Shakespeare makes life better.
How am I the last to know that ORSON WELLES DID A KING LEAR DIRECTED BY PETER BROOK, AND IT’S AVAILABLE ON VIDEO??? Why does nobody tell me these things?
The subject line comes from the behind the scenes look provided by the trailer, courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes. They act out the obvious scene with the eye business, so Orson Welles himself is not present.
Absolutely fascinating to me; I didn’t know this existed. Immediately goes onto my must-watch list.
Just how much Shakespeare is, literally, at your fingertips? I was thinking about this the other day while searching my Netflix account for keyword “Shakespeare”. And then I thought, “Yes but I also have Amazon Prime. And what about YouTube? People upload full versions of movies to YouTube all the time. You can watch 10 Things I Hate About You right now, actually.”
Apparently I’m not the only one thinking along these lines, because Can I Stream It? exists and looks to be pretty awesome. Go ahead, type in “shakespeare” and watch what happens. All the Shakespeare movies, along with a button telling you where you can get them.
Oh look, I can rent Josh Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing on Amazon for $1.99.
There’s also a feature where I can sign up for notifications, and get a message when it’s available for streaming on Amazon Prime or Netflix (or any of a number of other services that you may have, that I do not).
It could be a smidge better – I’d like the option to filter out certain services. Why get my hopes up that a movie is available for streaming on Hulu if I don’t have Hulu? But I can understand why they leave it in.
Ok, so, here’s the game. Play around with search. Report back on your most interesting finding, the one that makes you say, “Oh, wait, ______ is available online? Freaking awesome!”
I found a 1981 Cymbeline that’s only available on Netflix DVD, so I guess I’ll wait on that one.
I found a Shakespeare Conspiracy movie from 2000 starring Derek Jacobi? Has he always been on the wrong side of the authorship argument? I thought (hoped?) they just paid him off for that last movie. No link for authorship movies :-P.
You can rent Sir Ian’s Acting Shakespeare, but I added that one to my “alert when streaming” queue.
Oh hey cool, Fiennes’ Coriolanus is available for streaming on Netflix! And Sir Ian’s King Lear is on Amazon Prime!
Ok, that’s enough from me. What have you found?
UPDATE : Ok, I spoke too soon. Behold King Lear, a Jean-Luc Godard film starring Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald and Peter Sellars. WTactualH?
No, not one of mine! 🙂
I was on one of the domain registration sites today for a different project and for kicks and giggles I just typed in “shakespeare”. Of course www.shakespeare.com and all its variants were taken, but what I found interesting was the list of suggestions on the side. Check it out!
Some of those look pretty good if somebody’s up for a project. LoveShakespeare? Virtual Shakespeare? ShakespeareNotes? Personally I’ve already got too many projects and not enough time (as the above links will attest to), so I’m not rushing to do little more than add $$ to my hosting costs every year.
If you grab one (and plan to do something with it!) let me know! I’d love to help drive traffic to the finished product.
UPDATE : I also noticed that while “ShakespeareDay.com” is taken (and on the auction block for over $2000!), “ShakespeareDay.org” is wide open. So if somebody’d liked to camp on that and set it up as a home for the movement to change “Shakespeare’s Kind of Birthday But Definitely The Day He Died So We Just Tell People He Was Born and Died On The Same Day To Make It Easier Day” to “Shakespeare Day” in the hearts and minds of the people, you go right and and go for it, you know I’ll be the first one to sign the petition.
Spotted the headline Richard Dawkins Criticizes Shakespeare for Lacking Elite Education this weekend and thought, “Aw man, here we go again. And I liked Dawkins’ work, too.” And by “liked” I mean, “Read The Selfish Gene in college.” I have no personal experience with his well-known views on atheism.
Well, here’s the quote in question:
Sorry to be boringly predictable, but Shakespeare. Who are you? And how did a humble country boy like you become the greatest genius, and part creator, of our beloved English language. Might you have been even better if you’d studied at Oxford or Cambridge?
That’s it? Hmmm.
The Atlantic Wire article I’m linking to goes on to say stuff like, “It remains unclear what Dawkins could have meant by ‘even better’.” Really? How unclear is that? Are we arguing now that Shakespeare truly achieved perfection and that to even suggest that he could have been better is sin? Would he had blotted a thousand!
Seriously, though, the article is attacking Dawkins’ reference to Oxford (where he himself went) and the insinuation that Oxford or Cambridge alone would of course have made even Shakespeare that much better.
At least he doesn’t go off the deep end and suggest that without this education Shakespeare couldn’t have existed. If anything this seems to me like a positive quote, doesn’t it? Here you’ve got an Oxford-educated man who willingly admits that the “mystery” fascinates him, and he wants answers. He’s spent his life with the belief that only those with elite education can change the world, and yet Shakespeare is the obvious exception to that rule, and Dawkins wants answers.
I suppose if you’re in a grumpy cynical mood you can read between the lines and argue that this is indeed an authorship attack, and that the sentence following the quote above could easily be, “Perhaps you weren’t a humble country boy after all, perhaps you did study at Oxford…”
What do you think, does Dawkins go into the Denier camp, or is he just being attacked for daring to approach the question?
[So, how was everybody’s summer? Sorry I haven’t been posting as much as I used to, many projects have pulled me in many directions that are not Shakespearean. I shall try to return to a better pace now that the kids are back in school.]