humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On Feb 28, 8:18 am, "Paul Crowley"
wrote:
> Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time" series is often
> excellent (two very good programs recently
> on 'The Statue of Liberty' and on Cosmology).
> But whenever he goes near Shake-speare
> there is a thud as he hits rock-bottom. No one
> has anything to say -- other than the usual
> banalities.
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml
>
> Today's programme on King Lear was
> what might have been expected. Zero
> enlightenment.
>
> Curiously, the programme note on the
> schedule listing reflects more about the
> reality of the play than the programme
> itself:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/schedule/
> " . . Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare's King Lear with guests
> Jonathan Bate, Catherine Belsey and Katherine Duncan-Jones. The
> tragedy's themes of rule and misrule, old age and family breakup
> assumed a topical poignancy at the end of Elizabeth I's reign. . . "
>
> Yet the play was supposedly written in
> 1606 -- three years into the new reign.
> By that time, the atmosphere at the end
> of the old Queen's reign would have
> been quite forgotten -- and completely
> irrelevant to all that was happening
> under James. So where did the 'topical
> poignancy' come from?
>
> Paul.

Such is our dictatorship of relativism. It produces flat souls
incapable of understanding Shakespeare.