Shakespeare Does Halloween

Better Living through Beowulf ^ | Oct 31, 2016 | Robin Bates

[CondoleezzaProtege]

I reprint today a post on how Shakespeare can enhance your Halloween. It’s worth noting that Shakespeare’s most important audience for his late plays was James I, who was fascinated by the supernatural.

There are those ghosts that Puck mentions...

My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,
For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon,
They willfully themselves exile from light
And must for aye consort with black-brow’d night.

...

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Marcellus, Hamlet Act I, Sc I

(Happy Halloween)

Théodore Chassériau, “The Ghost of Banquo”

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

If he wanted a grand horror tale, that was probably too graphic for England, he could have written about mass murderer-cannibal Sawney Bean and his clan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawney_Bean

Dorothy L. Sayers did a great write up about Sawney & family, in her anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928).

[SunkenCiv]

Nice! Thanks CondoleezzaProtege.

[married21]

Thanks for this post. Our family loves a bit of literary nerd stuff, and there wasn’t even any Shakespeare in the park in our locale this summer. So this was welcome.

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[colorado tanker]