Month: March 2007

We’ve talked about sonnets before, but this link to sonnets.org is worth checking out for its treatment of all the sonnet forms – Italian, Spenserian, English/Shakespearean, and “Indefinable”.  Sometimes it’s neat to look at resources where our dear Shakespeare is just one small part of the big picture.  Keeps things in context.  He wasn’t the only one writing sonnets, and not every sonnet is written in the form he popularized.  

I am kicking myself for not jumping on the whole Hamlet on Trial thing going on down in Washington.  I’m being bombarded with links to it now.  When I first saw this story about a mock trial where Hamlet is tried for killing Polonius, I thought it just some weird law school academic exercise.  I guess I was wrong.  Everybody seems to have loved the “performance.” The verdict?  Split decision.  Apparently other similar trials in the past have found Hamlet sane…so what does that mean, guilty?  Held accountable?  It doesn’t really say. This particular article I’ve linked to doesn’t seem to take the actual arguments very seriously, pointing out both sides use of the whole “Hamlet talks to himself as if there’s an audience that can hear him” thing to be the defining issue of whether he’s insane and/or suicidal.  Could they not call Horatio, who was witness himself to Hamlet saying “I shall seek it meet to put an antic disposition on”?  Or are we going beyond the whole “acting crazy / really crazy” thing and just assuming that perhaps he has really gone crazy?  Man, I’m sorry I missed it, sounds like I would have enjoyed that.

In an article entitled What The Bard and Lear Can Tell A Leader About Yes Men, the Washington Post compares Lear to Bush on the whole question of surrounding yourself with die-hard loyalists who will only tell you what you want to hear. I’m not sure I fully agree with the comparison, as I really do believe that Bush surrounds himself with truly loyal people, regardless of competence.  That’s not the same as the feigned loyalty of Regan and Goneril who say whatever it takes to get what they want, and then change their tune as soon as they have it. I do agree, however, about the “hurt himself by shutting out those with a dissenting opinion” line.  That’s certainly true.  

I’m a little surprised that this Shakespeare Wiki has existed since Feb 2006 and I’ve never noticed it.  It looks like it needs a little help, all I see are Character summaries and even then a bunch of them (like The Tempest) are empty.  The page says it was last modified Oct 2006.  For a minute there I was hoping that it was a typo and that the site really had come into existence in Feb 2007 a mere month ago. So there you go, folks.  If you’ve ever wanted to contribute some Shakespeare content but feel overwhelmed by the encyclopedic amount of info already in Wikipedia, here’s a place where you can start fresh.  

If Coriolanus is getting some love, I should also link to some thoughts on Love’s Labour’s Lost over at Ann McN’s blog.  Is it that these shows are never performed near me?  I think maybe it’s that they are but when the time comes to put my money where my mouth is I chicken out, stay home and watch American Idol instead :).