"In the first place, I don’t think for a moment that Macbeth did it." I looked at her blankly. "Did what?" I asked. "I don’t think for a moment that he killed the King," she said.

I’d not read this short story by James Thurber, about a woman who reads Macbeth as if it’s a regular old murder mystery.  It’s satire of course, but quite amusing. I love the bit about Lady M’s dad.  Who’da thunk it? [ For some reason I cannot connect to the original site, so rather than lose the momentum of discovery I’m linking to the Google cache version.  Safe diff.  It’s short enough not to matter, and n0 images. ] The Macbeth Murder Mystery (via Google Cache)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gAdRKDfYXXMbGMeAciSWPIJPSTqAD9ARLNNO0 It’s long been known that the church where Shakespeare is buried needs work.  Lots of work.  They’ve raised nearly a million pounds over the years to do it. Now it seems things are even worse, as the main beam keeping the roof up is rotting faster than they thought. I don’t understand why the church is in such trouble.  We’re talking about a national landmark, no?  Wouldn’t the government want to throw them a few bucks?  I have to believe that at least a tiny bit of tourism is thanks to Mr. Shakespeare and his grave.

“Say you are an idiot.  Now, say you are Nicholas Cage.  But I repeat myself.”

With apologies to Mark Twain and none to Mr. Cage comes this story about the latter’s opinion on why Americans should not do Shakespeare:

"There is something about it. I feel the rhythm of the English language and manner of English speech seem to work effectively with William Shakespeare but when Americans do it, something seems stuck."

Now you may be saying to yourself, “The Leaving Las Vegas guy?  Moonstruck?  He won some awards, didn’t he?  Son on Francis Ford Coppola? I suppose he’s entitled to his opinion.” Wrong Nicholas Cage.  We’re talking about this guy:

  Oh, wait.  Same guy.  My bad.   Turns out there’s at least one American than shouldn’t do Shakespeare, I’ll give him that. Oh God. The bees.

Check out the quote I just tripped over, strangely enough when googling “Zombieland” :

"If a group of Shakespeare scholars believe that the universe is explained in the bard’s plays, does that mean science courses should include readings of Shakespeare? Shakespeare’s plays are literature, the Bible contains scriptures sacred to several religions, and neither has any pretentions to being a book of science or scientific authority." ~~ Michael Shermer in Why People Believe Weird Things

As somebody who has made the “all of human experience can be seen on Shakespeare’s stage” argument, I think I know what he’s getting at with the “universe is explained in the bard’s plays” thing.  No, Shakespeare didn’t say much about the orbits of the planets.  But he did do a pretty good job at saying “Here’s people, and here’s how people react in certain situations.”  So good, in fact, that 400 years later we have to often remind ourselves what he did actually say, and what we’ve just projected onto him. But it’s not science, and has no claim as such. 

That’s right, love.  Caught your attention?  Mine too. http://markrosenyc.com/?p=94 Their talking about a new production of Othello starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, opening this week in New York.  There’s a video interview with Hoffman, but I have not yet watched it. What’s even more interesting in the article is the bit about a new play by Toni Morrison called Desdemona:

In Morrison’s words, “The only reason Desdemona loves Othello, or so she says, is the stories he told her. She listened to these stories of his, of his travels and his adventures. Where are those stories? We need to hear those stories that are not in the play.”

That idea intrigues me.  We so often dissect the tiniest details of Hamlet that we forget you could do the same sort of thing with Othello, or for that matter any of the tragedies.