Finds like this send chills up my spine.  The Shakespeare geeks likely know, though others may not, that a certain Booth – Mr. Edwin Booth, to be precise – was a much heralded Shakespearean actor in the late 1800’s.  If the name sounds familiar, you are correct – he is the brother John Wilkes Booth, and hopefully we all know what he did. Would you have ever thought in a million years that you could hear what Edwin Booth sounded like?  Here’s a portion of his Othello, courtesy Michigan State:

  Of course the quality is terrible – it’s from a wax cylinder!  The fact that it exists at all is amazing.  You’re listening to a guy that was alive when Lincoln was  shot. How do you like his delivery, what you can make of it?  He seems a little … I dunno, spooky to me.  Bela Lugosi?  I’m trying to remember which of the horror movie actors was famous for that ghoulish sort of elongating of the vowels.  Like the narration on the old “Monster Mash” variety song. What a horrible comparison to make.  Sacrilege, I know. 🙂

“Who put their handprint on Mommy’s nice clean glass door that she just Windexed this afternoon?”  said Mommy. “Not me,” said three Geeklets in Sound-Of-Music unison. “Line them up and have them each put up a hand,” said Shakespeare Geek.  “See which one fits.” “Don’t do that!” said oldest Geeklet. “I think oldest geeklet did it,” says Daddy Geek. “Why?” asks she. “Methinks she doth protest too much,” quoth I. “Huh?” respondeth she. “It means that when somebody did something wrong, the person who says NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME is usually the one who did it,” summarize I. “*squit* *squit* *squit* *wipe* *wipe* *squeaky* *squeak*,” says Mommy’s Windex, onomatopoetically. “Too late now,” says too-observant-for-her-age oldest.  “Mommy cleaned it, now we’ll never know.  But I didn’t do it.”

"In the first place, I don’t think for a moment that Macbeth did it." I looked at her blankly. "Did what?" I asked. "I don’t think for a moment that he killed the King," she said.

I’d not read this short story by James Thurber, about a woman who reads Macbeth as if it’s a regular old murder mystery.  It’s satire of course, but quite amusing. I love the bit about Lady M’s dad.  Who’da thunk it? [ For some reason I cannot connect to the original site, so rather than lose the momentum of discovery I’m linking to the Google cache version.  Safe diff.  It’s short enough not to matter, and n0 images. ] The Macbeth Murder Mystery (via Google Cache)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gAdRKDfYXXMbGMeAciSWPIJPSTqAD9ARLNNO0 It’s long been known that the church where Shakespeare is buried needs work.  Lots of work.  They’ve raised nearly a million pounds over the years to do it. Now it seems things are even worse, as the main beam keeping the roof up is rotting faster than they thought. I don’t understand why the church is in such trouble.  We’re talking about a national landmark, no?  Wouldn’t the government want to throw them a few bucks?  I have to believe that at least a tiny bit of tourism is thanks to Mr. Shakespeare and his grave.

“Say you are an idiot.  Now, say you are Nicholas Cage.  But I repeat myself.”

With apologies to Mark Twain and none to Mr. Cage comes this story about the latter’s opinion on why Americans should not do Shakespeare:

"There is something about it. I feel the rhythm of the English language and manner of English speech seem to work effectively with William Shakespeare but when Americans do it, something seems stuck."

Now you may be saying to yourself, “The Leaving Las Vegas guy?  Moonstruck?  He won some awards, didn’t he?  Son on Francis Ford Coppola? I suppose he’s entitled to his opinion.” Wrong Nicholas Cage.  We’re talking about this guy:

  Oh, wait.  Same guy.  My bad.   Turns out there’s at least one American than shouldn’t do Shakespeare, I’ll give him that. Oh God. The bees.