Patrick Stewart on Charlie Rose

http://seeker65.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/patrick-stewart-on-charlie-rose-show/

It's video.  Of Patrick Stewart.  Talking about both Shakespeare and Star Trek.  What are you still doing reading?  Go!

The Meta Game Of Questions

http://www.metafilter.com/71459/Not-where-he-eats-but-where-he-is-eaten

A post on metafilter about the new Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead movie turns into a sort of meta "game of questions", which is funny if you've seen the original Stoppard movie (or read the book, of course).

Some Love For Marlowe

http://kyrillevin.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/dr-faustus/

No Shakespeare in this one, just a short and simple introduction to Faustus, for those who might be interested in what Shakespeare's contemporaries were up to.  Seeing as we had a Ben Jonson story yesterday, it seemed only fair.

Jonson v. Shakespeare : It's All About The Math

http://daughterofben.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/shakespeare-math/

The author of this post is doing research on Ben Jonson when she cross-references William Shakespeare and discovers the ratio of material is something like 15:1.  She then goes on to do a sort of "tale of the tape" between the two, figuring out how much time one would need to spend reading the material, and basically comes to the conclusion that while one could in theory "catch up" on what's been written about Jonson, this will never be true for Shakespeare - the rate at which new material is appearing is just too fast.

Then she makes the leap that "it must be fairly difficult (impossible?) to write anything new in Shakespeare studies", and that's where I'd disagree.  If that were at all true I think people would have stopped, or at least slowed, a long time ago.  It's not like we magically ran out of stuff within the last few decades.  Second, the world is a changing place.  100 years ago nobody was writing about what Shakespeare might have done with a word processor, or how Henry V compared to George Bush.  Lastly, it's not what you write, it's how you write it.  If you're saying that nobody can write an introductory book about Hamlet because it's already been written, I'd argue that nobody can write a story about unrequited love because that's been written, too.  Sometimes the quality is in the delivery, not the research material.

High School English ... Done Right?

http://sheehy9.edublogs.org/2008/05/06/romeo-and-juliet-act-i/

Now, see, this guy's blog I can appreciate a bit more.  For a lesson on Romeo and Juliet he has the students tell a biographical story in which they are to mix relevant quotes from Act I.  The problem would seem to be that not too much happens in Act I :).  But I like this idea much better than the tests I've posted in the past that are little more than "True or False, the Prince threatens to put people in jail if they disturb the peace."  Goes to my whole "Just because he wrote it 400 years ago doesn't mean it couldn't happen today" thing.

My XKCD Hobby

http://dcamd.com/2008/05/06/my-american-dream/

I don't know how funny XKCD is for folks who aren't computer geeks by trade, but if he's going to do a Shakespeare crossover, I'm there!  (Thanks to Teacher2.0 for finding what is apparently an old comic that I'd missed.)

Hamlet Roundtable

Just so nobody misses a passing reference in the comments, I wanted to make this item a post of its own.  Nigel Beale is hosting a "Hamlet roundtable" on Thursday of this week featuring four "prominent lit bloggers".  I'm not really sure what prominent means in this case, but they are:

http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/   (Amateur Reader)

http://fernham.blogspot.com   (Anne Fernald)

http://www.sarahweinman.com/confessions/ (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind)

http://www.edrants.com/ (Edward Champion's Filthy Habits)

 

They do each appear to reference Shakespeare frequently, although I'm sure how often they are writing specifically *about* Shakespeare.  I think I may have linked the Idiosyncratic Mind one once or twice.

Anyway, sounds like it could be worth a watch.  They do appear to be a fairly deep lot (at least, relative to this blog), so your mileage may vary.

Error of Omission

http://rfgainey.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/error-of-omission/

I find it hard to debate her logic.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead

http://www.undeadflick.com/

You know that vampire/zombie/horror movies are all the rage when somebody crosses one with Shakespeare.  Normally I would have put this in the same category as that "A.D.D Hamlet" thing we saw a few weeks ago, but this one appears to actually have some real (well, B list) actors attached including Ralph Macchio, Jeremy Sisto and Jake Hoffman (son of Dustin).  Sean Lennon is scoring it.

