Macbeth and me
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is as much poem as play. The essence of the drama is not in the action but in the words and in the unfolding of metaphor. It begins … Continue reading
Shakespeare’s girls
Shakespeare’s girls have grown up too quickly. Juliet was only thirteen in 1595 when Romeo and Juliet was written. ‘She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,’ Capulet tells … Continue reading
Hamlet, a post-Reformation tragedy
Francisco, an ‘honest soldier’, has only eight lines, but he sets the tone for the whole play when he says, in Act I, scene 1 of Hamlet, that he is … Continue reading
Proust, Einstein and the modern European novel
In the hundred years or so since Marcel Proust wrote A la recherche du temps perdu, Time has become one of the dominant themes of European literature. Patrick Modiano, W.G.Sebald, … Continue reading
Film by Satyajit Ray, story by Rabindranath Tagore
For his first job, the postmaster came to the village of Ulapur. It was a very humble village. There was an indigo-factory nearby, and the British manager had with much … Continue reading
Aimez-vous Tremblay?
Among the many things monolingual Britain is unable to appreciate is the work of one of Canada’s best playwrights. Unlike the Canadian writers whose work we do know, Michel Tremblay … Continue reading
Was Shakespeare a Catholic?
Whether Shakespeare was a Catholic is and will always be a moot point. The only thing we can say with any certainty is that his grandfather was. The only way … Continue reading
We just don’t say that sort of thing
Philip Hensher begins his introduction to the Penguin Book of the British Short Story with the assertion that ‘the British short story is probably the richest, most varied and most … Continue reading
A short story by Giovanni Verga
A young Sicilian woman called Nedda declares, at the end of a short story by Giovanni Verga, that it is better to be dead than alive and thanks the Holy … Continue reading
Submission
By coincidence, I finished reading Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel, Soumission, just a few days before Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, was elected Mayor of London. In the novel, another Muslim, Mohammed … Continue reading
