Where do you think Shakespeare ranks among the greatest of the storytellers? We all agree that he’s got some skills at the poetry, the drama, the character building, the “getting his point across.” But how was his story? Many of his plots require some serious suspension of disbelief, no? Or ignoring out outright plot holes?

I’ve always been fascinated by the core of what “story” means. If you stripped away Shakespeare’s words and still told the story, would it still speak to the truth of what it means to be human like the original does? How much of the message is in the words, versus the action between the characters? Obviously there’s something there, as people have been “inspired” to run with Shakespeare for centuries, from fan fiction to video games. But if you lose the power the minute you lose the words, why would we keep doing it? Surely there’s something in the story itself that Shakespeare put together. Shakespeare borrowed his stories, and built on them. So did he perfect them? Or is that the pursuit we’re all still engaging in?
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We are gathering a new tribe of storytellers: change-makers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and creatives who see storytelling as critical to their work and mission. There’s a star-studded line-up of 25+ speakers with diverse backgrounds to lead teleseminars, interviews, and panel discussions that relate to the future of storytelling as our world goes through reinvention. All sessions are recorded for playback. The online summit includes lots of social networking, collaboration, and crowd-sourcing for those who feel inspired to play. Entry-level pricing starts at just $11.11. To learn more: visit www.reinventionsummit.com.

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Remember the movie The Producers, which was turned into a stage play, which was then turned into a movie?
Imagine playing that game with Throne of Blood, Kurosawa’s legendary film adaptation of Macbeth. Because, you guessed it, somebody’s made a stage play out of it.
Scared? Intrigued? Disgusted?

…the 5th of November. You knew what was coming.
Today is Guy Fawkes’ Day. There’s clearly a connection to Shakespeare, and Macbeth. What’s your opinion? How much did Shakespeare know about the gunpowder plot?

Why doesn’t anybody donate 300yr old previously unknown Shakespeare books to my local library? That’s apparently what happened in Missouri, where the Friends of the Library looked in their donation baskets and found:

• an 8 volume collection of Shakespeare’s work, published by the infamous Lewis Theobald, in 1773
• a volume of Shakespeare’s poetry published by John Bell in 1774

First of all I think a clarification is in order, since keen observers may spot the fact that Theobald died in 1744. So my above paraphrase of the article is a bit awkward – these would have been books that Theobald had edited in his own lifetime, circa the 1720’s, that were then reprinted by someone else. At least, that’s how I understand it.

Theobald, by the way, is “infamous” for the whole Double Falshood / Cardenio issue. We’ve mentioned him many times in the past.
Here’s something that I hope proves as exciting as it sounds to me – *both* sets of books contain pictures of Mr. Shakespeare. And two different pictures at that! Theobald’s contains “a portrait of the artist as a young man” (bonus points to the article’s author for that literary reference), and Bell’s contains a picture of a middle-aged Shakespeare. I don’t think I’ve ever seen either of them (they are both included in the linked article).

What do we think? This sounds pretty neat to me.

So my publisher, Lulu.com, has been tweeting some great classic opening lines from novels. Whenever I spot this I always wonder if Shakespeare can play. We’ve talked about best opening lines in the past, but going head to head against the novel, I wonder if it’s still a fair fight.
Take the example that caught my eye and made me think of this:

They shoot the white girl first.

That’s from Toni Morrison’s Paradise, and dang if it’s not a pretty powerful opener. I’ve never even heard of that book, and yet in 6 words I’m here thinking “What the? Who are they shooting? Who’s doing the shooting? Why are they shooting?”
I remember some writing advice from Kurt Vonnegut, where he said something along the lines of “Throw away the first 20 pages of your story, you’ve said nothing.” I think this is the kind of line he was talking about. Don’t lead up to it, just drop the reader right into the middle of the action and leave them with a hundred questions about where they are and why things are happening.
With that in mind, is a Shakespearean opening line the same thing? You don’t have a reader, you have an audience. You don’t have a narrator, you have actors. Shakespeare was certainly good at taking time out of joint and sticking 2 hours traffic up on the stage, no doubt about it. The story of Lear’s a great example – we have no history at all of their family life, of what happened to the mother, of whether the king was a good king … and yet we don’t really need any of that, either, to still fully appreciate the story. But it’s not like in the opening scene you find yourself saying “Wait, what? Where’s the mother in all this?”
Which of Shakespeare’s openings is in the same camp? “Two households, both alike in dignity…” is a good line, but it’s more exposition than action. The same with “O for a muse of Fire!” The latter’s perhaps a little better, as you’re hopefully left wondering “Ok, who is this guy? What’s his deal?”
What about the more active openings? The witches have a good one. “When shall we three meet again?” What do you mean, again? We’ve missed your first meeting? Who are you and why are you meeting?
Then again, we’re talking about a meeting. In my initial example there’s a shooting. They’re pretty different on ye olde “heart pumping” scale.
See what I’m getting at? Shakespeare had a point, and the man crafted a killer story to make his point. We all get hooked the minute they begin talking, because we know how good the rest of the story is. But imagine sitting down with no knowledge of the story at all, and hearing a Shakespeare opening. Which one’s going to hook a modern audience best?