The William Shakespeare Weblog

2011-06-21T15:04:00.005Z

The William Shakespeare Weblog has become The Hamlet Weblog.

Re-directing now ....

2004-05-16T16:08:00.000Z

Words
Shakespeare didn't write any of his plays as we see them now. This isn't as controversial a statement as it might at first seem. When we go to the theatre now to see Romeo & Juliet or Hamlet are 'edited' versions of the plays, cobbled together by contemporary editors from a number of sources which we know are mostly acurate. Mostly. I was amazed when I read about all this while studying for my A-Levels. There are many versions of the plays and roughly fall into two camps, the Quartos and the Folios. Now at the time, bootlegging was rife and so these printings were often from not entirely trustworthy sources -- we have the editing together of the recollection of actors; a written copy of the script sold afterwards by a minor actor looking for some fast cash to supplement their pitiful actors earnings (the issue with this being that this not be Shakespeares final version of the play); a stage hand's version full of directions; a non-contemporary version of the play which has appeared a hundred years after Shakespeare's death. Different camps will argue endlessly about which can stake the greater claim for accuracy. This article tracks the history of the First Folio, one of the original collected works, now considered to well -- not too good really, and how a cult has developed around it's inception.

2004-05-16T16:06:00.000Z

Music
Will in concert: "I've always loved Shakespeare," said Paul Dorgan, the Salt Lake City pianist who devised the concert's program. "He's such a musical poet. And there are references to music all through the plays. A lot of them use music, too -- some of it quite elaborate." ... Decker's recitations in the concert include Caliban's speech from "The Tempest" -- describing the sounds of a mystic island; Sonnets 8 and 128; a speech from "The Merchant of Venice" beginning "I am never merry when I hear sweet music . . ."; and "If music be the food of love, play on . . . etc" from "Twelfth Night."

2004-05-15T18:39:00.000Z

Books
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film is a string of essays describing the problems involved in adapting what is essentially a thearical form to cinema. It's an academic work and so the writing is quite dry at times and because we have essays we have repetition - how many times you can write about Olivier's 'Richard III'?

There are three essays of note. 'Videos and its paradoxes' looks at the use of video as a study aid, and how the prouctions on show can colour the student's view of the play - so Anthony Hopkins characterisation of Othello in the BBC production is wildly different to Lawrence Fishburne's in the recent film - neither is necessarily correct, but the student might not make that connection.

'Filming Shakespeare;s history: three films of Richard III' offers the best and most honest review of Paccino's 'Looking for Richard' I've read, treating the film on its own merits and not as a version of the actual play. Finally, 'Flambiyant realist: Kenneth Branagh' again tries to re-dress the critical mauling his films have been subjected to - there really isn't anything like the four hour 'Hamlet'. The one disappointment is 'Shakespeare's cinematic offshoots' which looks at adaptations which are re-imaginings of the text. It's cursary, anodine and misses out 'In The Bleak Midwinter' and 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'. Why?

2004-05-15T18:35:00.000Z

Henry IV
Fascinating interview with Kevin Klein regarding his Tony nominated performance as Falstaff.

2004-05-15T18:28:00.000Z

The Scottish Play
Macbeth test silly, say irate teachers: "The 14-year-olds taking the compulsory exam on the Bard were asked in the paper on Macbeth to write as if they were agony aunts for a teenage magazine. The question, in the paper devised by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, told the pupils: "In Macbeth, Banquo warns Macbeth about the witches' influence. You give advice in a magazine for young people. "You receive this request: 'Please advise me. I have recently moved school and made some new friends. I like spending time with them but my form tutor thinks my work is suffering. What should I do? Sam.' "Write your advice to be published in the magazine."

2004-05-15T18:25:00.000Z

Romeo and Juliet
Multi-lingual performance celebrating diversity: "Students auditioned for the parts, and 28 were selected to narrate and perform scenes from Act 2 and recite sonnets. Each scene — including that with Juliet perched at her balcony calling for Romeo and that with tragic duo's secret marriage — was performed in all three languages by different pairs of Romeos and Juliets."

2004-05-15T18:23:00.000Z

People
Paltrow gives birth to baby Apple: "The baby weighed 9 pounds 11 ounces and both mother and baby were said to be doing well."

