Thank Shakespeare High for the word that there’s a new Henry V movie in the works. It looks like something independent, without even a reference on the Internet Movie Database. Perhaps they should have chosen something that Kenneth Branagh hasn’t already tackled? The comparisons are going to be obvious (and, I expect, fairly painful for Mr. Babakitis….)

Flickr: Photos tagged with shakespeare

It’s a slow Shakespeare day :). So have a link to Flickr’s interesting photos that have a Shakespeare tag on them. Part of the fun is guessing the relevance to Shakespeare before you click.

Titles from HAMLET, Act I

This site is cool and deserves mention if only for the amount of work it must have taken. Start with Hamlet alone, and work your way through the entire play, finding quotes that have been referenced as the title of other works. Example: Edith Wharton’s “The Glimpses of the Moon” is probably referenced back from I,iv: “What may this mean That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon…”

The entire play is analyzed like this. I think I’d like some links, where relevant, to the resources cited. After all, what good is having this master list of references (I presume that they are all books, no movies) if I can’t explore them further? Philip K. Dick wrote a book/story called “Time Out of Joint.” Great. I want more info. Now what? I can go search Amazon, but this is a resource just screaming out for some affiliate links.

I think that Lunar Park is going on my reading list. For one, it’s written by Brett Easton Ellis, author of such classics as American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and The Rules of Attraction. But moreso for this paragraph of exalted praise, way down the article:



And yet, for all of the references to himself and his work, the shadow of another famous writer looms over Lunar Park: Shakespeare. To begin with, there are numerous nods to Hamlet in the story itself: the father’s ghost haunting the son wrapped in turmoil, Ellis wracked with remorse and near disintegration (not to mention the fact that Ellis and his family live on Elsinore Lane, and that local landmarks include the Fortinbras Mall and Horatio Park). And yet — with all of Lunar Park’s rich fantasy and horror elements — the Shakespearean character that looms the largest over Lunar Park isn’t Hamlet but is instead the magic-illusionist Prospero from Shakespeare’s last play The Tempest. Ellis — like Prospero — is ultimately the creator of the novel’s increasing chaos.

So for those of us out there that are keeping notes of “novels that have lots of Shakespeare bits”, this one might be a keeper. That is, if you’re into the dark and gory side of things. Ellis is not known for writing about puppies romping in fields of daisies.

I wrote about Justice O’Connor’s connections to Shakespeare, so it’s only fair that I blog this article about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ position on a few controversial(?) topics back in 1972 when he was in Catholic school.

“I would prefer to discuss Shakespeare’s double entendre … without a blonde giggling and blushing behind me,” he wrote on the subject of women in the (then all boys) classroom.

I wonder if Justice O’Connor was more of a giggler, or a blusher.