FREE Stuff from The Daily Telegraph

http://www.medownloaded.com/Promotions/telegraph/

Blah blah, details, who cares, giving away free MP3 copy of "The Shakespeare Collection".  Includes 5 sonnets, selections from Dream, and two "great historical recordings" - Hamlet and Henry V - one of which is apparently Olivier, but I haven't listened to them yet so I dunno which is which.

You have to register and provide a UK postcode, but that's easily hacked.  If anybody comes looking for an Alan Farrar who lives at the House of Commons, tell them you haven't seen me!

 

 

(Just kidding, I'm actually Alan Blixt. :))

Stages of Thought

http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=e1bd6ffa-c648-4d40-8efd-40dd1b31b444

To make any contribution worth caring about, a philosopher's study of Shakespeare should do three things. First and most centrally, it should really do philosophy, and not just allude to familiar philosophical ideas and positions. It should pursue tough questions and come up with something interesting and subtle--rather than just connecting Shakespeare to this or that idea from Philosophy 101. A philosopher reading Shakespeare should wonder, and ponder, in a genuinely philosophical way. Second, it should illuminate the world of the plays, attending closely enough to language and to texture that the interpretation changes the way we see the work, rather than just uses the work as grist for some argumentative mill. And finally, such a study should offer some account of why philosophical thinking needs to turn to Shakespeare's plays, or to works like them. Why must the philosopher care about these plays? Do they supply to thought something that a straightforward piece of philosophical prose cannot supply, and if so, what?

I don't understand a word of it, but I've never let that stop me before.  There's plenty of folks in the audience who are far more well-read than I.

Great Tragedy, in One Word

Here's a game to play.  I'm curious if you'll all indulge me, or think I'm nuts.

Take a tragedy, and tell me what it's about....in one word.

I'll steal the easy one:   Macbeth is about ambition.

Who's next?   Feel free to repeat if someone else uses your play, especially if you have a different word in mind.

(The tragedies, for whoever needs a reminder:  King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens.  I'm only really expecting folks to hit on the first 7 or so, I think the last three are less well known to casual readers.)

 

[The idea springs from a conversation with a coworker where Anthony and Cleopatra came up, and I was trying to explain why although I read it in high school I think I would better appreciate it now, later in life.  I tried for a comparison, "If Romeo and Juliet is _______, then Anthony and Cleopatra is ________" and found that while I had the answer straight in my head, I couldn't adequately explain it in as few words as possible. So I wondered if we could collaboratively come up with a single word that would encapsulate each of the great tragedies.]

Will On The Hill

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10045.html

The United States Congress does Shakespeare.  Apparently it's part of an annual arts and education fundraiser.  Never heard of it before, but it sounds like a positive thing.

On a related note, I always wonder about women who say Taming of the Shrew is their favorite play.  Is it that they choose to see it with a wink and a Katarina victory at the end?  Or that they enjoy the debate about the real meaning?  I suppose that sort of like a Jewish person saying that Merchant is their favorite?

Hamlet, The Lost Ending

http://epistles.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/hamlet-the-lost-ending/

Short and silly.

The Psychiatric Times, on Hamlet

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/52396

I like finding crossover references like this (which, by the way, is dated 2005).  Most folks know, I'm sure, that it was Freud who came along and suggested Hamlet's issues with mommy.  Here is a psychiatric view of that argument and more.  As a matter of fact the article opens by crediting Freud with "persuasively answering" the question of Hamlet's delay.  However it then goes on to question Freud's character-centric analysis, showing the positive side of examining interaction between characters rather than just individual motivation.  I've got to sit down and read the whole 5 pages.

Cardenio Comes To Massachusetts

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0502/p13s03-almp.html

American Repertory is doing Cardenio in Cambridge, Mass starting May 10.  I have really got to make more effort to see these things. 

