I’m taking this one straight out of Emsworth’s blog because he basically called me out by name:

If the Shakespeare Geek were inviting his readers to rank their favorite practical joke scenes in Shakespeare, our favorite would be the trick Falstaff’s fellow villains played him on the highway near Gadshill. (Our second favorite is the hilarious scene in All’s Well in which the blindfolded Paroles all too readily betrays his comrades.)

Ok, people, whatcha got?  Do we count Puck’s translation of Bottom as a practical joke?  Does setting up Beatrice and Benedick count as a joke?  Should we make a list of what all the practical joke scenes *are*, before we discuss which is best?

David Bates of “Reading Everest” introduced himself and his blog to me this weekend, and I find his current post about Macbeth pretty cool.  Quoting Harold Bloom he refers to Macbeth as the killing machine – but then goes on to point out that Macbeth is only responsible for 3 deaths, and those offstage.  Hamlet, meanwhile, Shakespeare’s most intelligent character and certainly the darling of Bloom’s work, is directly responsible for the deaths of Claudius, Polonius (even if he didn’t know it was Polonius, he still wanted him dead), and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  He’s debatably got a hand in Ophelia’s insanity and eventual suicide.  As David asks, what would he have done to Gertrude if the ghost hadn’t stepped in?  (Actually he asks whether Hamlet would have done Gertrude in before Polonius, but I don’t think that was ever a possibility.  After, though, when he’d gotten himself worked up….) Macbeth *is* a killing machine.  He’s introduced that way.  Everybody loves the “unseamed him from knav to chaps” line, describing Macbeth’s prowess on the battlefield.  I think that his physical size and power has a great deal to do with the point of the story.  It’s not about who’s the biggest and strongest.  Macbeth the monster is manipulated by his wife.  She then goes down to her own internal demons, not to some assassin’s blade.  Does Macbeth remain a killing machine at the end?  Is Macduff fighting the same guy he would have in the opening scene?  Or is the monster a broken shell of himself at the end? UPDATE : Link to the original post, which I shamefully forgot when I originally posted this.  My sincere apologies to David.

http://shakespeare5000.blogspot.com/2009/09/shakespeare-plays-prominent-and-obscure_04.html Lifted from a comment on my Top Ten Shakespeare Plays story, Michael5000 did a far deeper look at the plays based on things like how well people can recall the name of the play, how well the books sell, and so on. I’m not going to steal his thunder, but I am going to zero in on a couple of fascinating things: * One of his lists echoes our own list almost identically, except for one glaring difference – Henry VI shows up on theirs.  Nobody in all of my voting has even mentioned Henry VI. * His most obscure, Two Noble Kinsmen, is hardly a surprise – until recently it wasn’t even considered part of the complete works!  I only learned about it in 2005, personally.  Never read it. * Measure for Measure shows up on his obscure list.  I’ve had several people put it on their top ten best list.  That sounds like a “hidden gem” of Shakespeare’s if I’ve ever heard one! * In the final analysis, Lear ranks surprisingly low.  That’s a good indicator of what he’s measuring (not that that’s a bad thing).  People are way, way more familiar with Romeo and Juliet.  People will go through their whole lives without knowing anything about Lear. Anyway, it’s a great bunch of data that folks can have a field day with.  Which play is the most quotable, and is that a good indicator of the play’s popularity?  What about how often the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has chosen to perform certain plays over others? Go check it out.

