Has Anybody Seen Hamlet’s Ghost?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

By that I mean Hamlet’s Ghost, a new film by Walker Haynes.  I just saw it scroll past on my FIOS On Demand. I’d never heard of it!  It appears new – their Facebook page says that it just became available this past week, which would explain why I never heard of it – but the IMDB page dates it 2015, so I guess it took a spin on the festival circuit first.

A modern Shakespearean actor must travel back in time to confront enigmatic forces from the past and future.

You had me at Hamlet.  But I’m still trying to figure out how much Shakespeare is actually in this.  Here, check out the trailer (which is dated two years ago and looks like the director put it together on his Commodore 64, but maybe he didn’t have much budget left at the time…):

So there’s a swordfight on stage.  Is that it? Do we even see Hamlet’s ghost? I’m happy to check this out, but I can tell you right now that I’m in it for the Shakespeare so if there’s not much, I’m going to be disappointed.

Also, does anybody else get a strong “young George Clooney” vibe from the director / star, Walker Haynes? I don’t believe I’ve seen him in anything else, George Clooney is the name that keeps leaping to mind as I watch.

Be the players ready?

The credits list Gertrude, Horatio, Laertes and Polonius, so that gives me hope. Where was everybody else? I clicked “See full cast” and discovered Claudius, Osric and Fortinbras.  Can’t find Ophelia anywhere, though.

Hey here’s a fun bit of trivia!  Hamlet’s ghost (or, at least, “The Ghost”) does show up!  The actor is someone whose credits include apparently long-running full time work as a transcriber for Shark Tank, and production assistant for The Real Housewives of Orange County. Guess the actual amount of acting experience needed for the ghost wasn’t too high.

Seriously, though, has anybody seen this yet? Is it worth seeking out?

Hamlet's Ghost

Shakespeare via Portal

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Ok, this is pretty cool.  You want to perform Shakespeare.  So does your buddy, only he’s 1600 miles away.  Not a problem! Coventry University and University of Tampere in Finland have created a giant window where the actors can see each other.

In a world of Facetime and Google Hangouts I suppose the underlying technology is not that exciting, but the application is very cool.  CoulProspero, Miranda and Ariel from The Tempest by William Shakespeared I do the same thing with my iPad?  No, not really. We’re talking about full body images, right there on the stage.  Imagine if Sirius Black fell through the curtain in whatever Harry Potter book that was, only now he’s standing there looking out at you from the other side, and you can have a conversation. Neat!  I suppose I could have come up with a more apt Shakespeare reference, but J.K.Rowling’s the one that gave us that easy example :).

What are the practical limits?

The article made it sound like one side was doing the performing and the other was doing some critiquing, but the video shows them interacting in the dialogue.  But that of course begs the question of physical interaction.  Does the whole thing go out the window when you’re supposed to run the virtual player through with an unbated and envenomed blade?

Maybe we could use it for ghosts, or other ayrie spirits? How about Caesar’s ghost, or Hamlet’s father?  I guess I’d have to see it. What’s coming to mind is that if it’s just a flat plane, can you only see the actor straight on?  How do you meaningfully project that to the audience?  I suppose we could get to the point where we put it on a little remote control scooter and drive it around the stage (there are iPad robots that do exactly that), but would that be ridiculously corny?  Maybe if we just embed it into the back wall and then treat it like part of the scenery?  I’ve never directed a Shakespeare production, I’m just brainstorming randomly.

How would you use this?

What do you think?  If you had this technology, Shakespeare directors, how might you use it?  (Obviously it’s a new thing and we don’t know the limits of it – so assume there aren’t any!)

A Light Heart Lives Long

~ duane ~ 5 Comments

Saw “A light heart lives long” today and immediately thought, “Nah, that doesn’t sound like Shakespeare.”  Did some quick googling, and it looks like something more in the “old Irish proverb” category (“Maireann croí éadrom i bhfad.“)

But guess what?  If we allow for the words to evolve a little bit over the centuries, however, look what I find in Henry IV Part 2, Act V, Scene 3:

A light heart lives long, a merry heart lives long
Light, merry, same difference.

Conclusion: “A Light Heart Lives Long” is Confirmed

So it looks like we can give Shakespeare credit for this one, after all! It’s a drinking song.

Now, whether or not he’s the first one to say it that’s a whole different story. But we’ll let all those Instagram and Pinterest posters get off easy this time.

ShakespeareGeek.com is Dead. Long Live ShakespeareGeek.com!

