http://philipschaefer.com/2009/09/03/what-shakespeare-play-would-you-assign/ There’s a simple little blog post with a deeper question.  On the subject of “What play would you assign?” the two friends discuss the understanding of revenge – one recommends Hamlet, the other suggests The Tempest.  (The interpretation of how best to handle your revenge, between those two plays alone, could fill quite a few lectures…) But let me ask the bigger question – how many of Shakespeare’s plays, and to what extent, have revenge at their core?  Is what Edmund does, revenge?  How about Iago to Othello (if we assume, as the text hints at, that Iago does in fact have some previous slights from Othello, and he’s not just a sociopath).   What about Romeo killing Tybalt?  Sure it’s a brief flash of a moment inside the play, but it’s a pretty pivotal moment.  How about Merchant of Venice? I realize that there are some “revenge plays” where that’s the overall point of the story.  I’m just curious, if you tried, whether you could find some level of revenge in just about all the plays, short of the silliest comedies.  How about Dream?  Is Oberon’s spell cast over Titania a form of revenge for the way she’s been treating him?

http://www.nj.com/celebrity-news/index.ssf/2009/08/emile_hirsch_im_going_to_give.html An interview with Emile Hirsch, mostly about his new movie “Taking Woodstock” but at the end there’s a paragraph on the upcoming Hamlet he’s doing with Catherine Hardwicke.

But I have to say we’re doing stuff with this script that’s going to give the average Shakespeare scholar cardiac arrest. That’s part of the kick, to like beat the geeks.

The geeks say, bring it.  I’ve got space for you on my wall right under Ethan Hawke, hippie.

So I’m having a total blast going over all the Hamlet clips. I noticed something that I wanted to point out in the Kevin Kline version:  Listen to the way he says “to sleep”, the way he extends the word longingly like someone saying “Sleep, there’s something I haven’t had in a long time. I want to sleep.” Made me think of a Hamlet who may merely be feigning insanity, but could also well be having serious trouble sleeping.  Who knows, maybe much of his disheveled appearance and manner have something to do with that? I love that.  I don’t know anything about form, or how Shakespeare wanted him to speak that particular passage.  All I know is what I hear as a fellow human being, and at that moment I hear a guy who wishes he could curl up and go to sleep.(*) Or we could take it the other way and look at some other plays, and try to find common ideas in what Shakespeare’s saying about the dual nature of sleep?  Look at Macbeth’s own take on the terror of what it would mean to “sleep no more”. (*) Reminds me of the story of Dustin Hoffman and  Laurence Olivier.  Hoffman’s character is supposed to have been up all night or something, so Hoffman has in fact stayed up all night.  When Olivier asks what happened to him, Hoffman explains.  “Oh Dustin,” says Olivier, “Try acting.”  I actually found this link that goes into a great deal of research about whether the story is true.

Ok, it’s moments like this why Twitter rocks.  Guess what’s coming?  Guess what’s coming?? Flash back to July, 2007, when I first learned that illusionist Teller (of Penn and Teller fame) is actually quite the Shakespeare geek himself, and was about to embark on a blood and magic filled Macbeth production. Well, it’s available on DVD (soon) and I’ve already got my copy pre-ordered.  They’ve cut a deal with Simon and Schuster to include it as supplemental material with a new release of the Folger text. I was going to go snoop around S&S’s press kit and see if I could beg a review copy, but to heck with it, sign me up.  Want.  May not ever show the kids, but it’s got to go in my collection!

When VP Joe Biden quoted Hamlet re: the passing of Ted Kennedy by saying “We will never see his like again”, the more cynical in the crowd (or perhaps just those with a darker sense of humor) pointed out that: a) Hamlet’s talking about his dead father, who he indeed does see a couple of scenes later :), and b) is it really appropriate to memorialize Ted Kennedy by quoting a play in which a young girl drowns? So instead, Melanie over at Hands To Soul has got some Henry V, courtesy Ken Burns. Much better. UPDATE : Here’s a blogger saying that “He made a good end.”  There’s that Hamlet again!