Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
“In any case, Shakespeare-the-man should ideally be viewed within his own historical context, in so far as this is possible, and not Romanticized or Victorianized. I don’t believe that any successful Elizabethans, even Shakespeare, were what might now be called ‘nice’ — liberal, unprejudiced, modest in their ambitions and pretensions. For most persons of talent in this period, even those who, unlike Shakespeare, enjoyed the privileges of high birth, a measure of ruthlessness was a necessary skill.”
– Katherine Duncan-Jones’s Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life