The Bard Never Would Have Let Me Use A Sledgehammer

http://nietzschefish.blogspot.com/2008/05/bard-never-would-have-let-me-use-sledge.html

[Note, image NSFW]

The above link just goes to a not-safe-to-work, albeit artistic image, with the following caption:

Shakespeare only really wrote with two views on women - the conniving sexualized and the innocent virgins.  The guys I work with in construction see me as either a sexual object or an incompetent child, so they aren't much different than Shakespeare.  Except the Bard never would have let me use a sledge hammer.

Discuss.

Art Student Macbeth

http://imagery.willentrekin.com/2008/05/03/macbeth/

A USC student has a vision for Macbeth that includes, among others, Christian Bale.  The link is to a sort of "promotional" piece for his idea, which mostly repurposes clips from American Psycho spliced in with music and Macbeth quotes.  I thought it was pretty cool.

Forget Shakespeare

http://shakespearence.blogspot.com/2008/05/forget-shakespeare.html

Alan K. Farrar (omgwtfbbq!) makes me want to read Peter Brook right now.  The topic, Forget Shakespeare, deals with advice on how to perform a Shakespearean role.  In so doing, Brook expresses pretty clearly one of the central reasons why I do love this stuff so very very much:

“The actor’s task is not to think of words as part of a text, but of words as part of a person whom we believe actually minted them in the heat of the moment” (pg 43).

In other words, take out the middle man between you and this fictious character.  Forget the playwright in the middle, forget that you are an actor performing a role created by Mr. Shakespeare.   You can't say "I will play Scene 2 this way because I know that in Scene 5 I respond in this way...." because Hamlet himself would have had no idea what he was going to do in scene 5, nor that there even is such a thing as a scene break.

Shakespeare’s words, Brook reminds us, are ‘necessary expressions of the inner patterns of exceptional human creatures.’

I think that summarizes nicely how I feel about things like Shakespeare biography, Elizabethan history, the Authorship question and all that sort of thing.  I care about the characters inside the plays, as if they are real people.  Hamlet is not a construct of this many words in this sequence - Hamlet is a messed up college kid whose dad was murdered and whose mom did some....well, he's got issues with his mom.  Hamlet, minus the sword fights and poisoning and such, could be any number of college kids in the world right now.  Same goes for Romeo, Juliet, Lear, Cordelia..... When I experience Shakespeare, I don't see text, I see people.  Exceptional people.   Last month I wrote a post entitled But what if you would? in which I tried to get at a similar idea.  Most of us in our lives will never experience the sort of exceptional life of a Hamlet or Romeo.  That is part of the great gift of Shakespeare, both to the actor who is given the roadmap for how to experience, and also to the audience, that they might witness it.

To Be Alone, Or Not To Be Alone

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/05/02/o.alone.or.not/index.html

There's really no Shakespeare in this story, but it did give me an idea.  Can you imagine if Shakespeare were alive today?  I don't know whether he'd be writing for television, movies or theatre, but I'm pretty darned sure he'd have trademarked the whole "To be or not to be" thing, and would be running around like a mad fool suing everyone who uses it.  Don't even get him started on people that use "wherefore" incorrectly.

Covering Shakespeare

One of my favorite podcasts is called Coverville.  The premise is simple - all cover songs, all the time.  A week or so ago I put in a request, in honor of Shakespeare's birthday, to do a cover of Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet. 

Ask and ye shall receive!

I wish he'd mentioned Shakespeare's birthday, but hey, I'll take what I can get :).

BookBabble

http://bookbabble.net/2008/05/02/bookbabble-episode-3-the-new-shakespeare-gary-barlow/

I was unfamiliar with this podcast until they stuck Shakespeare in a post title and showed up on my radar :).  If there's folks out there like me who are always on the lookout for some more intellectual / literary audio to fill up their MP3 players, this one might be worth checking out.

Note that I haven't actually *listened* to it, yet - I sync my ipod once a day before the evening commute home.  I'll let folks know tomorrow how it is.