http://wongablog.co.uk/2008/06/17/falstaff-fat/ A brief and cute story about “the fat Shakespeare character whose name begins with F.”

http://www.moviemaker.com/articles/article/shakespeare_on_film_20080530/ As I may have mentioned, I listen frequently to the TED series of podcasts, which offer glimpses into a wide variety of the greatest minds in the world.  This week I noticed a show come through by Julie Taymor, and I thought, “That name sounds familiar…..” She directed Titus.  What I didn’t know is that she also did The Tempest, I’ll have to check into that. But anyway, I bookmarked the above link about Shakespeare On Film before realizing that she’s mentioned in the first paragraph. I had no idea that there was such a thing as “BFI’s 100 Greatest Shakespeare Films”, or that she wrote the introduction to it: “There will never be too many versions of any of the Shakespeare plays because each artist brings his or her own vision to the script. The more you see these plays in all their varied forms, the deeper and richer they become. It’s often not about the story at all, but all about how you tell it.”

http://bookmineset.blogspot.com/2008/06/readers-diary-368-sarah-smith-chasing.html That the man behind all those brilliant plays and sonnets was not, in actuality, William Shakespeare is not a new theory. I thought for a while that I even cared. Credit Smith for curing me of that notion. I guess he didn’t like it.  Perhaps he should try Interred With Their Bones or maybe The Book Of Air And Shadows?

Just saw a commercial for the Playstation 3 videogame system.  In it they show clips of a variety of games, while the narrator does the “Band of Brothers” speech from Henry V.  That’s different. The games include Meta Geal Solid 4, Little Big Planet, and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. In case you’re more videogame fan than Shakespeare fan and you came looking for the words, they are: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon this day. That’s how they say it in the commercial, which is edited from the actual text.  Most notably, in my text, it says “upon Saint Crispin’s day”, not “this day”. UPDATE:  Found it!

http://www.flowersblog.co.uk/2008/06/16/the-top-roses-for-cutting/ Ha, tricked you – a post about roses and the Shakespeare reference is *not* “a rose by any other name….”, so there.  Apparently there’s a fairly high quality rose called William Shakespeare 2000.  Who knew?