| Start: | Apr 23, '08 |
| Location: | Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, Oregon) and many other places. |
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Willliam Shakespeare's Birthday (1564)
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| Start: | Apr 23, '08 |
| Location: | Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, Oregon) and many other places. |
April 23rd is also St Georges Day - so it's a great day to celebrate being English. So we celebrate it in a traditionally English way, by playing it down and/or forgetting about it altogether.
ReplyDeleteBoy I envy those Irish!!!
Why is that?
ReplyDeleteI think apathy is a great virtue when it comes to celebrations of nationalism.
ReplyDeleteWe are becoming just as apathetic. I remember when the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day were holidays celebrated together by the community. Now it is just an excuse to have a day off and drink a little bit and barbeque. The community aspect has dwindled to almost non existent
ReplyDeleteWell put Doug.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why the English haven't 'played down' or forgotten about Bon Fire Night when they still burn effigies of Guy Fawkes..... 405 years after the Gunpowder Plot?
False flag events were assumed to have enduring appeal until the cat escaped from the 9/11 bag I think.
Fred - I envy the irish - for knowing how to celebrate their patron saint and exporting it globally.
ReplyDeleteDoug - don't get me wrong, I'm an internationalist at heart, but a little celebration of regional heritage would be nice occasionally.
ReplyDeleteYou know there are more Irish in America than there are in Ireland
ReplyDeleteI've got some nightmare stories of Ireland's health and welfare system in the context of the 'celtic tiger economy', a scandal that would have James Connolly spinning in his grave.......but then again I would have.... wouldn't I?
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying the dicussion Doug.
to beer or not to beer
ReplyDeleteI hope you post some Irish Health/Welfare eyeopeners when you feel like it--I would have thought Ireland's economy--which is actually generating emigration INTO Ireland for the first time since, I don't know, the Scots showed up in the 1600's--would be making health and welfare better funded. I guess I'm wrong.
ReplyDeleteOr as "Macbeth" said in Act IV, Scene two: "Let's have a Foster's, Macduff. Has to be five o'clock somewhere."
ReplyDeleteAs long as it doesn't involve attacking someone of foreign extraction with a pointed stick. Sorry, another silly Monty Python reference.
ReplyDeletePerhaps people will get involved again in celebrations within their community as the price of gas continues to soar.
ReplyDeleteGood point! They might because they will not be able to travel as much!
ReplyDeleteDid you know (in best Michael Caine accent) that Will Shakespeare died on his birthday? Anyway, I'm off to bed....to sleep, perchance to dream.......-
ReplyDeleteThe story, if its true, is that Shakespeare caught a flu or something after an evening of carousing at a tavern with a couple of his old Globe Theater mates, Richard Burbadge and fellow playwright Ben Jonson, who were visiting Stratford to see their friend.
ReplyDeleteI still kick myself at times for not going there when I was in England a while back--I hadn't seen enough of his work yet. An English fellow of my acqaintance told me Stratford could get a bit too tourtisty for many people's tastes
This is true Doug, Stratford is only 30 miles from where I live, but I don't go there very often because of the congestion. But you should not be put off by that, the RSC are based there and there are 2 theatres that are worth a visit.
ReplyDeleteWhen next I go to the UK, I shall not omit Stratford.
ReplyDeleteHere, here! Raise your pints to the Great Shake!
ReplyDeleteWith a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no - Happy Birthday Will
ReplyDelete"Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me".
ReplyDeleteWilliam Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra (V, ii, 282-283)