David Suchet as Poirot. Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. All have been on my lifelong menu for mental comfort food. Tonight, Poirot was served up deliciously in the 2008 ITV adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Cat Among the Pigeons. The episode takes place at an all girls’ school. Early on, my thirst for traces of Pre-Raphaelites…
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Ophelia Through the Kaleidoscope
Shakespeare began Hamlet with the ghost of a slain king, but if there is a lasting phantom that haunts us from the play, it is certainly the character of Ophelia. She has inspired countless works of art, and each generation attempts to explore and reconstruct her in a myriad of ways. My current rabbit hole is the gleeful pursuit…
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A Pre-Raphaelite Look at Hitchcock’s Vertigo
Warning: This post contains spoilers. If you have not seen Vertigo, you might want to back away slowly because I do not want to ruin your experience You have been warned. “Do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?”–Gavin Elster to Scottie in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo Vertigo is,…
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Shakespeare Magazine
I am honored and excited to be in the current issue of Shakespeare Magazine. Huge thank you to editor Pat Reid for publishing my article on Elizabeth Siddal and Ophelia. It’s a gorgeous issue! Read it free online You can follow Shakespeare Magazine on Facebook and Twitter. Visit ShakespeareMagazine.com
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Victorian Murder
In 1857, a twenty-two-year-old woman stood trial in Glasgow for murdering her former lover. It was the cause célèbre of the day and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti declared her too beautiful to be executed whether she was guilty or not, saying, “you wouldn’t hang a stunner!” (‘Letters of DG Rossetti’, Atlantic Monthly vol. 77) Rossetti used the term ‘stunner’ quite…
