Today is Bob Dylan’s seventieth birthday. To celebrate, Bardfilm and Shakespeare Geek have compiled a list of his Shakespeare-related songs. It’s not just the ubiquitous “Shakespeare, he’s in the alley / With his pointed shoes and his bells” from “Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” you know!
Bob Dylan’s Shakespeare Songs
Won’t You Come See Me, Queen Mab?
The Times, They Are A-Changin’: O Cursed Spite, That Ever I was Born to Put Them Right
Rainy Day Women #12 (Goneril) and 35 (Regan)
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, For The Rain it Raineth Every Day
Something’s Happening, but You Don’t Know What it is, do you, King Lear?
Fool Wind
It Ain’t Me, Ophelia
Come in, Gloucester Said, I’ll Give You Shelter from the Storm
Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Sack
Oh, Sister (Sung by Angelo to Isabella)
I Ain’t Gonna Work on Oliver’s Farm No More
Cordelia, Cordelia
Blowin’ in the Windy Side of Care
Stuck Inside of Ephesus with the Syracuse Blues Again
. . . and, of course, there’s Bob Dylan singing the plot of Measure for Measure, which you really have to see (and hear) to believe.
Happy birthday, Bob!
Our thanks for this guest post to kj, the author of Bardfilm. Bardfilm is a blog that comments on films, plays, and other matters related to Shakespeare.