Like all great lists of Shakespeare trivia, most of the regular Shakespeare Geek readers are already going to know all of these Macbeth Fun Facts. Like the fact that James I was a fan of witches. Or that Macbeth was a real person.

But …

3. In Shakespeare’s day, females were prohibited from acting in plays and were always portrayed by young men. During “Macbeth’s” initial run, a rumor was circulating that the boy playing Lady MacBeth had died and Shakespeare himself took his place.

Download a sample chapter from my new project Now You Know Shakespeare!

From the Coming Soon page:

The problem as I see it is that there are thousands of books that will teach you about Shakespeare, but they all assume that you either know everything, or nothing. Either you’re researching your PhD thesis on Merry Wives of Windsor, or you just want to pass your Hamlet test next week. What about everyone in between? What about the average educated adult who would like to read up on Shakespeare to fill in the gaps she missed in school?

I’d like to do something about that. I’m starting a new book series I’m calling Now You Know Shakespeare that aims squarely at this audience, and makes no claims otherwise. I’ve met too many adults that want to come back to Shakespeare, but don’t know where to start and are afraid to jump in somewhere between the shallow and deep ends. I recently spoke with an elementary school teacher who was excited about a production of The Tempest coming to Boston, and asked me to recommend something she could read that could bring her up to speed on the play so she wasn’t going in cold. What could I say? She wasn’t a kid, or a dummy, or “the masses” or “middle school” or any of the other audiences I get when I google the expression “Shakespeare for” and see how Google autocompletes it for me. She needed more than the one-page summary she was going to get in the Playbill, but she wasn’t going to sit down to 400 pages of footnotes about the play, either.

They say that if you see a need you should fill that need. Well, I see a need and I’m going to try my best to fill it.

If you’d like to get an early look at what I’m talking about, follow the link and sign up to download your free sample. I apologize for the “coming soon” nature of the site, but it was very important for me to get this link up for Shakespeare Day and as you’re probably noticing I had about 25 other balls in the air approaching the big day.  This is a preview of what’s to come, and I’m not going to release the final product until the quality is where it should be.  But I’m excited for everybody to see it!

This year’s Shakespeare posting marathon is sponsored by “Shakespeare is Universal.” Help us prove that Shakespeare makes life better. Buy a t-shirt and support cancer research.

I’ve seen many references to Kronborg Castle in Denmark as the inspiration for Hamlet. The usual questions about – if Shakespeare visited Denmark, how could he have had a specific location in mind? Didn’t he just make it up?

This article walks through the play and the castle like some sort of detective story, looking for the details that prove Shakespeare must have meant this particular castle. Will Kempe, for instance, played here before he became one of Shakespeare’s best men. Could Will have told…ummm…Will about the castle?

I love the walk through the castle.  “Here could be the platform where they stood to watch the custom more honoured in the breach than the observance….and here’s a spot where Hamlet could have hidden and looked down to watch Claudius at prayer….” and so on.  Sounds like great fun!

This year’s Shakespeare posting marathon is sponsored by “Shakespeare is Universal.” Help us prove that Shakespeare makes life better. Buy a t-shirt and support cancer research.

Earlier this year I spoke about Shakespeare to my daughter’s fourth grade (9yr old) class, and I have to say that it was the best experience I’ve yet had. Just the right combination of attention span, interest level, and academic proficiency (i.e. they could read and pay attention :)). I heard that after I left and they went to their library hour, kids were looking for Shakespeare books.

I’m happy to report that I’m doing it again!

Every year this particular fourth grade classroom performs a play, based on a book that they read that year. The script, I believe, is written by the teacher. When I told her that I had more material that involved getting the kids up out of the seats and performing some Shakespeare, she suggested that maybe we could use it as an in-class exercise to help kids get over their shyness about speaking in public.

Happy to do it! Next week for the first time I’m going straight into a class that already knows me, already knows my subject, and has already heard most of my canned material. I get a blank slate!  I’m thinking about bringing kids up to act out Gertrude’s bedroom scene from Hamlet or something similarly exciting.  Mostly for the yelling and the stabbing. Get their interest right away. No monologuing.

I’ve also got a project I worked up for my son’s class and never got to use, where each kid gets a line from Henry V’s “band of brothers” speech. First, though, I show them Kenneth Branagh performing the speech, to see why it’s a big deal.  Then I tell them to do it like that, and let them have at it.  No idea how that’ll work, but it’s sure a great place to work on projecting from your diaphragm.

This year’s Shakespeare posting marathon is sponsored by “Shakespeare is Universal.” Help us prove that Shakespeare makes life better. Buy a t-shirt and support cancer research.

I love the potential for Shakespeare sequels and prequels. Once upon a time we played the “write a sequel” game, I highly suggest checking that out for Alexi’s genius crossover idea that blends a Merchant of Venice sequel into an Othello prequel.  There’s also Hamlet 2, which is a bit of a joke but does have an actual plot in there somewhere, and I’m pretty sure there’s a legit sequel called “Fortinbras” or “Horatio” (I think the latter) that has Horatio haunted by the ghosts of everybody that died in the first one.