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Mathew Lyons's avatar

I think you might like the long section on Woolf and Shakespeare in this book, in that case!

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Tadashi Tokunaga's avatar

This post really reminded me of the ardent enthusiasm about Shakespeare in Orlando - which was also contrasted with the likes of chilly take on Alexander Pope (I might count Sheridan as a theatrical Alexander Pope). I felt even a little bit embarrassed with her purity about love for him - now, I'm coming on terms with that purity, which I secretly share, too.

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Martina R. Williams, PhD's avatar

Perhaps this is why I don't like or pay any attention to Substack Live Video. I'd rather read the best writing than passively watch people talking about it. I think I might have gotten on pretty well with Virginia Woolf if only I'd been born earlier.

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Mathew Lyons's avatar

I wholeheartedly agree! I don't suppose VW was always an easy person, but the more I read of her diaries, etc, the more I think I would have like to have met her.

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Martina R. Williams, PhD's avatar

I wouldn't want to have lived with her, but tea and scones under the apple trees outside of Cambridge might have been nice once in a while.

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Mathew Lyons's avatar

Perfect, yes!

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E.J. Barnes's avatar

Enjoyed this and the quote from Keynes. Lydia Lopokova didn't just read Shakespeare, she acted in it too, notably as Olivia in Twelfth Night in the West End in the early 1930s, which I think was reviewed by Woolf fairly kindly ... (I write novels about these people and sometimes can't remember which bits I made up.) Lopokova's career as a Shakespearean actress was a bit doomed though, as most critics didn't like her Russian accent. She had better success with Ibsen.

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E.J. Barnes's avatar

Having checked sources, according to one of Keynes' biographers (Robert Skidelsky) Woolf thought Lydia's performance a "dismal farce" but only said so to her friends; her published review was much kinder.

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Mathew Lyons's avatar

Garber has four or five pages on Lopokova’s Olivia! Would you like me to scan them for you?

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E.J. Barnes's avatar

Yes please!

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Mathew Lyons's avatar

Actually there’s quite a few pages on her acting. Will DM them to you

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Harry Watson's avatar

I've always liked John Keats' idea of synchronised reading of Shakespeare to keep people who are far apart a sense of togetherness.

In December 1818, he wrote from London to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana in Kentucky with the following suggestion: "I shall read a passage of Shakespeare every Sunday at ten oClock – you read one at the same time and we shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same room."

Not sure they did it and of course time differences wouldn't have helped. After all 10 o'clock wasn't even 10 o'clock all over Britain at the time. However in Keats sense of togetherness the Keats-Shelley house during Lockdown did have a 'synchronised' reading group at noon on Wednesdays - what 'noon' you chose was left to the individual readers.

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Mathew Lyons's avatar

That’s a wonderful idea - a shared moment of communion thousands of miles apart. I feel like I have read of other people doing this somewhere, but I can’t remember where unfortunately!

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Harry Watson's avatar

Yes, it's lovely isn't it. I joined the KS group on occasion. I lived in Wiltshire at the time and sometimes read while strolling by the Avon. It did give a feeling of ‘union’ in troubled times.

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Mathew Lyons's avatar

Which texts did you synchronise on?

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Harry Watson's avatar

It wasn't all Shakespeare and I confess time has faded memory of some. I recall the first was Sonnet 44 and Keats' Solitude was another, oh and his Ode to Psyche featured too.

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Mathew Lyons's avatar

Sonnet 44 and Keats' Solitude seem very pointed choices for lockdown!

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Harry Watson's avatar

Indeed - helped keep a connection through tough times though.

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