2004-05-15T16:33:00.000Z

The Saturday Sonnet

Two

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

[translation, analysis]

2004-05-12T22:13:00.000Z

A Midsummer Night's Dream
An intriguing production in which the characters from the real play find themselves taking part in the making of a film: "In the new comedy, Puck and Oberon are returning to a wood near Athens, as directed at the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Puck mistakenly follows a sign that says 'A Wood Near Athens.' That sign is on a 1934 Hollywood sound stage at Warner Bros. 'They become engulfed in this movie that's being made around them,' Ludwig told Playbill On-Line. 'Oberon falls in love with one of the actresses, and Puck falls in love with just being there and getting treated like a star.' People at the studio think the fantasy figures are studio actors. When Victor Jory and Mickey Rooney have to unexpectedly leave the project, Oberon and Puck get cast as Oberon and Puck. (Jory and Rooney both did the movie.)"

2004-05-12T22:12:00.000Z

Hamlet
Basically, imagine the film School of Rock if a man playing Shakespeare had turned up instead of Jack Black. Getting kids to relate to the play: "'How did your son die?' Shakespeare, surprised and somewhat saddened at an old, still painful memory, said his boy caught a fever and died; as if to reassure his audience, he added that medicine wasn't very good in those old days. And then another student jumped up and said the boy's fever was caused by rats, and the rats gave it to flies, and the flies bit the people, and the old playwright allowed that there was some truth to that."

2004-05-12T22:06:00.000Z

Attribution
New film uncovers the mystery of Edward De Vere, yet another possible author of the canon: "Roland Emmerich has committed to direct an intense 16th Century drama, exploring a theory about the true authorship of Shakespeare's works. No, no, it's all right, you're not dreaming, nor has that suspicious guy by the copier slipped ketamine in your coffee again. Ladies and gentlemen Roland Emmerich is back, and this time... he's serious."

2004-05-12T21:47:00.000Z

Biography
Mouthwatering selection of quotations about food:
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O! it came oer my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.
"Twelfth Night" (1.1.1-7)

2004-05-11T18:52:00.001Z

People
Extensive interview Adrian Noble, the former artistic director of The Royal Shakespeare Company: "Of course, there were things that went dreadfully wrong at the RSC, and I deeply regret them. The principal mistake was announcing everything at the same time. We should have got the company's structure sorted out first, and moved on to the redevelopment later. As it was, opposition to one aspect of the project rebounded on to the others, so that nothing got considered on its own terms. People wanted a scapegoat, and as I'd been based at the RSC for 23 years, I was an easy person to pick on. But now I'm out of it, I'm not bitter. [French actor/director] Jean-Louis Barrault said, 'You must feel passion for everything but cling to nothing' - quite right. Festering is not in my nature. I have to move on."

2004-05-11T18:48:00.000Z

Much Ado About Nothing
Is still not colour blind, as eyebrows raised over the casting of a black African-American as the villainous Don John in new production: "Bob Devin Jones thinks questions he has gotten about being the only black actor in the cast and playing Don John are perhaps more telling about the general state of theater casting than they might seem. "In a way, even the most informed people, by saying, "Why are you playing the villain?' tacitly are referencing that it would be an automatic choice that the African-American would play the villain," he said. "If you scattered us throughout any particular play, it wouldn't come up."

2004-05-11T18:44:00.000Z

The Merry Wives of Windsor
New performance appears as matinee at the Shakespeare on Avon Festival.

2004-05-11T18:37:00.000Z

People
Some notable performances in productions of Will's plays crop up in the new Tony nominations: "As expected, one of the toughest categories to predict will be that of leading actor in a play. Kevin Kline and Christopher Plummer, who respectively played Shakespeare's Falstaff and King Lear, are competing against Frank Langella's bravura performance in Match, Simon Russell Beale's triumph in the National Theatre's production of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers and Jefferson Mays' juggling of 35 roles in Doug Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife."

2004-05-11T18:33:00.000Z

A Midsummer Night's Dream
In Korean: "It takes place in a world of Korean fairies such as Kyunwoo (herding boy) and Jiknyo (weaving girl) in ancient times in Korea. It is a love story that takes place one summer night in which reality and illusion are mixed together."

