited great Douglas, ta’en him once,

Enlarged him and made a friend of him,

To fill the mouth of deep defiance up

And shake the peace and safety of our throne.

And what say you to this? Percy, Northumberland,

The Archbishop’s grace of York, Douglas, Mortimer,

Capitulate against us and are up.

But wherefore do I tell these news to thee?

Why, Harry, do I tell thee of my foes,

Which art my near’st and dearest enemy?

Thou that art like enough, through vassal fear,

Base inclination and the start of spleen

To fight against me under Percy’s pay,

To dog his heels and curtsy at his frowns,

To show how much thou art degenerate.

PRINCE HAL

Do not think so; you shall not find it so:

And God forgive them that so much have sway’d

Your majesty’s good thoughts away from me!

Henry IV, Part 1 | Act III, scene 2

17 JANUARY

The death in 1456 of early German novelist Elisabeth of Lorraine-Vaudémont, who also translated French romances for her German readership

Although Shakespeare has nothing to say about German women, it seems that French men had no words for ‘No, thank you’ when it came to Italian signorinas.

KING OF FRANCE

Those girls of Italy, take heed of them:

They say, our French lack language to deny,

If they demand: beware of being captives,

Before you serve.

All’s Well That Ends Well | Act II, scene 1

18 JANUARY

The birthday in 1882 of author A.A. Milne, who created Winnie the Pooh, the self-confessed ‘bear of very little brain’

Thersites has a very low opinion of the warriors Achilles and Patroclus.

THERSITES

With too much blood and too little brain, these two may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too little blood they do, I’ll be a curer of madmen. Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as earwax: and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull – the primitive statue, and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother’s leg – to what form but that he is, should wit larded with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to? To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not, what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus! Hey-day! spirits and fires!

Troilus and Cressida | Act V, scene 1

19 JANUARY

Husbands Day in Iceland

What if wives acted like their husbands?

EMILIA

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults

If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,

And pour our treasures into foreign laps,

Or else break out in peevish jealousies,

Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,

Or scant our former having in despite;

Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,

Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know

Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell

And have their palates both for sweet and sour,

As husbands have. What is it that they do

When they change us for others? Is it sport?

I think it is: and doth affection breed it?

I think it doth: is’t frailty that thus errs?

It is so too: and have not we affections,

Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?

Then let them use us well: else let them know,

The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

Othello | Act IV, scene 3

20 JANUARY

The death in 1779 of David Garrick, actor and theatre manager, who did much to revive public interest in Shakespeare

Garrick’s breakthrough role was Shakespeare’s Richard III, for whom the end is close at hand.

RICHARD III

Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.

Have mercy, Jesu! – Soft! I did but dream.

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.

Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.

What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by:

Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.

Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:

Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?

Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good

That I myself have done unto myself?

O, no! alas, I rather hate myself

For hateful deeds committed by myself!

I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.

Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Perjury, perjury, in the high’st degree

Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;

All several sins, all used in each degree,

Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;

And if I die, no soul shall pity me:

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself

Find in myself no pity to myself?

Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d

Came to my tent; and every one did threat

To-morrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.

Richard III | Act V, scene 3

21 JANUARY

Grandmothers Day in Poland

Pythagoras believed in reincarnation. Feste disguised as Sir Topas is pretending that Malvolio is mad.

MALVOLIO

Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged: good Sir Topas, do not think i am mad: they have laid me here in hideous darkness.

FESTE

Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest terms; for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtest: sayest thou that house is dark?

MALVOLIO

As hell, Sir Topas.

FESTE

Why it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstores toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction?

MALVOLIO

I am not mad, Sir Topas: I say to you, this house is dark.

FESTE

Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness but igorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Eqyptians in their fog.

MALVOLIO

I say, this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say, there was never man thus abused. I am no more mad than you are: make the trial of it in any constant question.

FESTE

What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?

MALVOLIO

That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.

FESTE

What thinkest thou of his opinion?

MALVOLIO

I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.

FESTE

Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.

Twelfth Night | Act IV, scene 2

22 JANUARY

Grandfathers Day in Poland

Shakespeare comments succinctly on nature versus nurture; on inheritance versus ability; and on passing the buck. The Duke of Gloucester is the Duke of York’s son.

DUKE OF GLOUCESTER

Will you we show our title to the crown?

If not, our swords shall plead it in the field.

HENRY VI

What title hast thou, traitor, to the crown?

Thy father was, as thou art, Duke of York;

Thy grandfather, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March:

I am the son of Henry the Fifth,

Who made the Dauphin and the French to stoop

And seized upon their towns and provinces.

EARL OF WARWICK

Talk not of France, sith thou hast lost it all.

HENRY VI

The lord protector lost it, and not I:

When I was crown’d I was but nine months old.

DUKE OF YORK

You are old enough now, and yet, methinks, you lose.

Father, tear the crown from the usurper’s head.

Henry VI, Part 3 | Act I, scene 1

23 JANUARY

The birthday in 1918 of pharmacologist Gertrude ‘Trudy’ Elion, whose work on targeted drugs paved the way for AZT, the first treatment used widely in the fight against AIDS

Shakespeare often characterizes love as a disease, here made worse by his cruel treatment by the so-called Dark Lady who is the object of several of his sonnets.

