http://www.slate.com/id/2195521

Slate’s got a lengthy story up on the recently recovered First Folio, including an amusing profile of the thief.  Or rather, the dealer who still claims his innocence, Raymond Scott.

Quote of the article: “…aside from the Ark of the Covenant, a Shakespeare First Folio is the worst loot in the world to steal.”

What I did not know, the article goes on to explain, is that a lengthy census has been done of every mark on every surviving Folio, so identification of each one is pretty much mistake-proof. I say if you’re gonna steal something like that, just keep it for yourself.  It’s worth more than money anyway.

Here’s another blog reference, with a twist.  Whenever I find a blog with a Shakespeare story I typically hunt around the blog to see if the author speaks of Shakespeare often, and whether I should follow.  In this case the blog is actually “the observations of an Iranian-American female” who uses the story to add at the very bottom, regarding the Cuban connection of the story: “at least he didn’t use Iran or an Iranian family as his source for the book!  … it might have been the only cause for war against Iran that the academic, intellectual Shakespeare adoring community may have supported.  Phew!”

http://nakedbard.ca/ So I just stumbled across this new Shakespeare podcast called Naked Bard.  It’s only on episode 2, so I haven’t missed much. I like it.  Quite a bit, actually.  The near hour-long shows are doing an in depth analysis of Hamlet, at the level that I like.  For instance the author (Dr. Melissa) doesn’t just reference the “melancholy Dane”, she actually busts out a reference on the subject of melancholy from 1621 or so about the relationship between melancholy and, if I remember the term right, “overmuch study.”  She then relates it back to Hamlet’s college experience.  It is very deep on content, and I both managed to learn a lot while not losing interest because it got too far over my head. Having said that, I have two major concerns.  The first is that it’s terribly over produced.  She stops every few minutes for a music break.  When she’s talking, there’s background music.  It’s just too much.  It’s one thing to accompany the presentation with some sound, but I’m talking about just stopping in the middle of your point to play a rap song.  Stuff like that annoys me.  I didn’t sign up for your podcast to hear rap music, I signed up to hear about Hamlet.  Don’t make me sit through that other stuff.  That’s long been a complaint of mine with podcasts in general that do that.  “I’ve got your attention, so here’s a song I like!” My second concern is that….well, I can see where it would be pretty boring except for us geeks.  It sounds very much like high school English, where you sit down and somebody talks at you for 45 minutes.  I felt like she could have lost me at any moment if not for my love of the subject matter.  I wonder if maybe, instead of wasting my time with too many sound clips, she could interact more with the reader, maybe open up opportunities for interaction, ask questions, stuff like that that makes me connect more with her as the author and not just as the random person that’s reading the Hamlet material.
Overall, though, I give it the thumbs up, and I’m glad I found it.  I plan on listening, and learning some things.  I also plan on contacting the author directly with my thoughts (if she doesn’t contact me first).  Who knows, she might be up for the input. Update: The more I listen, the more I don’t love her analysis, actually.  I’ll still listen, because it’s still good content – nothing wrong with dissenting opinions.  Like her idea that “Hamlet can’t kill Claudius and live.”  Huh?  Why not?  Or how she finds the “undiscovered country” bit a little odd, seeing as Hamlet’s seen the ghost – and comments that “I don’t think this is an area of the play most people consider.”  Well that’s just not accurate, since we’ve discussed it here. I hardly think that my little blog breaks new academic ground.

http://ianhocking.com/?p=408 I’ve seen several blogs on this subject lately, and I’m still trying to decide if this is a rehash of the older “Reading Shakespeare makes you smart” argument or if it’s entirely new research.  I’m linking this one because it seems to state the problem most clearly.  Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (at least, I think it is; this is how I interpret it):

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?

The word ‘crook’ would be heard as a noun but later information forces a verb interpretation. It draws the listener towards the sentence. Its metaphor burns brightly. Philip Davis, Guillaume Thierry and Neil Roberts are investigating how the brain responds to these functional shifts.

It occurred to me the other day that Chasing The Bard will have to end soon, despite my threat to travel to New Zealand, kidnap the author and force her to write nothing but Shakespeare stories (“Misery style”).  And then I will be sad, because it really is just that good of a story.  I think what I love best of all (and I raved about this in a past post) is that while it is fiction, she didn’t muck with the known facts.  She simply worked around them (and in the case of the Dark Lady even proposed some answers). This is substantially different from, say, Shakespeare In Love, where the story was flipped all around to suit the movie’s needs.  You folks all saw how I went bouncing off the walls when I thought that Clare Danes had misspoken a line in R+J, you can imagine how….disconcerting it is for me when somebody just helps themselves to whatever bits of Shakespeare they want, without respecting the text.   [Note – Shakey In Love actually turns out to be a great movie because of its respect for the R&J material.  It’s the fictionalization of his biography that I’m referring to.] I’m wondering what other sorts of “Shakespeare fiction” are out there.  We’ve discussed various children’s literature, I’m not really talking about that.  Nor am I talking about “slash” fiction.  I mean legit, published novels for adults that happen to derive their central plots from Shakespeare, either the man directly, or perhaps alternate versions of the stories.  Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead would be an excellent example of the latter case, successfully weaving their story in between bits of the actual play. I know that the Clockwork Orange guy (Burgess?) wrote a Shakespeare novel, but I don’t know anything about it.  I suppose I could look it up but I’m at work.  And besides I’m trying to drum up conversation, not answer my own questions. Anybody else? While I’m here I should mention Jasper Fforde, a very bizarre “lit fantasy” writer who weaves bits of Shakespeare into his stories with some regularity.  I fell in love with his ideas in the very first book when he had the Baconians coming door to door like Jehovah’s Witnesses, trying to find converts to their cause.  In a later book he actually has Hamlet play a role, but other than a few specific references to the text (“If I’m such a religious figure why would I say something so atheistic like There’s nothing either right or wrong but thinking makes it so?”  Good question!), it is a minor role.

http://www.westmonster.com/2008/07/to_stab_or_not_to_stab.html So apparently this Boris Johnson fellow, the mayor of London or some such, said that knife crime should not be looked upon with the glamorous image that is currently has thanks to Shakespeare characters such as Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet. I’m a little confused by the reference, since he was asked to explain who Mercutio was.  (If this was happening in America his response would have been, predictably, “Mercutio.  You know, the black guy from Lost.  He played DiCaprio’s gay friend at the party.”)  If nobody understands the reference, then can it really be said to have a “glamorous” image? I appreciate a politician trying to seriously work in an actual Shakespeare reference, and not just a random quote, however.