PERIOD & MORE PERIOD - MY SUMMER LIST

I still remember when summer was like: what do I watch now? Because all our favourite shows and Tv programmes were interrupted for some time and nothing new was on,  except old movies and silly stuff. Well, that was in the prehistory of TV and eons before the Net, Netflix or satellite pay-Tv were introduced. 

Why am I thinking about that right now? Because, instead, I've been watching quite a good deal of great TV shows in the latest couple of months, that is,  since summer has started. 

That's not bad at all:  we all have more spare time in the summer and feel less guilty binge watching or staying up late to catch up with our favourite series. 

Luckily enough, there are or there have been several interesting period drama series to pick up among.  Here is  my summer watching list: Will, Still Star-Crossed, Jamestown, Poldark and Turn Washington's Spies.

AT THE CINEMA - ALL HAIL, MACBETH !

 "... a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  

At the cinema with my students

It came out on the 5th this month and,  at last, I came to see it this morning. It's the latest film version of Shakespeare's Macbeth. I saw it at the cinema with one of my classes. 

It is a great movie: dark, gloomy, violent, impressive. It was not my first Macbeth, of course, but it was certainly an outstanding one. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are giant actors and I expected them to be remarkable  as the two protagonists.  But they were beyond perfection. As Macbeth was doomed to be king and Lady Macbeth his Queen, Fassbender and Cotillard were born to embody these two icon figures.  They were not simply remarkable but incredibly intense, impeccable in their renditions. 

"The film is a grimly visceral version of the classic play and offers a fresh take on the tortured rise and fall of the Bard's darkest anti-hero". (Mail Online)

WAS SHAKESPEARE A CATHOLIC? AUTHOR ELIZABETH ASHWORTH ON SHAKESPEARE'S LOST YEARS

In April 1757, men working on the house in Henley Street, Stratford, where William Shakespeare was born, discovered a six page, hand-written document hidden between the eaves and the joists. It was a copy of the Borromeo Testament, an affirmation of the Catholic faith written by Cardinal Borromeo of Milan. Each one of the six pages was signed by John Shakespeare, William’s father. It would seem to suggest that the Shakespeare family continued to practice the forbidden Catholic faith. In addition, two Stratford recusancy returns have survived from the year 1592 and on both John Shakespeare is listed. His excuse for not attending church was that he was in debt and feared his creditors – a myth which has persisted although evidence suggests that John Shakespeare was not in debt and that it was a common excuse made by Catholics to avoid the Protestant churches. The final clue that the Shakespeare family were Catholics is a list compiled in 1606, after the Gunpowder Plot, of people missing from the Easter communion in Stratford. On this list is the name of Susanna Shakespeere – William’s daughter.