http://bookmineset.blogspot.com/2008/06/readers-diary-368-sarah-smith-chasing.html That the man behind all those brilliant plays and sonnets was not, in actuality, William Shakespeare is not a new theory. I thought for a while that I even cared. Credit Smith for curing me of that notion. I guess he didn’t like it.  Perhaps he should try Interred With Their Bones or maybe The Book Of Air And Shadows?

Just saw a commercial for the Playstation 3 videogame system.  In it they show clips of a variety of games, while the narrator does the “Band of Brothers” speech from Henry V.  That’s different. The games include Meta Geal Solid 4, Little Big Planet, and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. In case you’re more videogame fan than Shakespeare fan and you came looking for the words, they are: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon this day. That’s how they say it in the commercial, which is edited from the actual text.  Most notably, in my text, it says “upon Saint Crispin’s day”, not “this day”. UPDATE:  Found it!

http://www.flowersblog.co.uk/2008/06/16/the-top-roses-for-cutting/ Ha, tricked you – a post about roses and the Shakespeare reference is *not* “a rose by any other name….”, so there.  Apparently there’s a fairly high quality rose called William Shakespeare 2000.  Who knew?

  I just found this baby onesie at Shakespeare’s Den  that I can’t resist linking.  I noticed that they had a “Browse by play” area, and even better, a section for The Tempest.  My regular readers know that I’m a big fan of that one, and have corrupted it into a fairy tale for my kids. Well I see this “First Act” onesie, and my first thought is “Wait, that’s wrong…surely that one refers to the stages of man ala As You Like It (mewling, puking, whining…)” and thus is misplaced in The Tempest category. But nope, it actually references plays, associated with appropriate baby faces:  The Tempest (screaming), As You Like It (satisfied), and All’s Well That Ends Well (sleeping).  So there’s my As You Like It reference, intended or not 🙂 Even better, the description of the item reads, “No, your little one is not just crying, she is trying to tell you that The Tempest must now be read aloud, please.”  I wonder if the person who wrote that reads this blog? 🙂 Disclaimer:  Silas, who runs Shakespeare’s Den, is a regular reader of this blog, and yes, we do have an affiliate relationship.  I’ve also linked to his site before either of those two facts was true, so hopefully people won’t hold it against me if I do it going forward as well.

http://www.slate.com/id/2193477 I was wondering if this would happen, for real, in my adult lifetime.  Ron Rosenbaum reports that the Royal Shakespeare Company has made the decision to drop the long poem A Lover’s Complaint from The Complete Works, and to add the relatively recent discovery, To the Queen. Now, granted, it’s not Macbeth or Cardenio.  But still, think about what this means – redefining what’s understood to be “Shakespearean”.  I’m not quite sure what I find more intriguing, pointing to one work formerly thought to be Shakespeare and saying “Nope, not Shakespeare”, or a formerly unknown work and saying “That is.”