Everyday Shakespeare with Ben Crystal and David Crystal
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- Опубліковано 12 гру 2023
- This event took place at the British Library on Tuesday 18 July 2023.
2023 marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of William Shakespeare’s First Folio. It is the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, collated in 1623, seven years after his death. The British Library houses one of only four surviving copies of this world treasure.
In their book, Everyday Shakespeare: Lines for Life, the Crystals - son and father - gather the finest lines from lesser-known corners of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Together they create an entertaining trove of trivia, miscellaneous facts, historical context and opportunities for reflection:
'Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.'
'Make not your thoughts your prisons.'
'Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.'
'And I have heard it said, unbidden guests are often welcomest when they're gone.'
Join the Bard and two of his biggest advocates to revel in the joy of language and the wondrous complexities of life.
Ben Crystal is an actor, author, creative producer, patron of Shakespeare Week, Associate Artist to the new Shakespeare North Playhouse, and curator of theShakespeareEnsemble.com. Ben and his father David Crystal have collaborated on several books: Shakespeare's Words, The Shakespeare Miscellany, and The Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare. Ben's solo writing includes Lockdown Shakespeare, Shakespeare on Toast and the four titles of the Arden Springboard Shakespeare series: Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and King Lear.
David Crystal is known throughout the world as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster on language. His work on Shakespeare includes Pronouncing Shakespeare, Think on My Words: Exploring Shakespeare's Languages, and, with Ben Crystal, Shakespeare's Words, The Shakespeare Miscellany, and The Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary. He has written or edited over 100 books and published numerous articles for scholarly, professional, and general readerships on the history and development of English, including The Stories of English, How Language Works, Evolving English, Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling and Wordsmiths and Warriors: The English-Language Tourist's Guide to Britain, with Hilary Crystal.
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I’m a few minutes in, and I am going to buy that book
Ben and David I hava ALL your books. You are irreplaceable❤❤❤
Many wise words, and not all of them Shakespeare's. Thank you
Macbeth. What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
The lone chuckle at “non-binary pals” absolutely sent me 🤣 💀
Did you guys listen to any of the Bards' original recordings?
Cassius. Will you dine with me tomorrow?
Casca. Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth the eating.
Brutus. ’Tis a common proof
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the topmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
Cicero. Men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
Juliet. Mine ears have yet not drunk a hundred words
Of thy tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound.
I'd rather be 3 hours too early as well! 😂
I think I'm right in saying that the man who didn't write the canon had a daughter called Sarah who was illiterate. Do you mean to tell me that someone so gifted would not teach his daughter how to read, or that she wouldn't want to read her father's works?
If we leave Warwickshire and the money-spinner in Stratford, aka The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and go to Essex, we can visit the castle where Edward Vere was born.
I think my favourite Stratfordian is Sir Stanley Wells. I'm not quite sure why he was knighted. Perhaps he should be baffled for some of the gems that he's come out with over the years.
Stratfordians use some very flimsy arguments. Not as flimsy as those who think they're living on a tilting, spinning Copernican space ball, hurtling through space at Mark 98, and spinning upside down if they're in Australia, but flimsy nonetheless. It's funny how we never hear sonic boom, seeing as we're hurtling through space at Mark 98. I guess we must be deaf. Anyway, I digress.
Having read the entire canon, and working my way through it again, it is obvious that De Vere's works are aristocratic because he himself was aristocratic. Highbrow poetry, with the greatest of respect to Stratfordians, cannot flow from the mind of someone who could barely write his own signature, and didn't/couldn't teach his own daughter to read and write.