As the Sam Mendes / Kevin Spacey production of Shakespeare’sRichard III gets into gear at the Old Vic in London, this is a good time to look at what the play represents and the actors who have made the title role their own over the years.
Richard III is the last of the four plays in Shakespeare’s minor tetralogy of English history: it concludes a dramatic chronicle started by Henry VI: Part I and then moving through Henry VI: Part II and Henry VI: Part III. The entire four-play saga was composed early in Shakespeare’s career, most scholars assigning Richard III a composition date of 1591 or 1592. Culminating with the defeat of the evil King Richard III at the battle of Bosworth field in the play’s final act, Richard III is a dramatization of actual historical events that concluded in the year 1485, when the rule of the Plantagenet family over England was replaced by the Tudor monarchy. A full century after these events, Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audiences were certainly familiar with them (as contemporary Americans are of their own Civil War), and they were particularly fascinated with the character of Richard III. Shakespeare’s audiences could readily identify the various political factions and complex family relationships depicted in the play as they proceed from the three parts of Henry VI.
You probably know (or can imagine) the Laurence Olivier version, but did you know these other actors have all played the title role?
If you missed Pi day, you’re just in time to celebrate the day that honours its nemesis. Tau is the double of pi, corresponding to the date 6/28 or June 28, and to help mark the occasion, musician Michael Blake has created a musical interpretation of the constant (see video above). It maps tau, up to 126 decimal places, to musical notes. Earlier this year, Blake created a similar rendition for pi, that became popular online. Somehow, the melody of tau seems to be even more pleasing to the ear though.
Facebook use among over-50s in the UK has risen faster than any other group, according to research firm Nielsen. Overall, membership of the social network grew 41% between 2009 and 2011. Among older users the figure was 84%. The trend was similar for Twitter, although unlike Facebook, younger users appear to have drifted away. Nielsen’s findings contradict research published earlier this month that suggested the site’s popularity was dwindling in the UK and USA. The latest study was commissioned by the UK Online Measurement Company UCOM, which is funded by advertisers and media agencies. Its measurements are based on the behaviour of panel of internet users, both at home and in work. The research found that, in May, 26.8 million people in the UK visited Facebook, propelling it past Microsoft’s combined sites – MSN, Windows Live and Bing. Only Google was more popular, said Nielsen.
Without doubt, the most beautiful images to come out of Athens in many months. The Total Lunar Eclipse of June 15th 2011, as captured by Elias Politis.
What’s round, bright orange, full of holes and resembles a sponge? A newly-discovered fungus that was named SpongeBob SquarePants, Spongiforma squarepantsii, pictured above. But instead of living in a pineapple on the seafloor at Bikini Bottom, the real-life SpongeBob is a terrestrial fungus that lives in rainforests on the tropical island of Borneo. “It’s really like a rubbery sponge with big hollow holes,” said Dennis Desjardin, a professor of ecology and evolution at the San Francisco State University.
Dr Desjardin and his colleagues, Kabir Peay, an assistant professor of plant pathology at the University of Minnesota, and Thomas Bruns, a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of California at Berkeley, co-discovered the new species. The genus name, Spongiforma, refers to the close resemblance of the spherical fruit body to a sea sponge, whilst the specific name, squarepantsii, is the Latinisation of SpongeBob’s SquarePants pictured. The formal description has already been published online in the research journal Mycologia by Dr Desjardin and his colleagues. The print version is in press.
