1564 and 1960 - an Anniversary and a Birthday

15th October 1960

Presents, cards, breakfast, ingredients for a cake

So it was my birthday on 15th October. I was born in 1960 at 2:30pm in the afternoon in the front room of what was then 122 Linton Road on Eastmoor Estate in Wakefield. The house later became a different number because more houses were built.

And it's a beautiful day....
So I had some prezzies and got some great cards from family and friends – thank you, all – and watched the film Fargo in the afternoon, with the family. (“There’s more to life than a little money, you know? Don’tcha know that? And here ya are. And it’s a beautiful day. Well, I just don’t understand it.”)

Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson

Be More Molly and Marge

Some films (Fargo is one of them) contain characters that you never forget, and the final words (quoted in the paragraph above) of Marge Gunderson, played by Frances McDormand, capture a universal human impulse that turns the film into a piece of philosophy. It IS hard to understand why some of the characters behave the way they do when the world is essentially such a kind and wonderful place to be. One of my presents is the box set of the TV series of Fargo which I’ve already seen but which I’m sure I’ll watch plenty more times – and for every Lorne Malvo or Lester Nygaard, there is a Molly Solverson or a Gus Grimly. Molly in the TV series is the moral equivalent of Marge in the film – and as I celebrate my birthday I hope to Be More Molly and Marge – I’m sure it’s what Shakespeare would have wanted.

Alison Tolman as Molly Solverson

450 years ago Shakespeare was born
(23rd April1564 or thereabouts)
Did Shakespeare know his body of work would contain so many themes? Did he think of his work as having a coherent whole? An overarching style and tone? The range of ideas in his work had never accumulated in one person’s work before his writing career and has never been surpassed since, by any writer in any language. Shakespeare deals with just about every theme and aspect of human life known in England at the time, all of which are still relevant. As Ben Jonson predicted in his First Folio epitaph:

He was not of an age, but for all time!