Antidote to the election blues: two minutes of Shakespeare

Here’s a powerful antidote to the dispiriting election news this year: The Guardian‘s “Shakespeare Solos.”

This year is the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare‘s death, and the British Guardian is commemorating with its top actors and actresses performing 2- and 3-minute video clips, distributed on Facebook, Youtube, and the Guardian website. It’s terrific stuff.

Here are my favorites so far … from the sublime to the profane:

Laura Carmichael as Portia in Merchant of Venice: ‘The quality of mercy’

Paterson Joseph as Shylock in Merchant of Venice: ‘You call me misbeliever’

Damian Lewis as Antony in Julius Caesar: ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’

David Threlfall as Prospero in The Tempest: ‘Our revels now are ended’

Sacha Dhawan as Shakespeare’s Parolles in All’s Well That Ends Well: ‘Are you meditating on virginity?’

Tags: Damian Lewis, David Threlfall, Laura Carmichael, Paterson Joseph, Sacha Dhawan, William Shakespeare

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2016 at 9:55 pm by Cynthia Haven and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.