Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come, In yours and my discharge. So we’re a quarter of the way through the complete works of Shakespeare. We’re over 210 thousand words in, thirty two hours having elapsed of runtime, and 513 minutes of delicious, minty fresh podcast for you and yours.

It was our intention to go straight through, fortnight after fortnight. We were not seasoned podcasters starting this process, and we’ve learned on the fly; and one of the things that we’ve learned is that this is much more difficult than it appears from the outside, and season breaks are actually very, very necessary. So, we’re taking a break.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our listeners for joining us as we go through this odyssey. Don’t worry, however, because we’ll be back before you know it. Our next episode will be available in December, where we will be watching the 2014 RSC production of Two Gentlemen of Verona. We look forward to talking with you then!

Email Address: hsaulpodcast@gmail.com 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hsaulpodcast/ 

Instagram: @hsaulpodcast 

Twitter: @hsaulpodcast 

Editing by Tammy Sarah Linde and Luke O'Hagan 

Music by Luke O'Hagan 

Audio excerpt from Henry V used under a Creative Commons License from Archive.org - license available here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Heavenly Shows and Unnecessary Letters: Richard II, directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2013, filmed live at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and written in 1595 by William Shakespeare.

What is a king? A miserable little pile of secrets. The tale of Richard the Second is that rarest of beasts; a piece of theatre in a very monarchist era that contains, and even to some extent glorifies, a coup dethroning the king. This is a play with two Kings of England; Henry the Fourth, who we’ll have two plays about in the near future, and Richard the Second; the least popular and least discussed of the royal Richards, he is a king mostly known for an excellent play detailing his demise written by the son of a glover from Warwickshire. This little scripted bit of the podcast has existed for a few reasons over the course of our podcast thus far: it’s been a place to make grand and sweeping statements about the place of Shakespeare in our modern lives, it’s been a place to make thinly veiled political jokes, but actually the initial intent for this paragraph was to explain why we chose the version of the play that we did. We’ve picked plays for lots of varied reasons, and some for no reason at all, but this one is very simple.

Tammy’s a big Doctor Who fan, and putting David Tennant in a show is a surefire way to get her excited to watch it. So, there we are.

Email Address: hsaulpodcast@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hsaulpodcast/

Instagram: @hsaulpodcast

Twitter: @hsaulpodcast

Editing by Tammy Sarah Linde and Luke O'Hagan

Music by Luke O'Hagan

Audio excerpt from Henry V used under a Creative Commons License from Archive.org - license available here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Heavenly Shows and Unnecessary Letters: Measure for Measure, directed by Dominic Dromgoole for the Globe Theatre in 2015, and written in 1604 by William Shakespeare.

EPISODE NOTES: There’s a lot of discussion in the world about Shakespeare’s place in the English canon and education system, a lot of people saying that we’d have a better time of it if we used work that was more relevant to students and to modern life. We here at Heavenly Shows actually sort of agree with that--Shakespeare belongs in a drama class more than it does in every English class-- but we disagree with the notion that Shakespeare’s not relevant. It’s great drama, and great drama is work that talks about big ideas in the small context of actual people. What does a Shakespeare play relevant to 2020 look like? We watched Measure for Measure, and I couldn’t tell you- I mean, it’s about the nature of justice and mercy, and overreaching of the state when it comes to doing violence against human beings, and about corruption and how vital it is for us to emphasise ethical conduct when it comes to how we view our leaders: but I couldn’t possibly draw any lines between that and 2020. Maybe they’re right, nothing to learn at all.

Email Address: hsaulpodcast@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hsaulpodcast/

Instagram: @hsaulpodcast

Twitter: @hsaulpodcast

Editing by Tammy Sarah Linde and Luke O'Hagan

Music by Luke O'Hagan

Audio excerpt from Henry V used under a Creative Commons License from Archive.org - license available here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.