Last week I set my TV to start recording stuff with Shakespeare in it. I was amused to see Vincent Price’s “Theatre of Blood” come up, looking forward to that one.

But first we have Prince of Players, a 1955 movie about the Booth family.  You know, as in John Wilkes Booth.  The dude who shot Lincoln? We here at the site know that the Booth family were quite famous as Shakespearean actors, so the premise of this movie is fascinating.  We know what eventually happens, of course.  It’s like getting the back story.  Why does John go down the path he does? What of his brother Edwin?

The movie is more accurately the story of Edwin, played by none other than Richard Burton who had his own bits of Shakespearean fame.  We see Edwin grow up on the road with his father, Junius Brutus, memorizing lines while he was supposed to be sleeping or doing his homework. It was young Edwin who had to go drag his drunken father out of the local saloon so he could play Lear, or his famous Richard III. Flash to the Booth home life where we meet John, the apparent heir to the throne as he runs through the house doing scenes with his father while Edwin settles up the accounting books with his older sister.  We soon learn, however, that Edwin is a much, much better actor than John.  They can both do the lines and do them well, but it is clear to everyone that Edwin is the new king.

This movie has an amazing amount of Shakespeare in it.  These days it seems like we either get a movie version of a Shakespeare play, or we get a movie based on a Shakespeare play, but nobody thinks that today’s audiences can sit through too much Shakespeare in the middle of their show.  Fifty years ago, however, movie makers had more respect for their audience’s attention span (and perhaps the audience deserved it a bit more than today’s do).  We get to see very large amounts of Richard Burton’s Richard III, Romeo, and Hamlet.

The actual story, though perhaps a bit melodramatic, is still excellent and entertaining.  Edwin marries his Juliet, and has a child.  When his wife becomes ill and can no longer attend performances, he demands that her box remain empty, which angers the theatre owners who “could sell it 50x over.”

“You have the greatest Hamlet of our generation on your stage,” Booth’s manager responds, “If he wants that box to remain empty, it remains empty.”

What of his more infamous brother John? We see him, enough. Early on it looks as if he too will have a career in the theatre, but it’s clear that the critics prefer his brother. Somehow, perhaps for purposes only of the story, this translates into John’s preference for the South over the North.  I believe it was because he blamed the critics in the North, who preferred Edwin, for killing his own career.  Edwin tries to rescue his brother from the bad influences he falls in with, including a generous offer to share the stage (“One night you would play Laertes to my Hamlet, the next I would be Laertes to your Hamlet. Then Iago, and Othello.”) that, 150 years later, would have Shakespeare geeks salivating over the prospect. But just like any Shakespearean tragedy we know how this ends, we know what will happen to John and that Edwin will not be able to save him.

Unfortunately, it appears that this movie is not available on DVD at the moment, so you have to keep an eye out for it in the TV Guide.  I believe I found it on the FOX Movie Channel, in case you get that.  Definitely recommended.  Been a long time since a movie from the 50’s kept my interest like that.

You may have already seen this but I couldn’t post about it until I’d watched the Enunciation Battle between Stephen Colbert and Kevin Kline. Colbert challenges Kline to a duel of Shakespearean acting, without the “crutch of words and iambic pentameter.”  Nothing but facial expressions and grunts.  Colbert’s Lear and Caesar are good, but Kline’s Falstaff kills.

I’ve waited far too long to write about Hyperion to a Satyr, where the author appears to be going through Hamlet scene by scene. Big deal, you say?  Let me clarify.  The author is locating every version of Hamlet he can get his hands on, from film to graphic novel, and is doing a post per scene per version.  How did Mel Gibson handle the ghost in Act 1 scene 5? What about Tennant, what did he do different? And so on.  It’s really quite intriguing, and makes for an amazing amount of content. Once upon a time we did a similar, though much smaller experiment where I tracked down as many film versions of the scene where Ophelia returns the gifts to Hamlet.  I loved that post, it remains one of my favorites. How did Kevin Kline perform the scene at that moment? What about Jacobi, or Burton, or Brannagh or Olivier? Now imagine doing that, one post per version per scene, for the entire play.  It is a crazy huge undertaking.

If you like your Shakespeare blog posts on the long and deep side, Geek has never really been the place (though we do tend to go for quite awhile in the comments).  If you’re looking for some deeper reading material may I point you to newish Shakespeare blogger Gayle and her own bard blog? I’d spotted Gayle’s efforts a little while ago, and I don’t quite remember why I didn’t link her then. I think she was switching domains, and I’m never sure when that happens whether the author will continue the site.   Given that she later wrote me to say Hi, I’m taking that as a good sign that she’ll be sticking around. What does Gayle write about?  Looking at what’s on her home page right now I see mostly Authorship posts (including Mark Twain commentary and two separate posts on Delia Bacon). However there’s also a neat slice of history where she speaks of the Ireland forgeries, something I used to (I thought) great success this past April Fool’s Day. Welcome to the club, Gayle!

We all know by now that Kenneth Brannagh, he of Henry V, Much Ado and Hamlet, is directing the new Thor movie.  Odd?  Not to him.  He gave Comic-Con a Shakespeare lesson last week:

"We know that we’re interested in superheroes, kings, gods, because of their sort of human-like failings. So it seemed to me not as much of a stretch as some people might think," Branagh said at last week’s Comic-Con, where he presented footage from the film. "The stretch part of it is embracing the whole world of digital effects. That’s been something I’ve just loved because it’s — if you can think it, they can do it. And that’s exciting."

I think it’s fascinating that there are directors today who see all the CGI special effects stuff as their “go to” solution to everything, and here you have a classic Shakespearean who thinks that’s the hard part.