'Henry V' in the light of Gulf War II? Or the other way round?
Maybe I should read the first act again, with those pre-war diplomatic negotiations to find a justification for invading France (a University of California site even gives a choice of editions).
The part about justifications was among those judiciously cut from the famous film Laurence Olivier made during World War II. He went on to run London's National Theatre, which is now staging the play for the first time in the institution's history.
A play about all wars, people reckoned this morning on Andrew Marr's 'Start the Week', repeated tonight, in a briefer version, at 2030 GMT on Radio 4. (I missed most of a good programme:
state of bowels = 
urgent visits since 1:20 am = 4
state of mind = 
progress towards check-up =  , i.e. broken through all secretarial firewalls, consultation imminent. Bon courage!, Karin, I'll be back soon*.)
'Start the Week' is also already on the Net (needs Real Player, free version is in small print). What I did hear so far will make me reassess one of my least favourite, apart from those semi-franglais courtship moments, Shakespeare plays. And brother Jon has probably forgiven our mother by now for not waking him up for the battle of Agincourt bit when she took us to see the Olivier film as kids.
I hadn't considered, for instance, an ever contemporary war-and-the-media side to the play, apparently highlighted in the new modern-dress London production, despite the obvious "propaganda value" of that 1944 film. Nor the role of the Chorus as one feature of Shakespeare's ability to see and tell several sides of a story.
Shakespeare and themes universal. Unbidden springs to mind the thought that my plan for yesterday, before trying to sit through any movie seemed like a lousy idea (so I'll wait for Marianne's thoughts on it), was to see 'X2: X-Men United' (Flash site). The first reviews I saw were mostly thumbs down ("not as good as the first"), but they've improved since, among both press and the public.
The connection with "the bard" is not just something I read on Ian McKellan, now taking up roles like Magneto and Gandalf, and the way people see Shakespeare in such unlikely places as Star Trek.
It's also precisely that nigh on conventionally godlike, supra-human capacity Shakespeare has for seeing the whole of things and their manifold facets, and his treatment of outsiders, social alienation, madness...
Playing opposite McKellan in X2' - I think I had better see it when I can - is another renowned Shakespearean, Patrick Stewart, who braved the stage a couple of years back in Leeds for a one-man show called 'Shylock: Shakespeare's Alien.' This account of it is more sympathetic than one I got after the event from a Yorkshire friend.
Unnervingly, run a quick web search for "Shakespeare AND alien" as separate words and you bump into people who seem seriously convinced that Shakespeare was an alien, even a bunch of them.
I'd just be intrigued to know how he would have "scored" on those personality tests I have yet to post about. He'd probably blow the software fuses, a person too multiple and complex to fit into any of their scales.
_____
(*mood update = briefly  . I'd about done this entry before seeing Yang, who ruled me off until "jeudi (...) au moins". Non-negotiable, but I've also been to a lab and got the wherewithal for the first tests.
Honestly, no more tiresome running commentary here! To someone else the last word:
- Something wicked this way comes.
- One sorrow never comes but brings an heir:
Open, locks, whoever knocks!
O, my offence is rank,
It smells to heaven -
Great floods have flown from simple sources.
- Thou damned tripe visaged rascal,
Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
0 thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness -
Thou hast done a deed whereat valour will weep,
On such a full sea we are now afloat!
Your bum is the greatest thing about you, so that,
in the beastliest sense, you are Pomey the Great:
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem.
- 'Tis neither here nor there.
Leave thy vain bibble-babble.
A friend is one that knows you as you are,
Understands where you have been,
Accepts what you have become, and still,
Gently allows you to grow!
- No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,
Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.
What's gone and what's past help
Should be past grief,
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.
- I'll be as patient as a gentle stream.
- There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.
- My library was dukedom large enough.
- For my part, it was Greek to me. There is not one
Wise man in twenty that will praise himself.
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck!
- Now, good digestion wait on appetite,
and health on both!
- It is the mind that makes the body rich,
They are as sick that surfeit with too much,
as they that starve with nothing.
(Chorus):
- Things without remedy, should be without regard:
By medicine life may be prolonged,
Yet death will seize the doctor too.
We do not keep the outward form of order,
where there is deep disorder in the mind.
Thought is free -
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.
(With apologies to WS & those monkeys)
5:22:56 PM link 
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