First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"We are such as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep."
"Be cheerful sir, our revels now are ended."
"I will plague them all, even to roaring!"
"This island is mine!"
"Misery acquaints a man with strange bed fellows."
"What they say is real Shakespeare, with some reasonable trims and modifications. And with one notable exception, they speak the language beautifully, finding nuances of humor, feeling and fantasy packed into the prose and poetry of the script. Presiding over a motley, talented assembly is Helen Mirren as Prospera, the former duchess of Milan and Ms. Taymor’s most provocative and persuasive act of revision. Switching the gender of Prospero — an aging wizard who is also his author’s last and fondest alter ego — is more than a gimmick. When the character is a woman, a central relationship in the play, between the magician and her doted-on child, Miranda, sheds some of its traditional, patriarchal dynamic. Instead, a mother-daughter bond fraught with envy, protectiveness and identification blossoms into something newly rich and strange. … The Tempest is, perhaps above all, the portrait — the self-portrait — of an artist on the verge of saying farewell to his art. By abjuring her “rough magic,” burying her magician’s staff and drowning her book of spells, Prospera elects to live in a world without supernatural possibilities; having demonstrated the power of art, she accepts the limits of that power and forsakes hubris for humility, something Ms. Taymor seems unable to do."
"I didn't really have a male actor that excited me in mind, and yet there had been a couple of phenomenal females — Helen Mirren being one of them — who [made me think]: "My God, does this play change? What happens if you make that role into a female role?" … We did a reading to see if it was just a gimmick, and it worked so beautifully. The potential was there to enhance the play for people who know it — and for others it will just seem natural."
"Helen Mirren - Prospera"
"Ben Whishaw - Ariel"
"Djimon Hounsou - Caliban"
"Felicity Jones - Miranda"
"David Strathairn - Alonso, King of Naples"
"Tom Conti - Gonzalo"
"Reeve Carney - Ferdinand"
"Chris Cooper - Antonio"
"Alan Cumming - Sebastian"
"Alfred Molina - Stephano"
"Russell Brand - Trinculo"
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.