How about a book on the subject of suicide in Shakespeare? On that subject alone, how many suicides can you name? I saw it and figured Brutus, Cassius, Othello, Romeo and Juliet…then had to think about it. Ophelia, maybe?

The book focuses on patterns of suicide present in six Shakespearean tragedies: “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “King Lear,” “Timon of Athens,” “Othello” and “Julius Caesar.”

No mention of R&J. Interesting. What about Lear? Is he going to talk about what happens strictly in the last scene? I can’t honestly remember whether Regan poisons Goneril and then kills herself, or it’s the other way around. And are we to take Kent’s “My master calls me, I must not say no” as his impending suicide? That’s how I’ve always assumed it.
The inclusion of Hamlet makes me assume that he’s speaking of Ophelia, although I think her state of mind would make any conclusions about suicide somewhat questionable.
What of Macbeth? Does it ever clearly say that Lady M kills herself? I’m looking at the MIT version of the text right now and it goes straight from “The queen my lord is dead” right into to-morrow and to-morrow, with no real explanation in between.

As I walk around the building at lunch (8 laps, 2 miles) I notice bumper stickers. I see one that says, “Eventers do it 3 ways in 3 days.” I think, given the context of other stickers, that this is some sort of horse / show-jumping thing. But it makes me realize that there’s an audience that will get that, no matter how esoteric.

So I’m surprised to google “Shakespeareans do it…” and get no good bumper sticker answers.

No, the point of this post is not to collect ideas and then run off to start a bumper sticker business ;). Though if any good ones come up and there’s interest I could always change my mind!

Feel free to substitute in Hamlet, Macbeth, or other nouns besides “Shakespeareans” to keep it interesting.

When Shakespeareans do it, everybody dies at the end.

Shakespeareans do it with boys dressed as girls dressed as boys.

Hamlet does it with a skull.

Richard III does it for a horse.

Macbeth will do it tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.

Shakespeareans do it with their tongues in your tail.

Normally I find links on Reddit, and then we go discuss the original source. Sometimes, though, it’s the comments on the thread that make it interesting. For your Sunday morning enjoyment, check out some of the suggestions provided when a high school girl asked for Shakespeare costume ideas so that she could march in a parade.

By amazing coincidence I just got to hear an NPR interview with F. Murray Abraham, who is currently playing Shylock here in Boston. Did anybody else catch it?
Normally I listen to my iPod on the ride home. Today for some reason (fate!) it hid itself in my bag and I could not find it. Normally I would have sat and dug for it, but I had places to be so I just flipped on NPR instead. Lucky me!
Thoughts
* He’s rather patronizing. Some noises were made by the setup people in the background and he stops the interview to say “We’re doing a thing over here, so quiet please, thank you.” Later when he references Burt Lancaster in a story he adds to the interviewer, “I don’t even know if you know who that is.” Total name drop.
* “Shakespeare invites you to try anything. Try your voice. Try your imagination. He can take it.” I love that quote.
* He found Macbeth harder to play than even Lear. Although he doesn’t elaborate terribly as to why.
* Being inside a theatre, he refers to the Scottish play. I was amused by how naturally that came to him, and was going to comment on it when I got home. Then the interviewer says, “I notice you called it the Scottish Play…can I just” and she didn’t get to finish the sentence, which I would assume was going to be “say the name” before *I* was screaming at the radio “DONT YOU F%^&*ING DARE!” But he calmly informed her to wait until she got outside. Which she did. Why she felt obliged to say the name, since this interview was not about that play at all, I have no idea.
* I always thought he was Jewish. He’s not.
Should be an interesting show. Apparently set on modern Wall Street (or a reasonable facsimile), with obvious connection to the modern day banking crisis.

Hailee Steinfeld, who we last saw telling us about the Shakespearean dialogue in True Grit, may be playing Juliet.
What would make this project intriguing is that Steinfeld is in fact 14, making her one of the most age-appropriate Juliets you’ll find. How would that change your opinion of the movie? Does everyone remember the Zeffirelli version of Romeo and Juliet with a 17yr old, topless Olivia Hussey?
I wonder how old this one will make its Romeo?