SONNET 147

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease,

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

My reason, the physician to my love,

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

Hath left me, and I desperate now approve

Desire is death, which physic did except.

Past cure I am, now reason is past care,

And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;

My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,

At random from the truth vainly express’d;

For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

24 JANUARY

The discovery in 1972 of Sgt Shoichi Yokoi, a soldier who had remained in hiding on Guam since World War Two, believing that surrender and capture were more dishonourable than death

Claudio and Isabella discuss death and dishonour.

CLAUDIO

Death is a fearful thing.

ISABELLA

And shamed life a hateful.

CLAUDIO

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendent world; or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought

Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

Measure for Measure | Act III, scene 1

25 JANUARY

Burns Night, when the Scottish poet Robert Burns is honoured at haggis dinners throughout the world

Touchstone is in love with simple goat-girl Audrey and wishes that she had a lover’s interest in poetry.

TOUCHSTONE

When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

AUDREY

I do not know what ‘poetical’ is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?

TOUCHSTONE

No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.

AUDREY

Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me poetical?

TOUCHSTONE

I do, truly, for thou swear’st to me thou art honest; now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign.

As You Like It | Act III, scene 3

26 JANUARY

In 1905 the world’s largest diamond, the Cullinan, is found in a South African mine

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but not necessarily a king’s.

HENRY VI

My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,

Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:

A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

Henry VI, Part 3 | Act III, scene 1

27 JANUARY

The death in 1922 of pioneering investigative journalist Nellie Bly, whose Ten Days in a Madhouse exposed the ill-treatment of women suffering from mental illness

Hamlet, having killed Laertes’ father, excuses himself on the grounds of temporary insanity.

HAMLET

Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;

But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman.

This presence knows,

And you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d

With sore distraction. What I have done

That might your nature, honour, and exception

Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.

Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet.

If Hamlet from himself be taken away,

And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,

Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Who does it, then? His madness. If’t be so,

Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d;

His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.

Sir, in this audience,

Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil

Free me so far in your most generous thoughts

That I have shot my arrow o’er the house

And hurt my brother.

Hamlet | Act V, scene 2

28 JANUARY

In 1591, Agnes Sampson is hung as a witch in North Berwick, Scotland

Resentful Hamlet resolves never to approve his mother’s marriage to his uncle.

HAMLET

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother!

O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever

The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural;

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites –

How in my words somever she be shent,

To give them seals never, my soul, consent!

Hamlet | Act III, scene 2

29 JANUARY

The death in 1961 of novelist Angela Thirkell, who declared after two marriages that ‘it’s very peaceful with no husbands’

Katherina takes the same view, when her husband-to-be has yet to arrive on her wedding day.

KATHERINA

No shame but mine; I must, forsooth, be forc’d

To give my hand, oppos’d against my heart,

Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen,

Who woo’d in haste and means to wed at leisure.

I told you, I, he was a frantic fool,

Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behaviour;

And, to be noted for a merry man,

He’ll woo a thousand, ’point the day of marriage,

Make friends invited, and proclaim the banns;

Yet never means to wed where he hath woo’d.

Now must the world point at poor Katherine,

And say ‘Lo, there is mad Petruchio’s wife,

If it would please him come and marry her!’

The Taming of the Shrew | Act III, scene 2

30 JANUARY

The day in 1649 when Charles I of England was beheaded

Queen Margaret mocks her prisoner Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, a man who would be king.

QUEEN MARGARET

[…] York cannot speak, unless he wear a crown.

A crown for York! and, lords, bow low to him:

Hold you his hands, whilst I do set it on.

[Putting a paper crown on his head]

Ay, marry, sir, now looks he like a king!

Ay, this is he that took King Henry’s chair,

And this is he was his adopted heir.

But how is it that great Plantagenet

Is crown’d so soon, and broke his solemn oath?

As I bethink me, you should not be king

Till our King Henry had shook hands with death.

And will you pale your head in Henry’s glory,

And rob his temples of the diadem,

Now in his life, against your holy oath?

O, ’tis a fault too too unpardonable!

Off with the crown, and with the crown his head;

And, whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead.

Henry VI, Part 3 | Act I, scene 4

31 JANUARY

Anton Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters premieres in Moscow in 1901

Chekhov was not the first person to write a play about three sisters. King Lear’s favourite daughter, now Queen of France, hears news in a letter of the treachery of her two siblings towards their father.

EARL OF KENT

Did your letters pierce the Queen to any demonstration of grief?

GENTLEMAN

Ay, sir. She took them, read them in my presence,

And now and then an ample tear trill’d down

Her delicate cheek. It seem’d she was a queen

Over her passion, who, most rebel-like,

Sought to be king o’er her.

EARL OF KENT

O, then it mov’d her?

GENTLEMAN

Not to a rage. Patience and sorrow strove

Who should express her goodliest. You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears

Were like, a better way. Those happy smilets

That play’d on her ripe lip seem’d not to know