Month: September 2012

I didn’t post much last week about the possible discovery of Richard III’s bones, because so many other stories already beat it into the ground.  We did have some fun with the puns, though:

• To repeat, archaeologists are not 100% sure that this is Richard III – they only have a hunch.
• Somebody please tell me he was found on a Wednesday so we can call it Hump Day?
• You might think Richard III would have been great at the new “Gangnam Style” invisible horse dance, but he was partial to the Humpty Hump.
• Ironically, they found the bones of a horse right behind Richard.

You get the idea.  If you like them, they’re mine, if they’re awful they’re Bardfilm’s. 😉

Anyway, by not posting I realized that I was denying the Shakespeare Geek audience the opportunity to get together for discussion, so here be that post.  What are your thoughts?  Do you think it’s him?  Where do you stand on the whole “Richard III wasn’t really the bad guy he’s been painted by history” angle?

As I’ve mentioned, I’m just plain not that familiar with the story of Richard III, so I have little opinion on the matter other to say that I make no connection between what Shakespeare wrote, and what reality was.   He could have been a saint for all I know.  Though probably not.

My favorite quote from the linked story, by the way:

“If Richard was the kind of plotter Shakespeare makes him out to be there are a lot of questions to be answered, like if he was so power-hungry why didn’t he kill his brother King Edward IV?”

“Oh yeah?  Well what about all the people he *didn’t* kill, huh?  How come nobody ever talks about that?”  That sounds like a line out of a Saturday Night Live skit.

Methinks that Stanley Wells was jonesing for some Cherry Garcia.

The problem is that they were supposed to get permission, and didn’t. They were unaware that the building was classified Grade I (“the building is of exceptional interest, sometimes even considered to be internationally important”). They are now on the hook to get “retrospective” permission and, if that falls through, could be required to put the building (actually just a “pea shed”) back to its original condition.

Paul Edmondson from Blogging Shakespeare alerts us to mark the date for October 20th, when Roehampton University will be hosting a symposium entitled Shakespeare and the Contemporary Sonnet:

Which Shakespeare sonnets do modern poets refer to again and again? What still attracts them to the sonnet as a form, and to Shakespeare’s poems in particular? Are there sonnets that resist adaptation in terms of theme, sexual politics, structure? Is the original 1609 sequence still important or do a small number of sonnets now stand alone? What are the challenges and possibilities afforded by adapting Shakespeare’s sonnets into modern idiom and modern culture?

Sounds like a neat topic.  Naturally it’s more on the academic side, not the kind of thing that we casual hobbyists can just zip off to.  Maybe they’ll do some live tweeting or blogging of what content comes of it?

[ If you want to see just how much depth can be found in even a single sonnet I point you to Paul’s previous article “Miracles in Miniature” where he talks about working through Sonnet 29 with a group of people and how you could talk about it for hours, down to the last syllable and punctuation mark. ]

While researching a new game (coming soon!) I noticed that the new center of the Shakespeare universe might well have turned up in McLean, Virginia?!  Check it out:

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You might need to zoom in to get the details.  See anything amazing?

Birnam Wood Drive.  MacBeth Street. Oberon Way. Titania Lane. “Agin Court”. Cawdor Court. Dunsinane Court. Hamlet Park. Falstaff Road. Ariel Way. Capulet Court. Elsinore Ave. Timon Drive. Lear Road.

Are you kidding me?!  Is anybody in the audience from this neck of the woods who can explain how exactly this little slice of heaven came to happen?   I wish I’d known about it during my trip down to Washington DC earlier this year, I might have made a special detour!