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

Hello, world!  If you’re seeing this, that means I’ve gone ahead and pulled a trigger that I’ve had my finger on for several years now.  When I started ShakespeareGeek.com back in 2005, I used the free service known as “Blogger”.  If anybody’s been around with me that long you might even remember that the original name was “Such Shakespeare Stuff” and we lived at http://suchshakespearestuff.blogspot.com.

Fast forward 10 years and almost 3000 posts and it had gotten a little cramped.  The rules for what makes up a good web experience changed on us, and I found it frequently hard to keep up. Which, in turn, made it more effort for me to put out the content I wanted to at the level I wanted. Which ultimately resulted in less content, which made me sad, and the downward spiral would continue.

But on the flip side we had lots of people linking to us, and for some queries ShakespeareGeek.com is on the first page of Google results, and that is not something you just walk away from!  So I’ve agonized over the decision for a long long time about when to switch from Blogger to WordPress.  I didn’t know what would break, or how much effort would be required to fix it.

That’s like saying I can’t ever move to a new house because some dishes might break, or I’ll forget which box holds my spare phone charger. Sometimes you just had to make it happen.

Once More, Dear Friends, Once More

And here we are!  Thank you all for taking the ride with me for so long.  It seems like only yesterday I started the site because I had no one to talk to about Shakespeare, and wanted to light a little candle and see how far it might throw its beams.  And just look at us now.  There’s over ten thousand people watching on Twitter and Facebook for this site alone, and many of them are running their own little corners of the Shakespeareverse.  Talk amongst yourselves, make some friends. I bet you have a lot in common :)!  Who knows where we’ll all be ten plus years from now?

So once again welcome to the new ShakespeareGeek.com.  My apologies if some stuff broke while I get my house in order and start unpacking the boxes.  I hope you all like the new place!

ShakespeareGeek.com original banner
June, 2005 – February, 2017

The Island of Misfit Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

How was everybody’s Christmas?  Man it’s feeling pretty neglected here lately.  Ye Olde Blogge is starting to look old.  I think it’s going to be time for a change in the new year.

But!  Tradition does have it that I share my Shakespeare christmas with everybody and I’m not about to let that stop.

Let’s start out with the twins.  I’ve actually had Shakespeare stickers on my work laptop since last year (I posted about a year ago during my “decorating your life” phase). But I’ve got another identical machine for personal use, that has to date been naked.  No longer!

Twins!

Ah, that’s better. Now they match.   If you can’t quite read it, the new one is the one on the left and has the “Some are born great…” quote from Twelfth Night.  It actually came as a big white sheet sticker as if they wanted me to cover the whole front with it, but I didn’t like that so I carefully cut the good bits out and just used those. You can’t quite see it in the picture but my son pointed out that the Apple logo behind it glows right through, and looks very cool.

Last year I got some Shakespeare pajamas that I wear every night, so as Christmas approached I told my wife directly, “This, I like this.  More like this.  You know, in case you need ideas.”

This year I got two, and I love them both for how wacky they are. First is a colored shirt with a Merchant of Venice image and quote:

So far so good!  The quote is on the back:

I laughed out loud at the obvious mistake. Everybody sees it, right?  For a second I wanted to double check the text to make sure I wasn’t missing something obvious (good tip for arguing politics on the internet – always be willing to entertain the possibility that you might be mistaken), but I was not.  “villains’s”.  It’s as if the creator got halfway through the shirt and said, “Wait, is it s-apostrophe or apostrophe-s?  I can’t be arsed to go look, just do both!”

My daughter said, “We should return it.”

I said, “Are you kidding?  It’s stuff like this that makes these conversation pieces! I love it.”

The second one is even better, and it’s all visual:

Man, Shakespeare does not look like he’s having a good day.  I pondered aloud, “Why is he cross-eyed?” and our neighbor offered, “Because he’s trying to look at the things he’s juggling?”  Good idea.

“Is he wearing Chuck Taylors?” another asked.  I didn’t even realize.  He is indeed.

What I noticed is what he’s juggling. There’s the comedy / tragedy masks, that makes sense. And a sword, fine, lots of Shakespeare scenes have swords.  The skull, that’s gotta by Yorick.

But … a lizard?  For the life of me I still cannot figure out why he is juggling a lizard.  He looks like Quincy, Jason’s pet lizard in the comic Foxtrot.

I know it’s a week+ late, but how was everybody else’s Christmas?  I also got a gift certificate to Newbury Comics and am looking to grab the Deadpool/Shakespeare crossover whenever I can find it.  Anybody get anything cool?