Daily Archives: 28 April 2016

Shakespeare Live! From the RSC – Screening Across Australia on May 6

Sharmill Films presents:

Shakespeare Live! From the RSC

Celebrating Shakespeare’s legacy in all the arts to mark the 400th anniversary of the world’s greatest playwright.

In Cinemas 6 May 2016

Tickets on sale now! For a list of participating cinemas in Australia, please visit: http://www.sharmillfilms.com.au/?p=5675

A once in a lifetime opportunity. An incredible cast. Featuring a special performance by Prince Charles!

Watch the Trailer!

Hosted by David Tennant, this star-studded show from the BBC and the Royal Shakespeare Company celebrates Shakespeare’s plays and their enduring influence on music, dance, opera, musical theatre and comedy.

Captured live from Stratford-Upon-Avon on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran has assembled an astonishing once-in-a-lifetime cast, including Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Helen Mirren, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tim Minchin, Rufus Wainwright, John Lithgow, David Suchet, Rory Kinnear, Joseph Fiennes, the cast of Horrible Histories, The Royal Ballet, English National Opera (ENO), Birmingham Royal Ballet, and many more, plus a very special appearance by Prince Charles, to perform in a unique tribute to the genius and influence of the world’s greatest playwright and storyteller.

Shakespeare Live! From the RSC will feature numerous theatrical performances, as well as Shakespeare-inspired works spanning the musical genres, including hip-hop, blues, musical theatre, jazz, opera and classical music. This unique gala event will immerse you in the excitement, the drama, the laughter, the tears, the constant reinvention and the utter timelessness of the works of William Shakespeare.

Gregory Doran, RSC Artistic Director, said:

“I am thrilled that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s celebration to mark this very special anniversary will be seen in cinemas across Britain and around the world. Performances of some of the greatest dramatic scenes ever written, played by some of our greatest actors, will look and sound wonderful on the big screen, as will the songs, the comedy, the dances and the music that we are bringing together in Shakespeare’s home town. Watching it together with an audience in your own town should make it truly an evening to remember.”

Dr Patrick Gray, Shakespeare and Aristotle on Friendship, Melbourne University Free Public Lecture

“The Eye Sees Not Itself: Shakespeare and Aristotle on Friendship”, Dr Patrick Gray (Durham University)

Date: Wednesday 11 May, 2016
Time: 4:30–5:30PM
Venue: 4th Floor Linkway, John Medley Building, University of Melbourne (map)
More info: sarah.balkin@unimelb.edu.au and (03) 9035 8617

In a conversation in Troilus and Cressida between Ulysses and Achilles, Shakespeare presents a remarkably sophisticated account of the relationship between the self and the other, adumbrating the concept of intersubjective “recognition” (Anerkennung) more commonly associated with Hegel, as well as other, later Continental philosophers such as Sartre, Ricoeur, and Levinas.

The idea that the other, especially, the friend or lover, is a mirror or “glass,” enabling and mediating self-definition, reappears in Julius Caesar, as well as Antony and Cleopatra; even as early as King John. Shakespeare anticipates Hegel here not only because he himself influences Hegel’s thought, but also because both he and Hegel are drawing on a common source, Aristotle’s account of the role of friendship in his moral philosophy.

More specifically, the image of the friend as mirror can be traced to a treatise attributed to Aristotle, the Magna Moralia, now considered of doubtful authenticity, as mediated through influential commentaries on Aristotle’s ethics by Shakespeare’s English contemporary, John Case: the Speculum Moralium Quaestionum (1585) and the Reflexus Speculi Moralis (1596). Case further complicates Aristotle’s original metaphor by emphasizing the eye of the other as providing the most revealing reflection of the self, drawing upon related conceits in Plato’s First Alcibiades and Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations.

Patrick Gray is Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in the Department of English Studies at Durham University. He is the co-editor with John D. Cox of Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics (Cambridge UP, 2014) and guest editor of a forthcoming special issue of Critical Survey on Shakespeare and war. His essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Critical Survey, Comparative Drama, and Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir. He is currently working on a monograph on shame and guilt in Shakespeare, as well as co-editing a collection of essays on Shakespeare and Montaigne. In April and May 2016, Patrick Gray is Early Career International Research Fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, 1100-1800.