http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/celebrities/6570989.html Remember Tony Danza?  Whether you only go as far back as “Who’s The Boss” or all the way to “Taxi” it’s hard to forget the guy – sort of a real life “Joey” from Friends. How’d you like him teaching your kids Shakespeare?  All in the name of good reality television.  Sounds like somebody should just pitch it as a sitcom … and then kill it because “loveable goofy guy with no academic smarts ends up being the best teacher these kids ever had because he teaches  them about life” has already been done a few zillion times.  (And I’d be willing to bet that every time they had a “Let’s do Shakespeare” episode :)) [* The title comes from the old joke about Tony Danza either being *such* an Italian stereotype, or else just being so dumb, that he always plays a character named “Tony”.  While this is not technically true, his IMDB profile does list five Tony credits to his name … as well as one “Pony”.]

http://games.ign.com/articles/101/1013349p1.html When I see headlines like this I immediately scan for Shakespeare (I know he didn’t write novels but typical web writers don’t make such clean distinctions…)  Alas, no Bard in this list. But it does beg the question, what Shakespeare makes for good video games, and what sort of game would it make?  I’ve seen a number of variations on Romeo and Juliet as a game, ranging from text adventure to platform/jumper.  But what else?  Could Macbeth make a good first person shooter? 

http://chud.com/articles/articles/20456/1/OF-COURSE-3D-SHAKESPEARE-WHY-DIDN039T-I-THINK-OF-THAT/Page1.html 3D Shakespeare.  Love it.  Immediately makes me think of Macbeth more than Hamlet, though.

Don’t ask me why, but I was thinking about Othello a minute ago, specifically the “It is the cause, my soul, let me not name it to you” scene.  It clicked with me just how scary that really is, if you consider Shakespeare’s characters as real people who could really be walking the Earth next to you. So I thought I’d ask : Which of the tragic heroes, if you knew them in real life, would be the scariest?  Lear’s got a temper on him and he goes a little crazy, but it’s more the forces around him that cause the damage, not him.  Macbeth?  Sure he’s a bit of a mass murderer, but I’m left thinking that everybody who gets it in that play is really in his way in one form or another (even if hypothetically, like Banquo, or collaterally, like Macduff’s family).  Who knows, maybe it’s the bloody nature of that one that makes it hard to even imagine in real life. Hamlet’s a bit scary when you think about it.  Not for butchering Claudius, that was straight up revenge.  Or for how he ran through Polonius, which was a bit impulsive.  I’m talking about sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, a purely calculated move.  Did he have to do that?  Couldn’t he have written “throw them in jail” instead of “execute them”, or something similar? Now compare Othello and Desdemona.  He’s not even really that bad of a guy, is he?  Does he run around the play killing anybody?  Desdemona is a complete innocent.  Othello gets just completely brainwashed, not into a rash and impulsive act, but into something so calm and collected that he pretty much explains to his wife what he’s going to do before he does it. That, I think, is what worries me most of all.  That there are personalities like that who can be manipulated to any degree, even to the killing of innocent loved ones.  It’s not that Othello was crazy like Lear (and arguably Hamlet), or that he was already a little bloodthirsty like Mr. “unseamed him from nave to chaps” Macbeth over there.  PTSD much?  Othello was a regular guy who was manipulated into doing a pretty bad thing.  Which means you could quite possibly say the same about anybody around you.

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE5750WZ20090806 I’ve thought about it, and decided that this news that Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio teaming up to do a new Brave New World movie counts as Shakespeare news. While it’s true that the title comes from our beloved Miranda in The Tempest (“O brave new world that has such people in it!”), the book itself if you’ve never read it has quite a bit of Shakespeare. I’d like to say I’m looking forward to it, but I’ll have to refresh myself a bit on the story and what their plans are.  Wasn’t Gattaca awfully close to this one?