This week, two priests took up opposing positions on what is and is not appropriate for a Catholic funeral Mass.

We take a trip down memory lane and check out what happened on this day in years gone by.

Richard T Cooke is involved in organising the Music at the Maldron free gigs by Jimmy Crowley and others as part of the Mother Jones Festival in Cork, until Sunday.

As yet another new label is launched, Donal O’Keeffe raises a glass – and wonders if we’ll ever reach ‘peak gin’

Here is this week's entertainment news.

As part of Science Week, Astronomy Ireland will be setting up some of the most powerful telescopes in Ireland to look at a very rare sight in the night skies.

James Berkery learned his craft in Cork, and is now making waves in London, writes Esther McCarthy

Justice may be seen to be done shortly with the possible disposal of a magnificent, but vacant, courthouse building.

Assassin's Creed starring Michael Fassbender is in Irish cinemas on the 1st of January 2017. It's an epic story of a man who dives into the world of his ancestor in the 15th century to learn the secrets of the Creed.

Finn from CCCahoots is quickly building up a reputation as the country's most clued up toddler.

The lapidary line of the tubercular John Keats is almost a cliché — “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” writes Damien Enright.

Cork Midsummer Festival runs this weekend and next. Here are some of the early highlights:

FOR writer and director, Ger Fitzgibbon, trying to figure out what William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, saw in each other, has been “the most fun” element of working on his new play, The Bed.

Ian McKellen has criticised India’s use of a British colonial law to crack down on homosexuality, telling a newspaper in Mumbai that the country needs to “grow up”.

The Eurovision Song Contest Semi-Finals is on Tuesday and Thursday night on RTÉ2 at 8pm. The final is on Saturday. 

SOME of the brightest lights of contemporary fiction celebrate the timelessness of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes in a collection of short stories to mark the 400th anniversary of both men’s deaths.

On the 400th anniversary of his death, William Shakespeare is rightly celebrated worldwide as possibly the greatest dramatist of all time.

USA: A Massachusetts man reading a book at the beach found a box containing human ashes. George Silva told The Standard-Times he found the box wedged in the rocks, in New Bedford, on Tuesday. Inside was a bag that had the name and number of a New Jersey crematorium.

A biscuit or a Bard? As the world marks the great writer’s 400th anniversary, Ger Fitzgibbon reflects on how Irish people drawn to his work included rebels holed up in Jacobs during the 1916 Rising.

MICRONESIA: The men rescued in this tale of three castaways were not named Tom Hanks, or Gilligan, or Robinson Crusoe. Though they might as well have been.

Limerick-born author Kevin Barry will read at Cork City Library on Tuesday, April 19, as part of Cork World Book Fest. He will read his ‘Cork’ story from Winter Pages, the first volume of the arts anthology he put together with Olivia Smith.

“Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere”— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

NOTHING will come of nothing, King Lear famously declares as he considers dividing his kingdom between his daughters commensurate with their expressions of love for him.

Legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's crowning achievement Ran is due to return to cinemas in a special 4k presentation

Did we mention it was random?

The late Brian Friel should have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, according to the director of the Abbey Theatre.

Justin Kurzel’s version of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (15A) opens with an extraordinarily vivid battle scene, as loyal Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) goes to war on behalf of King Duncan (David Thewlis).

Bears Don’t Read

This is one of those things you will either think is a pretty good idea, or it will make you unreasonably angry with the world.

LIKE butter on hot toast or cream with just-baked apple tart, some partnerships work perfectly together. 

Experts have poured scorn on an historian’s claim to have made the “literary discovery of the century” – uncovering the only portrait of William Shakespeare made in his lifetime.

A historian has claimed to have discovered the only portrait of William Shakespeare made in his lifetime.

Ireland is to overthrow King James II, today - over 300 years after his death.

Battlefield Hardline strays from the tried and tested formula by putting players on the streets as cops (and robbers in multiplayer). Here are our thoughts.

Wayne Jordan has had fun with his production of Romeo and Juliet, writes Padraic Killeen

Investigators said they believe remains found under a Madrid convent include those of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote and considered the father of the modern novel.

A new chapter in the story of Anne Boleyn worthy of an episode of Wolf Hall has been unveiled, thanks to facial recognition technology. Henry VIII’s attempt to erase his second wife from history after chopping off her head may have been thwarted after more than 470 years.

Walk to castle greeted by a locked door