2004-05-11T18:31:00.000Z

Much Ado About Nothing
Don Pedro hits the streets: "And I'm pretty sure there wasn't any hip-hop trio called Super Dope Posse in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." This would be Shakespeare's loss. There is such an aggregation in Mosaic Youth Theatre's "Everybody's Talkin,' " an original musical based on "Much Ado," and its members nearly steal the show as they wax poetic on subjects like potato chips (crunch! crunch!) and SpongeBob SquarePants."

2004-05-10T23:22:00.000Z

Measure For Measure
for no reason I can write about here I thought I'd offer this bit of four hundred year old poetry which is a perfect examples of why men know nothing about women. It's the final speech from The Duke at the end of the play.

For those not familiar, in brief, The Duke has spent much of the thing running around in disguise tidying up after he left his deputy in charge of his city in an attempt to clean up the city -- while The Duke wants to tidy up the people's attitude Angelo brings in some far more draconian laws than he was expecting. In one sub-plot Isabella, a nun, watches as her brother Claudio is condemned to death for making his girlfriend pregnant out of wedlock. The deputy, Angelo, offers to set the brother free if Isabella will sleep with him. The Duke manipulates the action so that Angelo sleeps with one of his ex-girlfriends and the brother is freed. Now see what he does here:

THE DUKE:
She, Claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore.
Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo:
I have confess'd her and I know her virtue.
Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness:
There's more behind that is more gratulate.
Thanks, provost, for thy care and secrecy:
We shill employ thee in a worthier place.
Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home
The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:
The offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel,
I have a motion much imports your good;
Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline,
What's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.
So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.

So basically, The Duke having saved Isabella from sleeping with Angelo and breaking her holy orders and beliefs (the real issue at hand) offers her the same thing, grinning as he does so. In no production that I've seen has he had his way with her. At least she dashed off the stage. The best reaction was a slap across the face and a push of the throne, which is about what he deserves.

2004-05-09T13:31:00.000Z

Edition
The Charles Knight version of the canon rendered online: "This website presents 38 engravings from the Imperial Edition of William Shakespeare's Complete Works by the Victorian publisher Charles Knight. You can view accompanying texts in English and in Dutch, and, for thirteen texts, hear them enacted in English."

2004-05-09T13:02:00.000Z

Hamlet
"'To buy?' not the question...": "Wealthy Shakespeare fans had a rare opportunity April 14, when Christie's New York offered at auction a third-quarto edition of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Published in 1611, it was expected to sell for $2 million. In 2001, a first-folio edition sold for $6.2 million, more than double Christie's highest estimate. The price set a record for Shakespeare at auction, as well as a world auction record for a 17th-century book."
[Later: Hamlet fails to sell at auction]

2004-05-09T12:45:00.000Z

World
More on Will's food, this time what he might have been eating at dinner time: "It is impossible to say exactly what Shakespeare ate, but one can make educated guesses. Excavations around the site of the old Globe have uncovered mounds of oyster shells, Ms. Segan said. Oysters were served both at taverns as a pretheater snack and inside the theater itself, the Elizabethan equivalent of ballpark franks. Shakespeare's frequent mention of them ("love may transform me to an oyster," says Benedict in "Much Ado About Nothing") makes it all but certain that he slurped on oysters or ate oyster pie during long days at the theater."
[Related: Francine Segan, Shakespeare's Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook]

2004-05-09T12:09:00.000Z

People
With RADA celebrating its centenery this year, BBC News provide an overview of some of its most famous sons and daughters: "Steve McFadden is best known as bad boy Phil Mitchell in BBC One soap EastEnders. He attended Rada in his mid-20s for two years. Previous jobs before joining the Academy ranged from carrot picking and street trading to plumbing and working with the disabled."

2004-05-09T12:06:00.000Z

Performance
An overview of Ontario's forthcoming Stratford Festival: "The perfect selection to open the season in summer is "A Midsummer Night's Dream," one of three plays this season rated G, great for families. Instead of an English wood, the scene is Brazil, where Hippolyta, Amazon queen, reigns. Mischievous Puck plays court jester while other spirits toy with the emotions of Man, tradesmen try to master acting, and the magic of a summer's eve in the Amazon rain forest plays tricks on lovers who chase each other by night. All's well that ends well, so to speak."

