{"id":89898,"date":"2019-04-23T15:31:13","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T13:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2019\/04\/23\/if-were-all-hedgehogs-or-foxes-what-was-shakespeare\/"},"modified":"2019-04-23T15:31:13","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T13:31:13","slug":"if-were-all-hedgehogs-or-foxes-what-was-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=89898","title":{"rendered":"If we&#039;re all hedgehogs or foxes, what was Shakespeare?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Specialist hedgehog or wide-ranging fox? In an extract from his new book, the late playwright Stephen Jeffreys identifies two kinds of thinkers \u2013 and one writer who defies definition Just as people outside the theatre ask actors, \u201cHow do you remember the words?\u201d so do they enquire of writers, \u201cWhere do your ideas come from?\u201d In both cases, the truthful answer is: \u201cThat\u2019s the easy part.\u201d For a professional playwright, having ideas for plays is something that happens on a daily basis. Reading a newspaper, listening to a friend\u2019s holiday anecdotes, glimpsing a curious image of, say, two people and a bag of firewood \u2013 anything can set you off. But as Robert McKee says, \u201cHaving an idea is like whistling a tune on the steps of Carnegie Hall. The hard part is getting the orchestra to play it inside.\u201dIsaiah Berlin, quoting the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, suggests that there are two kinds of writers and thinkers: foxes and hedgehogs. While the fox knows many things and forages across a range of experiences, the hedgehog concentrates its attention on knowing one big thing. Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/stage\/2019\/apr\/23\/stephen-jeffreys-playwright-hedgehogs-or-foxes-shakespeare\" target=\"_blank\">If we&#039;re all hedgehogs or foxes, what was Shakespeare?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Specialist hedgehog or wide-ranging fox? In an extract from his new book, the late playwright Stephen Jeffreys identifies two kinds of thinkers \u2013 and one writer who defies definition Just as people outside the theatre ask actors, \u201cHow do you remember the words?\u201d so do they enquire of writers, \u201cWhere [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}