King Lear
King Lear and The House of Mondavi
What can Shakespeare teach us about a troubled family business?
That’s a question I’ll try to answer at a discussion hosted by a long-lasting and large book group in Burlingame, Calif., this fall. Over the summer, the group has decided to read Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, alongside my book, The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty.
- Continue Reading » 5 Comments
Keats' Sonnet on Lear and Literary Biography
As a way to say goodbye to Lear I thought I would share this poem, and some thoughts sparked by it:
- Continue Reading » 5 Comments
"He must out-do the Devil, to be a Poet in the rank with Shakespeare"
- So said Thomas Rhymer in his 1693 treatise A Short View of Tragedy.
- Continue Reading » 6 Comments
"That's how it is on this bitch of an earth"
Matthew Biberman writes today about the "tragedy of tragedy," about nothing and nowhere to fall from.
- Continue Reading » 8 Comments
Lear, Gitmo, Beckett: On Torture
- In previous posts, I have drawn attention to the significance of Edmund—he is the glue of the play. And I have stressed that—for me—Lear is indeed mad from the start.
- Continue Reading » 1 Comment
Summer Reading Plans
The only reading I got done yesterday involved The NY Times, The SF Chronicle, and redroom blogs, which were so interesting to me in terms of discussing King Lear and &qu
- Continue Reading » 6 Comments
Lear: Men and Threats to their Security in Old Age
King Lear and Confucianism
`At Deptford & Stratford' _ Scene One
Scene: a pub in Deptford, just off the Thames. Four men at a table, drinking heavily, worried.
- Continue Reading » 7 Comments
Something comes from nothing: On Cordelia's Silence
- While keeping in mind that backstage Edmund is busy accumulating power and leaving destruction in his wake, I turn now to Lear’s main plot.
- Continue Reading » 4 Comments