2004-05-09T12:02:00.000Z

Hamlet
Or in fact Hamlet! The Musical: "The show includes a slew of Nashville stage veterans and is done, mind you, with ''full respect'' for the original Shakespearean work. Its cast of characters has everything from an all-too-egotistical thespian to a Ted Nugent-like rock singer, with a theater co-owner who ''hawks beauty products at the ticket counter'' in between."

2004-05-09T11:51:00.000Z

Biography
Shakespeare - the Musical: "a play about the Bard with excerpts from his plays and poems, with words and music by Cenarth Fox, proved to be a memorable spectacle. Under the able guidance of Ms Caroline Pullicino and Ms Clarissa Fleri Soler, who produced and directed the play, over 100 fourth form students gave an excellent performance of music, dance, song and drama. It was a joy to watch these beaming teenage girls on stage as they were obviously enjoying themselves. Maybe it was the subject matter, very dear to my own sensibility, but surely the verve and confidence which all and sundry showed on stage, that made me wish the spectacle would never come to a close."

2004-05-08T15:47:00.000Z

The Saturday Sonnet

One

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

[Translation, Analysis]

2004-05-08T00:00:00.000Z

Words
Collection of food terms used throughout the canon presented in their original context: "This informal survey of Shakespeare's use of food in his writings reveals much, I think, about Renaissance literary convention, about the Elizabethan table, and about Shakespeare himself. Mostly "low" characters express themselves in terms of appetite."

2004-05-07T23:57:00.000Z

Taming of the Shrew
Another positive review for the North Shore Kiss Me Kate: Matching her intensity is the rakish masculinity of the strikingly handsome Dvorsky as ex-husband, star and director Fred Graham. Dvorsky portrays Petruchio with increasing vigor and ferocious physical manhandling as he attempts to fend off the onstage blows of his infuriated co-star. Dvorsky matches deBenedet's terrific timing, creating a believable rampage of conflicting emotions and delicious physical revenge, or as Shakespeare puts it, "For I am rough and woo not like a babe." His melodious baritone is a perfect foil to her powerful soprano as the sophisticated pair delivers one great Cole Porter hit song after another."

2004-05-07T23:55:00.000Z

Performance
Festival in Central Ohio: "Shakespearean insulters like Branstool mocked the few hundred students, parents and siblings who attended the school's third annual Shakespeare Festival Thursday night, which was organized by senior English teacher Dana Decker. Other students performed William Shakespeare's plays, sang Elizabethan songs, served as life-sized chess pieces in a real game, prepared food from the era and stood in the stocks as festival-goers tossed wet balls at their faces. A petting zoo with a small goat, sheep and pig was set up just outside the school cafeteria."

2004-05-06T23:55:00.000Z

World
It's easy to chide yourself for not knowing enough about y'know stuff from the past. Or rather that you know more about some science fiction shows or pop music than you do about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Catharine Lumby, associate professor of media studies at the University of Sydney, writing for The Age, thinks that's perfectly normal and rather healthy, quoting commentators making a case for Shakespeare's theatre being the Elizabethan Big Brother:

"Indeed, Hawkes has argued that the true heir of the Elizabethan theatre isn't Tom Stoppard or even David Williamson, but television. It's a claim Australian media studies scholar John Hartley enthusiastically endorses, arguing that television is the modern vehicle for popular drama. Comparing the last Big Brother series with William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, he notes that the latter employed "various stock characters, as carefully chosen as the housemates on Big Brother, to portray familiar types in the target demographic of the popular audience" and was equally "full of stagy artifice disguises."

There isn't any doubt that Big Brother is drama of a sort, and that the programme makers are manipulating the situation and unconsciously drawing out some very human themes such as paranoia and servitude. But will it be studied in four hundred years? Possibly but only as a cultural artifact, as a way of coming to terms with were humanity was at the turn of the millenium. It lacks metatextual depth -- the actual thing itself lacks a substance which can be studied.

