First, a very happy 448th birthday to Will… Your work never ceases to amaze. Well done. Take the rest of the day off.
Now! This coming Star Wars Day, I’ll be giving a talk at the British Library based on the CD of Shakespeare sonnets, speeches and scenes I curated for the BL.
Together with a fab line-up of actors, we’ll intercut the blah-blah-blah by performing speeches & scenes from Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation. Some will be from the CD, some won’t have been heard in OP for over 400 years… Come one, come all…!
For details of the event, and to purchase tickets, click here…
How did Shakespeare sound to the audiences of the day?
Ben Crystal, together with actors from the company formed for the new British Library Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation CD, offer us a rare chance to hear new meanings uncovered, new jokes revealed and poetic effects enhanced.
‘Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation’ is currently available on CD & to Download here.
You can have a sneak preview to Sonnet 116, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet here…
Been looking forward to this for a while. My new talk coming soon to the British Library:
What would it have been like to go to the theatre in Shakespeare’s time? How did his plays tap into his audience’s views on life and love? How did the social, cultural and political developments of the time shape his writing? Just as the English language was going through great change, so was the city of London. The world was rocked too by the death of Elizabeth, and James’s accession to the English throne.
Shakespeare’s audience had a tremendous ability to suspend their disbelief, and a great appetite for story-telling; they would have been thrilled by his language play, by the new words he invented and by the semi-familiar worlds he and his actors took them to. His works are revitalised when seen through the eyes and minds of the people he was trying to entertain.
Actor and author Ben Crystal (Shakespeare’s Words, Shakespeare on Toast) dives into the hearts, minds, ears and words of Shakespeare’s world.
1-2pm, Friday 25th, The British Library – Shakespeare, Language & the Elizabethan Mind…
Posted on December 10, 2008 in:
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Last weekend’s Independent on Sunday chose Toast as one of their Christmas Stocking Fillers, going as far as to say:
Ben Crystal, a professional actor, wrote the zippy, anecdotal Shakespeare on Toast (Icon £11.99) to give the reader “the ability to go to any Shakespeare play and feel comfortable reading or watching it”.
He’s succeeded. It’s humourous, unpretentious and fascinating.
Hi, and welcome to the Shakespeare on Toast website.
I’ve set this site up as a base for my new book Shakespeare on Toast – Getting a Taste for the Bard, published by Icon Books in September 2008.
In times to come, there’ll be details of literary festival talks, reviews, and anything else interesting I can think of.
There’s also a Facebook group that’s been set up, for those of you that do, and a space there for a discussion forum.
If you’d like to hear more about the book, and exactly why it’s different from all the other books on Shakespeare, click here for the video I recorded for Meet the Author, or you can click on the Amazon link over to the right under Toast Links, to pre-order the book.
Thanks for visiting…
Ben
