David Foley
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Shakespearing #37: The Tempest
Shakespearing #37 by David Foley The Tempest Sometimes it takes a production that doesn’t work to make you understand how a play does. As I re-read The Tempest, I wondered guiltily if I’d ever much liked it. Coming after Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, it felt tepid. Where was the drama, the deep emotion? The next… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #34: Pericles
Shakespearing #34 by David Foley Pericles Last week I mentioned a tug-of-war I’d felt in college between the Shakespeare-as-literature and the Shakespeare-as-drama camps, but now I wonder if I just don’t get academics in general. In his introduction to the Pelican edition of Pericles, Stephen Orgel of Stanford calls the play “a masterpiece—which is to… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #33: Timon of Athens
Shakespearing #33 by David Foley Timon of Athens Timon of Athens is supposed to be one of the plays Shakespeare collaborated on. The speculation is that Thomas Middleton (Women Beware Women) wrote about forty percent of it. To make matters worse, according to James Shapiro, “individual scenes [are] divided between the two, suggesting that the… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #31: Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespearing #31 by David Foley Antony and Cleopatra One reason I wouldn’t be a good playwriting teacher is that I wouldn’t know how to teach inconsistency. It’s one of those things I think you either get or you don’t, one of those things that suggest certain elements of writing can’t be taught. Mostly I mean… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #25: Troilus and Cressida
Shakespearing #25 by David Foley Troilus and Cressida You have to let critics do what they do, and one who reviewed my play Cressida Among the Greeks said that, although the press release cited both Chaucer and Shakespeare, I was clearly following Shakespeare much more closely. I found the claim bewildering at the time, and… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #24: Twelfth Night
Shakespearing #24 by David Foley Twelfth Night I am sure that a lot of the coyness and silliness that accompanies productions of Shakespeare that include cross-dressing roles is an attempt to steer them clear of the Queer. This is Jeanette Winterson in one of her more high-handed modes, and it always makes me want to… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #23: Hamlet
Shakespearing #23 by David Foley Hamlet For a certain kind of theatre/English lit nerd, Hamlet was our Catcher in the Rye. Hamlet not Holden was the disaffected hero who awakened our sense that we were surrounded by phonies in a messed-up world. I remember being puzzled to learn that scholars argued back and forth about… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #22: As You Like It
Shakespearing #22 by David Foley As You Like It I’ve probably fallen too easily into the assumption that the order I’m using for Shakespeare’s plays reflects an actual order of composition. Go online and you’ll find chronologies that vary significantly from Riverside’s. So my sense that As You Like It acted for Shakespeare as a… Continue reading
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Shakespearing #19: Much Ado About Nothing
Shakespearing #19 by David Foley Much Ado About Nothing Why are Beatrice and Benedick so funny? Maybe you can’t appreciate the force of the question unless you’ve been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately, unless you’ve struggled through the sometimes dusty corridors of his humor, laboriously reconstructing jokes and trying to imagine how they landed four… Continue reading
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Shakespearing 17.2: Lears
Shakespearing 17.2 by David Foley Lears (An Interlude) Note: In my project of reading all of Shakespeare’s plays in order, I’m still a long way from King Lear. What follows are thoughts about seeing a recent production. When I entered NYU’s Skirball Center a couple of weeks ago—exhausted from four hours of teaching, a little… Continue reading
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The Drunken Odyssey is a forum to discuss all aspects of the writing process, in a variety of genres, in order to foster a greater community among writers.
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