2004-05-06T23:46:00.000Z

The Winter's Tale
Review of a new production from the Ten Thousand Things Theatre in Minneapolis: "By mixing death's rueful sting with the tonic of pastoral relief, Shakespeare gave early form to the tragicomedy. To the mystification of early critics, he also stirred time, place, religion and structure -- using whatever convention suited the moment. Costumer Sonya Berlovitz, tasked with delineating 15 characters with six actors, takes a cue from this anachronistic vision. Initially nonplussed, one can either choose to accept fedoras and trenchcoats alongside Elizabethan collars as a necessary convenience, or not."

2004-05-06T23:42:00.000Z

Hamlet
MPC Theatre Company (Monteray) presents Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". Short article describes the many levels of the play: "You can take the play on three different levels," he explains. "If you know 'Hamlet,' you'll enjoy seeing the play from the unique and fresh perspective of its two most insignificant characters. If you're unfamiliar with 'Hamlet' you will still enjoy all the verbal word play, gamesmanship and physical humor. Plus," he said, "there are the metaphysical, existential, and philosophical aspects of the play. Free will versus fatalism. The 'why are we here?' stuff."

2004-05-06T23:39:00.000Z

A Midsummer Night's Dream
... The Musical: "Michelle Risling loves singing and Shakespeare. The high school senior has composed a suite of choral music set to the bard's words. Risling chose lyrics from her favorite Shakespearean play, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," using lines from the characters of Puck and King Oberon, as well as Queen Titania's court."

2004-05-06T23:29:00.000Z

Seminar
Shakespeares Others: Shakespeare in the Context of his Rivals and Collaborators: "Proposals for papers are welcome on a wide range of topics and issues, including: The Non-Shakespearean Canon; What Shakespeare Read; Deviant Sexualities; Performing Shakespeares Contemporaries; Literary Reputations; Non-Shakespearean Motivations; Performing Shakespeares Contemporaries; Sentiment; Heroic Cultures; Jonsonian Realism and Jonsonian Fantasy; The Rise of Revenge; Who are Shakespeares Heirs Today."

2004-05-05T23:49:00.000Z

The Scottish Play
An analysis of the play with reference to modern psychiatric thought and possibility of changing our personality via prozac: "Every day, several patients ask me Macbeths question with regard to themselves—in less elevated language, to be sure—and they expect a positive answer: but four centuries before neurochemistry was even thought of, and before any of the touted advances in neurosciences that allegedly gave us a new and better understanding of ourselves, Shakespeare knew something that we are increasingly loath to acknowledge. There is no technical fix for the problems of humanity."

2004-05-05T23:44:00.000Z

World
Shakespeare vs. Britney Spears- What is Art?

2004-05-05T23:22:00.000Z

Hamlet
Brian Micklethwait considers the pricing of tickets for the new Hamlet at the Old Vic: "The genuinely decent seats for Trevor Nunn's Hamlet are £37.50. This is way out of my league. No offence to Trevor Nunn's Hamlet (keep reading, we'll get to offending Trevor Nunn's Hamlet quite soon now) but this is more than I can afford. What if I really like it and want to go again, to Trevor Nunn's Hamlet? What if I want to take another friend to Trevor Nunn's Hamlet. That's a whole trip to the South of France."

2004-05-05T23:12:00.000Z

Backstage
The hazards of performing in the open air: "At Theatricum Botanicum, dogs and toddlers have strolled onto the stage, owls have swooped down. I've seen bats and birds compete for audience attention, and apparently shooting stars have been known to divert viewers, too. At a Shakespeare L.A. Pershing Square show, a homeless man wandered onstage during Juliet's solo scene; a security person shooed him off. Leaves blow into teacups in prim drawing-room scenes. Once during The Seagull at Cal Shakes, the wind flung two area rugs across the stage. "You acknowledge the situation with good humor and then move on," says Marshall."

2004-05-05T22:57:00.000Z

People
Rare interview with Dame Judi Dench curtailed due to traffic: "The trouble with this phone-on-the-road-interview malarkey is that Dench's answers tend to be as staccato as my questions. And when she does answer, I'm so busy diving for cover from oncoming traffic that I forget to follow up. I promise Dench that we're as good as at the book festival now. A voice in the background, says that there's only 10 minutes left so I should make the most of it. "Is there a new bloke in your life?" I ask. "Are you joking?" she says. "I'm 69." "Well, you're just a baby, so why not, and let's not fall out before we've even met." She says something about flattery that I don't quite catch because the wheels are screeching to a stop."

