Shakespeare and Epic Poetry Blog

I am excited to announce the first reading of The Purgatorio (Cantos 1-12) at the Plymouth Library on Sunday January 31 at 1:00 pm.

 We had a wonderful reading of The Inferno last year and we will reread the last Canto of The Inferno before we start the reading. You are encouraged to come to this reading even if you did not read The Inferno with us, the second canticle very much stands on its own. In fact in Canto I of The Purgatorio, if I remember correctly, Dante’s face gets washed of the grime and mists from travelling through “Hell” so that he can make a fresh start.

The Purgatorio is definitely my favorite Canticle among the three. Although very little can outdo The Inferno for sheer vividness of description and The Paradiso for its incredible attempt to describe a dream like vision of transhuman wonder, The Purgatorio is steeped in capturing the quality of being human.

W.S Merwin captures this very eloquently in the foreword of his translation of  The Purgatorio:

“In the years of my reading Dante, after the first overwhelming, reverberating spell of the Inferno, which I think never leaves one afterward, it was the Purgatorio that I had found myself returning to with a different, deepening attachment, until I reached a point when it was never far from me . . . Of the three sections of The Divine Comedy, only Purgatory happens on the earth, as our lives do, with our feet on the ground, crossing a beach, climbing a mountain. All three parts of the poem are images of our lives, but there is an intimacy peculiar to the Purgatorio. Here the times of day recur with all the sensations and associations that the hours bring with them, the hours of the world we are living in as we read the poem.”

I hope you can join us in our journey through The Purgatorio.

Prashant Andrade (fea_123@yahoo.com)

Thanks to everyone who showed up to read Coriolanus yesterday! I think everyone enjoyed the reading very much. A lot of the characters and events in the play seemed to suggest analogies to happenings today (tea parties, vile tribunes, war as glory) etc.

I wonder what the people in the book checkout line outside the Friends Room where we were meeting thought at hearing a bunch of sedate looking readers (playing the conspirators) chanting “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill” in a crescendo just before Coriolanus went down :-).

We also voted for the play to be read in February and “The Winter’s Tale” came out on top. I was glad of this choice as those of us who have read the play before get to fall in love again with Perdita and Autolycus (for different reasons!).

The group encourages the participation of students in these readings. Please let any students that you think might be interested know about the readings. We have often had students from the Plymouth Canton Educational Park attending the Shakespeare readings and we hope this continues in the future too.

Prashant Andrade (fea_123@yahoo.com)

The roles that I came up with for the end of month reading of Cantos 1-12 of The Purgatorio are given at the end of this e-mail. I would strongly encourage you to come to the reading even if you did not read The Inferno with us, each division can stand up for itself. Each of the major divisions of this great poem has a unique feel to it.

The readings of the Inferno and the Aeneid last year were among the most enjoyable literary or book group activities that the readers had ever participated in and we would love for you to enjoy this experience too if you can find the time.

Unlike the Shakespeare group, the Epic Poetry group tends to have a fair amount of discussion between sections and that greatly enhances one’s understanding of the poem.

Over the next three readings, we leave the darkness of The Inferno to spend some time in the Purgatorio, a mixture of darkness and light before moving on to The Paradiso which is all light. We will read the last canto of The Inferno aloud before we start to ease our way into the new Canticle.

I’ll see some of you for Coriolanus tomorrow and later on I will send a reminder about The Purgatorio reading!

Finally, the roles with some notes:

i) We are using the John Ciardi translation
ii) Roles are for between 4-8 readers
iii) Primary readers in a Canto (the Dante’s) will skip any speech of 3 lines or more, someone else will say that speech
iv) Explanation of notation
     a) Dante 4 (76-end) means read Canto 4 from line 76 to the end of the Canto skipping speeches of 3 lines or more
     b) Angel 9 (85-87, 91-92, 121-132) means read the Angel’s lines given  in Canto 9

Cantos 1-4
==========
1 Dante 1 (1-84), Dante 2 (67-end) *
2 Dante 2 (1-66), Dante 3 (73-end) **
3 Dante 3 (1-72), Dante 4 (76-end) ***
4 Dante 1 (85-end), Dante 4 (1-75) ****
* Manfred 3 (112-146), Virgil 4 (37-39, 61-75, 88-96, 137-140)
** Virgil 1 (52-84), Belacqua 4 (127-135)
*** Cato 1 (41-48, 85-105), Casella 2 (88-90, 94-105), Cato 2 (117-120)
**** Virgil 2 (28-36, 61-66), Virgil 3 (23-44, 52-54, 73-78, 94-99)

Cantos 5-8
==========
1 Dante 5 (1-69), Dante 6 (79-end) *
2 Dante 6 (1-78), Dante 7 (70-end) **
3 Dante 7 (1-69), Dante 8 (64-140) ***
4 Dante 5 (70-end), Dante 8 (1-63) ****
*  Pia 5 (137-143), Virgil 7 (4-8, 22-39, 49-51, 62-63), Sordello 8 (37-39, 43-45)
** A Late Repentant 5 (4-6), Late Repentant Souls 5 (46-60), Bonconte 5 (91-96, 100-135), Judge Nino De Visconti 8 (65-81)
*** Jacopo del Cassero 5 (70-90), Virgil 6 (34-51, 55-63)
**** Virgil 5 (31-36, 42-45), Sordello 7 (16-21, 40-48, 52-60, 67-69, 85-end), Virgil 8 (91-93), Conrad Malaspina 8 (112-120, 133-140),

Cantos 9-12
===========
1 Dante 9 (1-72), Dante 10 (70-end) *
2 Dante 10 (1-69), Dante 11 (73-end) **
3 Dante 11 (1-72), Dante 12 (73-end) ***
4 Dante 9 (73-end), Dante 12 (1-72) ****
* Omberto 11 (49-72), Virgil 12 (4-6, 77-84, 121-126)
** Angel 9 (85-87, 91-92, 121-132), Virgil 11 (36-45), Angel 12 (92-96)
*** Virgil 9 (46-63, 88-90), Virgil 10 (10-12, 97-99, 112-117)
**** Od’risi 11 (82-117, 121-126, 133-end)

Prashant Andrade (fea_123@yahoo.com)

Happy New Year!

This is a reminder that we will be meeting next Sunday on January 17 at the Plymouth Library to read Coriolanus. Hope you can make it and it will be wonderful to see you there! We will start at 12:30 pm as the play is one of the longer ones with 3417 lines.

Your chances of catching this in performance are rare so this should be an especially helpful reading to anyone who has wanted to see the play. A list of some of the actors who have played Coriolanus include Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Ian McKellen, Toby Stephens, Christopher Walken, Ralph Fiennes and Alan Howard.

Prashant Andrade (fea_123@yahoo.com)