Coworker this morning tells me, “Hey, saw a Shakespeare book over the weekend, thought of you.” “Which one?” I ask. “I probably know it.” “It was called Coffee with Shakespeare.” “I don’t know that one.” “It was this tiny little thing, looked like the idea was that the author goes back in time and has coffee with Shakespeare. It was part of a series, there was a whole bunch of them.” “Coffee with Descartes, Coffee with Mark Twain, and so on?” “Yeah. Seemed cheesy.” I go hunting around anyway. Turns out this particular “cheesy” book is edited by Stanley Wells, one of the foremost Shakespeare authorities in the business today. It’s also got a forward by Joseph Fiennes, the guy who played Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love. I relay this information to my coworker, who responds, “Yeah, that’s the one. It was the forward by Fiennes that made me not pick it up.”
Would that be the Fiennes who is the son of a novelist and photographer – and who has a brother who is an actor, two other film making siblings, a twin who happens to be more scientific than the rest of the family and an adopted brother into archaeology – not to mention being a bit blue blooded (distant cousin to Bonney Prince Charley and that lot)?
Strange reason for not picking a book up …
gglebq