Ok, let’s face it, if you’ve got an iPhone you’ve got the Complete Works app.  It’s free, it’s awesome, go get it. But is that it?  Is Shakespeare on the iPhone done? Oh, heck no. Omnitoons has thrown down the competitive gauntlet with their Bard’s Dream, a graphic novel adaptation of Midsummer Night’s Dream.  With it’s new $1.99 price (more on that later) I’m hoping to start a stampede for this one. I was skeptical at first, especially with a $2.99 pricetag for a single play (in a competitive landscape where the text of the complete works is free?)  But then they released a Lite version (act 1 only) and I got a peek, and my opinion completely flipped.  I’m very impressed with this idea. I wonder, of all the people in that opening paragraph who have the free Complete Works app ever actually *read* the thing.  I’ll admit, I don’t.  I keep it for reference, but I don’t break it out for pleasure. With Bard’s Dream you could cruise through the something like 1000 frames and just enjoy the pictures.  You know the play, but you don’t know how they’ve chosen to render it, so there’s something new.  Even better, and maybe this will turn out to be their hook, is that they’ve packaged both the original and “modern” translation, and you can flip back and forth.  (This by itself is not new, we’ve reviewed Manga Shakespeare and Classic Comics which have done the exact same thing – but dynamically putting them both in front of you at the same time?  Wonderful idea.) Disclaimer : When I saw the app come through at $2.99 I commented on Twitter that I found it too expensive.  This got me in contact with the Omnitoons folks, and I made my case – no opportunity to take it for a test drive, competing against the free version, etc…  I suggested more like a $1.99 price.  I don’t expect that I’m the only one they talked to, but now that they’ve actually *done* it, I certainly feel obliged to back them up on their decision.  I am not getting any sort of kickback or affiliate link out of the deal. It’s not perfect.  1000 frames is a *long* story.  You don’t get much text on a page.  In a graphic novel world you might see 6 or 8 frames on a page, but here you’re getting 1 frame at a time.  That ends up making a relatively short story like Dream look like War and Peace.  On the other hand, you just paid for this visual entertainment, so you want to get your money’s worth, no?  There’s something to be said for it not being over too quickly. Four things I’d like to see: 1) Turn the engine into a player in general, and give me the chance to buy more plays.  If Hamlet comes out as a micropayment for 99 cents inside this app?  I’d be all over it.  Heck, I’d probably buy them all like that – and now suddenly you can envision a company making something like $38 off the complete works, while the competition is giving it away.  That’d be fun. 2) I’d love to see the language flipper be more dynamic so that, right from the page, you could change back and forth.  That’d bring it closer to the side-by-side approach used by some of the No Fear versions, and give people a better understanding of “Oh, ok, when Shakespeare says this he really means that….” 3) Much like Classic Comics did, make 3 versions.  Keep the original text, a “modern” text that tries to be a direct translation, and then a “quick text” which is much shorter and looser.  I turned my 7yr old geeklet daughter loose on this app with the modern text, and it was still too advanced for her.  But, she’s the perfect audience to appreciate the graphic novel illustrations.  So if the text was a little bit more on target for her, she’d be a total fan. 4) There’s a typo on their title screen, they call it “Nights Dream” with no apostrophe.  In all their literature it’s correct, they just missed it in their title graphic.  That’s incredibly trivial, but it bugs me :). I think I’m going to like this company.  I originally commented that I love their attitude – in the description of their own app they even write of the competition, saying something like “Besides the app that we all know everybody has, including us.  How could we not?”  Then later, they refer to their “modern” translation as being for “intelliwannabees”.  That’s pushing the boundaries a bit, you run the risk of turning off people who actually want that translation.  But I loved it :).  I especially love that they spotted my commentary, opened up a dialogue, and appear to have listened. If you’re a Shakespeare Geek with an iPhone, you’re gonna want to check this one out.  Now that they’ve got a free Lite version (whether or not that was at my urging as well, I don’t know :)), what have you got to lose? How many of us live by that “more Shakespeare is always a good thing” mantra? http://www.omnitoons.com/products.php#shakespeare-iphone-book-synopsis

http://perezhilton.com/2009-10-02-your-play-sucks-shakespeare-sellars It looks like the new Othello, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is getting some pretty bad reviews. What’s even worse is that Perez Hilton, quite possibly the most hated  celebrity blogger on the planet, saw fit to mention it. Seriously, anyone who’s only value add is to scribble “FML!” over a picture of the star isn’t allowed to use the word Shakespeare.  Slow gossip day, you think?  Maybe he can ask him if he supports gay marriage!  Or maybe he could call him names and see if he gets punched in the face? Oh, wait, that was a different Will.I.Am.