Now this is neat. Ed Stoppard, son of Tom Stoppard, will play Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, written by his dad.

The interview’s a good length, and Ed covers his thoughts on what R&G did to Hamlet as a play (by giving us a behind the scenes and essentially making fun of the poor melancholy Dane), lines that were cut from Shakespeare in Love (also by dad Tom), how he got his name, and “Mick Jagger and David Bowie coming around for tea.”

The band Weezer has fans concerned that they’re calling it quits after leaving a particular Shakespeare quote in the liner notes of their last CD. The quote is Prospero’s, from the Tempest, and will be familiar to fans of the play:

“This rough magic / I here abjure, and, when I have required / Some heavenly music, which even now I do / To work mine end upon their senses that / This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff / Bury it certain fathoms in the Earth / And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I’ll drown my book.”

The Tempest is often referred to as Shakespeare’s final work (although evidence suggests that he at least co-wrote three more plays after this one). But this speech in particular is usually considered to be his personal farewell.

Weezer won’t say if that’s what they meant, other than “…I thought it’s a really nice way to say goodbye, if it is a goodbye.”

Is it possible that a rape trial inspired Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure? The article tells the story of Christopher Beeston, fellow Elizabethan actor who was accused of rape in 1602. Both men were members of the Lord Chamberlain’s men during the 1590’s, though Beeston changed over to the Earl of Worcester’s men in 1602.

The “evidence” seems to be little more than a similarity to Lucio (who admits to making a prostitute pregnant) and Angelo (who threatens to rape someone). To say it inspired the whole play might be a bit of a stretch, but it does appear to be a good example of the sort of thing that was going around in the daily news and gossip of Shakespeare’s time and how easily he would have snuck it into his own work.

I’d never heard the theory that Mary Sidney Herbert wrote the works of Shakespeare. I’ve always heard either Marlowe, de Vere, or maybe Bacon.

The article is a press release for an event in which the founder of the Mary Sidney Society, Robin Williams, will discuss her evidence for the theory.

Tag: shakespeare

It seems that this Ed fellow is doing a whole series. I just yesterday found his Midsummer’s, and now here’s Enjoying “Hamlet”.

I would never have imagined that you could say so much about Hamlet in a single page. Granted it is one mother large page. But he does cover everything you could imagine — scene by scene description, plot and character synopsis, and about a zillion historical sources for what went into the story, as well as people who took the ideas from Hamlet after Shakespeare and ran with them in even more directions.

It’s finding sites like this one that make me sigh and put away my own book project and fall back into “See? It’s all been done already…” mode.

Nothing against Ed – I’m incredibly impressed with this page. I just wish I could do it, too :).