2004-05-05T22:52:00.000Z

Biography
Dance at Mary Arden's house: "On Sunday, May 16, performers including the Coventry and Hereburgh Morris, Elizabethan Dancers, from Tamworth Castle, and Irish Dancers from Bidford will provide entertainment all day long."

2004-05-05T22:49:00.000Z

Romeo and Juliet
A staging of West Side Story by The Trinity Repertory Company in Boston: "Dehnert and choreographer Sharon Jenkins make a number of choices, aesthetic and economic. (It's not easy for a standing repertory company to stage Broadway musicals.) Singing is a higher priority than acting. The choreography chooses sensuality over grace. The young performers, many of them making their Trinity debuts, stress innocence over experience. These may be valid artistic choices for "West Side Story," but they also prevent the musical from being all that it should be."

2004-05-05T22:46:00.000Z

Biography
Study suggests that Will and Ozzy Osbourne may be related: "Having given the world Shakespeare, England's greatest ever cultural figure, Aston has also provided its greatest living icon in Ozzy Osbourne," said Tony Kennedy. "By a spooky coincidence Ozzy's wife Sharron is also an Arden and I do believe there is a strong resemblance between Sharron's and Ralph's eyes."

2004-05-05T22:42:00.000Z

Hamlet
Just to prove that everything is a matter of taste, a new production receives this staggeringly negative review: "(Director) Kiselov plays fast and loose with Shakespeare's text, to no apparent end. That he edits it isn't the issue-- every director cuts Hamlet , if only to shorten its running time. Here, Kiselov cuts the play's entire first scene, allegedly to hasten the drama's family dynamic. Yet he loses any coherent thematic focus by the end of the first act. He reassigns dialogue from one character to another, and inexplicably alters phrases: Hamlet's famous declaration that "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," oddly becomes " our philosophy." ... and also a piece which sees the editing as a positive adjustment ... "This dramatic, albeit abridged, production opens with a black-clad, grieving young Hamlet. We know something is terribly wrong from the get-go - deleting the famous traditional opening scene does not alter the dark mood at all. A solitary Hamlet against a stark background and an open grave create a foreboding strong enough to endure throughout this tragedy. The deletion shaves time and characters from the play and brings the audience into the core of the tragedy quickly and more accessibly."

2004-05-05T22:39:00.000Z

People
Barry Stewart Mann plays Will in a one-man-show designed to give children a way into the canon outside the classroom: 'This will be an introduction for elementary and middle school students to the characters, stories, ideas and styles of William Shakespeare,' said the Newton County Library Systems head of children services Carol Durusau. 'The bard himself will welcome the audience aboard an amusement park ride and take them through imaginary chambers of comedy, tragedy, history and fantasy and meeting such wonderful characters as Falstaff, Puck, Richard III, Cleopatra and Romeo.'

2004-05-05T22:37:00.000Z

Taming of the Shrew
Review of the musical Kiss Me Kate at North Shore Music Theatre in Boston: "Rachel deBenedet seems to have been born to play Lilli and Kate. She looks and sounds gorgeous, ends a chorus of "I Hate Men" on a note as long and loud as Ethel Merman ever hit, and manages high notes and coloratura as deftly as she barbs a line and wings it at its target -- usually her nemesis and ex-husband, Fred Graham. She's elegant even in slapstick horseplay, and there's a human side to her, too -- she establishes a neat ambiguity, because it is not clear who is taming whom."

2004-05-05T22:30:00.000Z

Hamlet
Michael Portillo reviews the Old Vic new Hamlet: "Throughout, Nunn rejuvenates the text by helping his actors find new ways to deliver the most familiar lines. For example, a slight change of emphasis during the later scenes between Claudius and Gertrude suggests that she obeys Hamlet's order to shun her husband as the pressure on their marriage mounts. The queen hits the bottle, which provides a lovely double meaning when, in the duel scene, Claudius orders her not to drink. (The goblet, of course, contains poison.)"

