It’s funny how meanings open up when you paraphrase things for children.  This is another post about my kids and Sonnet 18, so if you’re bored with that, you can move on :). Since they have now memorized the first part and are driving us nuts with it, I’m trying to teach them the rest.  At one point I got to the line that, in my own interpretation, “Is the most beautiful line in the most beautiful poem in the world:  Nor shall Death brag thy wander’st in his shade, when in eternal lines to time thou growest. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”  To me it means, quite simply, that as long as people continue to read this tribute  to your perfect beauty, you shall never grow old, and you shall never die.    Is there really anything greater to wish for your true love, than immortality?  Shakespeare takes it one step further by not just wishing immortality, but claiming that he has the power to grant it. And then I thought, “And you know what? Shakespeare was right.  It’s 400 years later, and we’re still talking about it.  Dang, that’s some good stuff.” That’s when the irony set in. Somebody please tell me, who exactly he wrote Sonnet 18 for?

http://satiasprogress.blogspot.com/2007/09/1-king-john-225.html The other day I posed the “Which play would you skip” question, and said I would not bother reading/recommending King John.  Several people jumped to the defense of the play.  So I was particularly interested in the above blog, who also asks “Why read this play?”  After, I’ll add, saying “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why this is not one of Shakespeare’s more popular plays.” No mention of The Bastard, by the way.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=66943&in_page_id=34#StartComments Ok, once again there’s something I haven’t seen before.  Surprised nobody ever thought of it.  Take a police sketch artist who is trained in age progression, set her up with the necessary technology and some sort portraits of Shakespeare, and then have her work backwards to come up with an image of Shakespeare in his teens.  Of course the validity is up in the air given the variety of portraits available, but still, it’s a cool idea.   

http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/coogan-and-keener-to-work-on-hamlet-2.php You can imagine that I did quite the double take when I saw “Working on Hamlet 2” in a headline.  Turns out that the plot of this new movie revolves around a drama teacher who decides to write a sequel to Hamlet. Reminds me of all those tv sitcoms that ran with the whole “Re-imagining Hamlet” idea — Gilligan’s Island, Dick Van Dyke, Head of the class, etc.. Here’s an opening for you all.  What’s the plot of a Hamlet sequel?  Is it all about Fortinbras, or Horatio?  Does young Hamlet make an appearance as a ghost? Or, option B:  Every American television show that involves high school students has inevitably done an episode arc where the school play is Romeo and Juliet, or Midsummer.  But how many can you name that have done Hamlet?  

http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/kingsley-signs-the-will-of-shakespeare.php Well here’s an interesting idea.  How about a novel based around Shakespeare’s deathbed as he updates his last will and testament?  The new movie, based on the novel by Christopher Rush, will star Ben Kingsley in the title role (which, if you missed it, is a play on both Will as in Shakespeare and Will as in the legal document). I assume that it’ll be the standard movie fare where his “last moments” are actually little more than a flashback through his entire life.  What will be interesting (I have not read the book) is to see how they deal with one of the most damning pieces of anti-Stratfordian evidence, that the will contains no mentions at all of any books, ownerships, or other ties to what has become the Shakespeare canon. How do you like Ben Kingsley for the title role?