Although Bardfilm doesn’t have any visceral objections to the Super Bowl, he does find Shakespeare more interesting. In the list below, he offers some of his reasons. Enjoy them—and follow the hashtag #ShakesBowl on Twitter to see what other reasons people come up with—and to add your own to the mix!

Shakespeare is better than the Super Bowl . . .

. . . because most Super Bowls are only four quarters long. All Shakespeare plays are five acts.

. . . because millions have been talking about Hamlet for over 400 years—but how many remember who won Super Bowl IV?

. . . because you can be sure that neither Macbeth nor Macduff will call time out in the middle of their exciting battle.

. . . because the ads during a Shakespeare play . . . well, all right. Super Bowl ads are pretty good.

. . . because the coaches hardly ever deliver the St. Crispin’s Day Speech to their teams during halftime—even though they really ought to!

. . . because when Hamlet talks about “Singeing his pate against the burning zone,” he’s not talking about the End Zone.

. . . because if you feel disappointed at the end of a Shakespeare play, you’ve been rooting for the wrong people.

. . . because women in Shakespeare are generally treated with more respect than women dancing at the Super Bowl are.

. . . because “The Battle of the Century” should refer to something like Bosworth Field, not a Football Field.

. . . because “Two households, both alike in dignity” seldom describes the Super Bowl matchup.

. . . because the pre-game show usually consists of a speech like “O, for a muse of Fire” instead of inane chatter.

. . . because “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, / Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of Steelers” doesn’t have quite the right ring to it.

. . . because John Madden seldom delivers a play-by-play on a Shakespeare play.

. . . because concussions only occur in Shakespeare very rarely—usually by accident when the Scottish Play is being performed.

. . . because Sonnet XLV begins with “The other two, slight air and purging fire, / Are both with thee, wherever I abide”; Super Bowl XLV begins with a sixteen-hour pre-game show.

. . . because Because the Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” doesn’t show quite the emotional range of Romeo and Juliet.

. . . because Rosalind says “my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal” not “. . . like the bay of green.”

And don’t forget to follow #ShakesBowl on Twitter during the big game for more reasons!

Sir Patrick Stewart CBE is to receive this year’s Pragnell Shakespeare Birthday Prize.
I’m not really sure what that means, but past winners include Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, so Sir Patrick is in good company.

I love the paradox : Shakespeare is so difficult and irrelevant to modern society that nobody can understand why we even teach him anymore … and yet every time a new movie comes out, inevitably somebody compares it to Shakespeare.
Today’s example is True Grit, the current remake of the old John Wayne western. Although the linked interview is with 14yr old Hailee Steinfeld, she quotes co-star Barry Pepper for the Shakespeare reference.
Combing through the quotes page on IMDB, I found this amusing bit of dialogue that Mr. Shakespeare himself might have penned:

Rooster Cogburn: The jakes is occupied.

Mattie Ross: I know it is occupied Mr. Cogburn. As I said, I have business with you.

Rooster Cogburn: I have prior business.

Mattie Ross: You have been at it for quite some time, Mr. Cogburn.

Rooster Cogburn: There is no clock on my business! To hell with you! To hell with you! How did you stalk me here?

Mattie Ross: The sheriff told me to look in the saloon. In the saloon they referred me here. We must talk.

Rooster Cogburn: Women ain’t allowed in the saloon!

Mattie Ross: I was not there as a customer. I am fourteen years old.

Rooster Cogburn: The jakes is occupied. And will be for some time.

Although modern moviegoers may know him now as Sabretooth from the X-Men movies, Liev Schreiber is actually an accomplished Shakespearean (which I personally learned when he was a guest on NPR). So when he was the invited guest at Yale University Theatre recently, interviewed by Dean of the Yale School of Drama, the conversation was not about Magneto and Wolverine:

He added that he attributes his success to rehearsals. Schreiber said he was initially intimidated by the ambiguous notion of success in theatre.

“In French, rehearsal is called repetition,” he emphasized. He added that it is important to repeat rehearsals until the actors know the verses “upside-down.”

Luckily, he said Shakespearean verses come much more easily to him than normal script.

“It’s like a nursery rhyme,” Schreiber said. “It’s so easy to just repeat and repeat and repeat.”

I appreciate the simplicity of that thought. It says that anyone can do it – but don’t fool yourself, it’s going to be hard work. He doesn’t say you have to repeat yourself a dozen times. You’ll have to repeat yourself hundreds of times.

UPDATED for spelling the man’s name right.  Thanks, Christine!