2004-05-05T22:22:00.000Z

Attribution
Review of Fletcher's Cardenio from the Southwest Shakespeare Company of Arizona, USA: "But it’s painful to sit through a tragedy only to be overwhelmed by its silliness. Kudos to Southwest Shakespeare for giving the show a go, but let’s shoot this "Cardenio" from the "canon" or leave it buried, where it belongs."

2004-05-05T22:18:00.000Z

People
The Independent newspaper reports that the next book from Peter Ackroyd, soon to be seen the BBC's new documentary series London should be a biography of Will.

2004-05-04T22:13:00.000Z

King Lear
New review of Kurosawa's adaptation Ran: "'King Lear' is an old man's drama, so it's fitting that Kurosawa should have made it in his own dotage (he was 75 at the time of production). Excising the bard's iambic pentameter and the father-daughter theme, Kurosawa sets the tale in 16th Century Japan. Aging warlord Hidetora (Nakadai) is preparing to divide his land up between his three sons: Taro (Terao), Jiro (Nezu) and the youngest of the three, Saburo (Ryu)."

2004-05-04T22:07:00.000Z

Henry V
A key moment in the play is compared to the USA's current attitude towards Iraq: "When Shakespeare's Good King Harry was at war in France, and had an old drinking buddy hanged for robbing a church, he knew how much he would need the support of the populace if he were to hold his claim to rule that land, and how little it would take to lose it. The United States does not seek, we are told, to rule Iraq. But if Iraq is to be ruled by anyone friendly to the West -- or, perhaps, by anyone at all -- the reports of grotesque tortures committed against Iraqi prisoners by American and British forces must be dealt with firmly and openly."

2004-05-04T22:00:00.000Z

Attribution
Short discussion about whether Fletcher's Cardenio is in fact one of Will's lost plays: "But what of the play's origins? The handwriting expert compared an original manuscript to Shakespeare's will, one of the few documents known to have been in the Bard's own hand. The verdict was a match. The conclusion suggests Cardenio was either Shakespeare's own creation or he may have edited and critiqued Fletcher's script as a teaching tool. "

2004-05-03T23:51:00.000Z

Canon
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: "Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993."

2004-05-03T23:33:00.000Z

Macbeth
Miss June, a loose film adaptation with Peter Mullen and Courtney Love. First film for director Vincent Reagan.

2004-05-03T23:31:00.000Z

The Merchant of Venice
New film version with Al Paccino in the title role. Also starring Mackenzie Crook, Joseph Fiennes, Gregor Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Andy Serkis and John Sessions. Directed by Michael (Il Postino) Radford.
Related: Shakespeare's Merchant, with Bruce Cornwell.

2004-05-03T23:12:00.000Z

Hamlet
Review of the young version of Hamlet at The Old Vic: "But if this messy-haired Hamlet is most convincingly a student - (Ben) Whishaw seems constantly to be pulling up his pants as if it would be uncool to wear a belt - he's in sympathy with a production that will probably resonate most with students. Others may miss the maturity and/or nobility that such older Hamlets as Tony winner Ralph Fiennes have brought to the part."

2004-05-03T23:06:00.000Z

Words
An exploration of the importance of language within the plays through the work of the voice coach Andrew Wade: "How we find a way for language to go through us is the real challenge," he says. Partners switch places, and later Wade instructs, "Hands on partner's ribs. Count slowly as they exhale . . . Seated people, open your mouth and sigh out. Feel your ribs in your partner's hands like a corset. Stick your tongue out like a gargoyle: Breathe in, out. Are you more conscious?" A few heads nod affirmatively. "Now count to 10 in a whisper." The sound is like wind rustling trees. "Lean back into your partner's hands, they'll support you. Explore your own resonance."

2004-05-03T23:02:00.000Z

People
Eyewitness acciount of veteran actor Jonathan McMurtry's 'Speaking Shakespeare' class at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Point Loma, San Diego: "What defines poetry anyway?" he asks to open his class. The Shakespeare text has landed in a new resting place atop an old piano in the corner of the theater ... "You have to love the words," he tells the class. "In Shakespeare, especially, what you speak is what you say. ... You say the words and you ... your character ... has to make me want to hear them. The imagery seduces the audience into listening."

