{"id":21059,"date":"2025-08-28T19:36:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21059"},"modified":"2025-08-29T11:53:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:53:13","slug":"brush-up-your-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21059","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Brush Up Your Shakespeare&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Brush up your Shakespeare - Kiss Me Kate (1953) - Movie Version\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u8Zzl_HH4XQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I have no real excuse<\/strong> for posting something fun and trivial tonight, except\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"\">First of all, I don\u2019t have a book finished for review;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">Secondly, everything\u2019s so sad today, and this clip amused me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Above, a show-stopping number from the musical, \u201cKiss Me Kate.\u201d The production, in its various manifestations, is a meta-narrative \u2013 a musical about a musical. It deals with a fictional musical production of a version of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cThe Taming Of the Shrew.\u201d The producer and star is Fred Graham, played here by Howard Keel. The female lead is Lilli Vanessi, played by Kathryn Grayson. They are divorced, but still cherish suppressed feelings for one another, though each is now involved with someone else. Lilli\u2019s guy is another actor in the play, who owes a large sum of money to a gangster, and has deviously signed Frank\u2019s name to his IOU. The gangster sends two minions to collect from Frank; here they&#8217;re played by two of the great character actors of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century \u2013 Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore. Who knew they could dance like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(By the way, I have never seen \u201cKiss Me Kate\u201d in any of its forms, and I get this information from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kiss_Me_Kate_(film)\">the Wikipedia article<\/a>. But I\u2019ve long been familiar with the song.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lyrics are by Cole Porter, better than which you do not get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The movie altered the plot somewhat from the stage version, so I don\u2019t entirely understand what excuse they made for having the two goons encourage Frank with this number in the back alley. In the original play, they find themselves onstage alone before the audience, and improvise it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Does quoting Shakespeare to women actually make a man interesting to them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not in my experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have no real excuse for posting something fun and trivial tonight, except\u2026 Above, a show-stopping number from the musical, \u201cKiss Me Kate.\u201d The production, in its various manifestations, is a meta-narrative \u2013 a musical about a musical. It deals with a fictional musical production of a version of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cThe Taming Of the Shrew.\u201d &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21059\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;Brush Up Your Shakespeare&#8217;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[4378,5677,5676,5674,2555,5673],"class_list":["post-21059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goofing","category-music","tag-cole-porter","tag-james-whitmore","tag-keenan-wynn","tag-kiss-me-kate","tag-shakespeare","tag-the-taming-of-the-shrew"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21059"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21061,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21059\/revisions\/21061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}