Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Courtesy of William Shakespeare

Posted on by under The Reading Life, Word Play

Folger Shakespeare by DG Rosetti

Portrait of Shakespeare, ca. 1865 [FPm1 (Bd.w. PR2842 1709 copy 3 Ex.ill.). Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License]

In case you hadn’t heard, last Saturday, April 23, marked the four-hundredth anniversary (also known as the quadricentennial) of William Shakespeare’s death. There was much to-do about it in dramatic, literary, and historical circles, and for good reason: The English language, and humankind itself, owes a great debt to the Bard, whose influence persists more than four centuries after his plays hit the London stage.

The staggering scope of that influence is impossible to chronicle in a single blog post, so we’ll let Sir Ian McKellen—whose Shakespearean roles include Hamlet, Romeo, Macbeth, Richard III, Iago, King Lear, and Coriolanus—sum it up for us. Continue reading →

Soundtrack for Summer Reading

Posted on by under Books Make It Better

Summer is just around the corner, and that can only mean one thing: road trip! Of course you’ll need plenty of reading material to keep you company in the car, on the beach, by the lake, or in the hammock. We’ll be happy to help you pack your book tote, especially once Bas Bleu’s Summer issue hits your mailbox next week!

But aside from great books (and lots of sunscreen), no summer road trip is complete without good tunes. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a special Bas Bleu playlist just for you. Continue reading →