Signs Of Spring, Hamlet And Yet More Balzac

[poliphilo]

1. Blackbirds (probably the same pair as last year) are nesting in the honeysuckle. I keep spotting dad, with a worm in his beak, perched on the back gate, checking to see that all's clear for his final hop home. Also- and this too is a sign of spring- we have a fat little mouse scampering around the kitchen.

2. Ailz is collecting Hamlets. Today Mel Gibson's popped through the letter-box. Yesterday she watched Branagh's; she thinks it's marvellous. Me, I'm still in love with John Gielgud's quiveringly sensitive 1948 performance (audio only). People who saw him on stage say he was the Hamlet of the century and I'm not going to argue.

3. I didn't watch Branagh because I needed to finish Balzac's La Rabouilleuse- due back at the library today. If it's less famous than Le Pere Goriot or Eugenie Grandet, it's because it's a bit rambly- starting off in Paris with one group of characters, then jumping to another set in Issoudun- though everything comes togaether in the end. I like Balzac when he's rambly because you never know what he's going to serve up next. La Rabouilleuse is about an obsessed mother with two sons- a bad boy whom she favours and a saintly artist- but it's also a proto-western about two amoral ex-soldiers (this town ain't big enough for the both of them) matching wits over an inheritance, then settling things with a duel to the death. It's a lovely book.

Comments

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I did not care for Kevin Kline's Hamlet(funny it's about the only thing of his that I did not care for), I liked Mel Gibson's very much, and I had some mixed feelings about Brannagh's (again, I loved most of his Shakespeare, and also his other movies, but Hamlet did not quite make it for me). Gibson was just zany enough for the scene where Hamlet plays at being mad. Brannagh did the entire play, which I appreciated.
I also saw the Olivier, which was too melodramatic for my taste.
When I was taking the Shakespeare class in college, we watched videos of the BBC productions, which were excellent, not only of Hamlet, but of many others of Old Will's plays as well.
I fell in love with Shakespeare while taking that required class in college. He was so far ahead of his time - or is it that he was always timely - so that what is really true is always true?

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Ailz, you have just given me an idea. I too shall collect Shakespeare videos/DVD's, and add them to my "keepers" video collections.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"What is really true is always true": that's it, I think. Shakespeare was a popular dramatist, writing for his audience in Elizabethan/Jacobean London. He was very much of his time.