http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/audio/more/will/ I don’t really track every podcast that claims to be about Shakespeare – there’s too many of them, and many are too specific to either one particular project (like Shakespeare By Another Name) or theatre (I believe there’s a Chicago production that does a podcast).  ShakespeareCast was good when I was listening to it, but in general I prefer to listen to people talk about Shakespeare, rather than listening to people perform it.  Performance I leave as a live treat. Anyway, this podcast came up and lately I’ve been in the mood to get more into the text and the academic discussion around it (probably having something to do with reading Shakespeare Wars).  I like it.  The first episode is an interview with Professor Jonathan Bate, editor of a new edition of the Complete Works.  It starts out a little painful where he says, for example, that “Fifty years ago we could expect the reader to have an understanding of the classical mythology, and these days they don’t have that.”  Ouch.  Probably true, but still, ouch. But then, and maybe this is my geek side coming out, it gets pretty neat.  Why he used First Folio almost exclusively.  Why he put in even more bawdy sex references than anybody has in the past.  He has a particular emphasis on punctuation.  An example?  Lady Macbeth’s line:  “We fail!  But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.”  He chose to edit the first punctuation mark as a question mark rather than an exclamation point:  “We fail?”  The character change is substantial.  In the first and more common interpretation, Lady MacBeth is answering her husband’s concern with a very aggressive, “What are you, nuts?  How dare you even think of failing!  Failing is not an option!” sort of a tone.  But with the question mark it’s different.  She considers it.  It’s more of a “Hmmm, well yes, there is the possibility that we might fail.  So get your courage up, and let’s not do that, k?”  That is my wildly paraphrased recollection of what he actually said.  He does point out that he doesn’t feel either is particularly the “right” way, but seemed to feel that the question mark left more room for the actor to interpret.  

http://www.madbeast.com/greatest_hamlets.htm All stage performances, no film, so don’t go wondering where Mel Gibson and Kenneth Brannagh place on the list.  They don’t.  This list is reserved for the likes of Jacobi, Barrymore, Gielgud and others.  I knew that John Wilks Booth’s brother had been performing Hamlet the night that Lincoln was shot, but I had no idea that he was “considered the greatest Hamlet of his generation.” The idea of calling a stage performance one of the greatest of a generation is an interesting idea to us now in a world of DVDs and Tivos where we can go pause, go backward, and watch over and over again.  These were real people performing live.  If you missed it, well, you missed it.  

http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_10637.shtml What’s this what’s this?  A play by Shakespeare about Don Quixote?  Lost since 1612?  Confirmed in its authenticity by Gregory Doran, Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company?  Very interesting!  Does anybody know more about what play they’re talking about?  Is there a title?  Wait….CARDENIO?  THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT CARDENIO, FOR GOD’S SAKE!  THEY FOUND CARDENIO?!?!?!
I think I need to sit down. More info, courtesy Ann in the comments. Thanks Ann!   

I’m reading The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum right now, and having trouble blogging about it because I’m finding something worthy of comment on every single page.  I’m only on about page 20.  I knew I was going to like this :). Let me see if I can describe what the experience has been like so far.  I have this picture in my head of a girl I knew in college. I don’t know that she ever actually did what I’m about to describe, or if I’m just putting her in the situation because she seems like a natural.  Anyway, I envision this girl reading a book, and she gets to a certain point where she stops, then she beams a bright smile and hugs the book tightly to herself, shaking back and forth like a 3yr old would hug their most beloved teddy bear. Then she goes back to reading. Does that get the image across?  It’s a feeling of loving a book so much that you want to climb inside of it, to become a part of it or make it a part of you.  It’s not enough to read it and say “I really enjoyed that”, or even to read it cover to cover in one sitting.  It’s about having a far more immediate and emotional need to connect with what you just read.  There are times whenI feel that way about Shakespeare.  And then there are times when I feel that way about people who are writing about Shakespeare. To sum up the Shakespeare Wars, at least as far as I’ve read:    Shakespeare is awesome.  No, seriously.  He defies all previous descriptions of the word.  I could keep repeating myself in different ways for all eternity and still not sufficiently get my point across.  The man is infinite in his awesomeness.  Now and forever, you will be able to discover something new about his genius that will make him…well, that much more awesome.  And it’s at that point that you stop long enough to give the book a nice hug, and then read some more.  Rosenbaum does like 10 pages alone on Bottom’s awakening from his dream.  Just that speech.  Not the whole play, not even the whole scene, just that one speech.  And he still manages to come away feeling like if he kept looking, he would find more to discover.  And, at least to me, it never sounds boring.  That can certainly be a scary thing, this feeling that you will simply never know it all.  But then, I think, we can go back to the old “glass half empty” cliche.  You can revel in what you do know, and every time you gain more knowledge you can rejoice in the discovery.  Or you can constantly look at the impenetrable darkness that is the abyss of the unknown and mope, “I’ll never know if I’m right or wrong, so I’ll just assume I’m wrong….” Personally, I’ll take the former.  

http://bluepyramid.org/library/bookcomp.htm As composed by BluePyramid.org, whoever they are.  Found via Mental Floss which lists several such lists.  So naturally the first thing I did was search them all for Shakespeare, who appears on only this one.  It’s so hard to measure because you have to ask what “book” means.  Is Hamlet a book?  Or only a certain version?  Are we talking about best loved, most read, most purchased? Anyway, the BluePyramid list is my new best friend because it includes Hamlet(#2), Macbeth(#42), King Lear (#49), Romeo and Juliet (#62), Henry V(#199), The Winter’s Tale (#304), The Tempest (#496), Othello (#530) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (#581). Wait….Winter’s Tale?  That’s … different. Anyway, their list is apparently dynamically compiled based on people entering their own personal top 25 and then scoring accordingly, 1 point for position 25, 25 points for position 1.  So if you want to get Shakespeare an even better showing, go add your tuppence.