2004-05-03T22:55:00.000Z

Life
An American travel review of Will's birthplace: "A visit to Stratford-upon-Avon is worthwhile, but keep in mind that this town knows which side its scones are buttered on. Shakespeare is the cottage industry here, and amusements range from boat rides along the river Avon to Falstaff's Experience, a bizarre tour of history hardly related to the favorite Shakespearean character. Even so, the town is a pleasant visit, with scores of Tudor half-timber buildings and Elizabethan decor in shops and restaurants. There is no Starbucks-upon-Avon."
Related: From Shakespeare with love

2004-05-03T22:46:00.000Z

As You Like It
That quote rewritten for the property market: "All the world's a stage, / And all the properties merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances; / And one property in its time plays many parts."

2004-05-03T22:44:00.000Z

People
Appreciation of Jonathan Miller who amongst other things oversaw the televising of the canon on the BBC is the Eighties. In reference to a recent production of King Lear: "I'm very strongly influenced [in interpreting the play] by what [the political theorist Thomas] Hobbes said about the necessity of sovereign power. But I'm also interested in the concrete, grungy details of overdemanding fathers who want to hear their daughters say how much they love them. There's a wonderful moment, just after the king has gone raging out into the storm, and one of the daughters turns to the others and says, rather guiltily, `This house is little.' It's the most wonderful piece of suburban triviality."

2004-05-03T22:32:00.000Z

Measure For Measure
Desperate Measures is a loose rock musical retellng: "David Friedman's musical score, an agreeable blend of soft rock and faux country, is happily wed to Peter Kellogg's lyrics. Kellogg's book moves the action from 17th-century Vienna to the 19th-century American West, where cowhand Johnny Blood is sentenced to hang for killing a man in a saloon fight. The condemned man's sister, Susanna, who is about to become a nun, urges the governor to Look in Your Heart. He responds with a mocking reprise and a wicked offer: He'll grant Johnny a pardon if Susanna will sleep with him. Not a problem. Arrange the assignation, dim the lights, substitute Bella, the local floozy, for Susanna and you have the device Shakespeare scholars refer to as the "bed trick."

2004-05-03T22:26:00.000Z

Biography
Will was forty years old today four hundred years ago. The Guardian suggests that by this age he was past his prime and seeking to collaborate: "About the time he turned 40, the once cockily independent Shakespeare had begun collaborating again. As John Jowett's superb new Oxford edition of Timon of Athens shows, that play was probably written in 1605, and Thomas Middleton wrote about a third of it. After Middleton, Shakespeare collaborated with Wilkins (Pericles), then John Fletcher (Cardenio, All is True, The Two Noble Kinsmen). In each case, an older man who had not had a hit in years teamed up with a young man who had just written a hit play, or several hit plays. Those young men did not need Shakespeare. He needed them. They had the juice. He didn't."
Related: World Takes to Stage for Shakespeare's Birthday

2004-05-03T22:15:00.001Z

Hamlet
In Francois Truffaut's Day For Night (1973) at the wrap party for the film within a film, the Severine characters tells the following story (I'm paraphrasing): "An actor had wanted to play Hamlet all of his life so eventually he put on his own production for himself to act in. He was so awful he was met with boos from the audience every night, until he eventually stopped during one performance, in the middle of the soliloquy, turned to the audience and said, "I didn't write this shit!' "

2004-05-03T22:15:00.000Z

Hamlet
Or rather ... Skinhead Hamlet

"[Enter HAMLET, followed by GHOST.]

GHOST: Oi! Mush!

HAMLET: Yer?

GHOST: I was f*cked!

[Exit GHOST.]

HAMLET: O F*ck.

[Exit HAMLET.]

[via someone at Metafilter]

2004-05-03T22:13:00.001Z

Hamlet
One possible way to experience the play is to read it out loud. With other people. In the absence of that, you could try this handy text adventure influenced by the Infocoms of old. It's starts simply enough:

"I am in my bedroom in the palace. There is a four-poster bed, and not much else. A portrait hangs on the wall.
An exit leads north."

Now where? It can only end in tragedy you know ....

2004-05-03T22:13:00.000Z

Hamlet
This for the wierd productions file ... an English production of Hamlet featuring an all Japanese cast set in rural Russia.