As you’ve no doubt heard, Charlton Heston died this weekend.   It’s debatable what his greatest role was – Moses?  Ben Hur?  The human guy in Planet of the Apes?  Hopefully he’s not remembered as the crazy head of the NRA. When a well known actor like Heston passes away I like to scan his works and see if there was any Shakespeare we can talk about.  I found something interesting about Mr. Heston, who by the way played the Player King in Brannagh’s Hamlet.  Check this out: Antony and Cleopatra (1972) …. Marc Antony Julius Caesar (1970) …. Marc Antony Julius Caesar (1950) …. Antony   Seems the man was born to play Marc Antony!  According to IMDB Heston actually directed the 1972 A&C himself.  I wonder how often you get to see an actor play the same role with a 20 year difference between them?  In 1950 he would have been just 26. You want something downright spooky?  Heston played Sir Thomas More in the 1988 TV version of A Man for All Seasons.  In the 1966 movie version the title role was played by Shakespearean actor Paul Scofield, who himself died less than a month ago. That’s a little eerie.  Or, you know, coincidental.  Take your pick.

http://blog.askmisspriss.com/?p=61 This simple question gets a very lengthy answer, including quotes from Keats, Coleridge and Herman Melville, a shout out to Harold Bloom, and a good summary of something I’ve always said: It’s long been observed that one of the best measures of literature is when you can discuss the characters of a story, or play, as if those characters were real people: when you can talk about their personalities ; when you can psychologize over them, their choice of careers and deeds; when you can pick their brains and discuss their addictions and predispositions, as if these characters were actual human beings. I never really thought about it being “long observed”, but that certainly gets to the heart of what I get out of Shakespeare.

http://musecatcher.com/2008/04/04/resurrecting-ophelia/ I love finding stuff like this to link to.  Here, an artist works on a series of “underwater self-portraits” using Ophelia as inspiration.   Warning, the images are a bit disturbing in that they are, in fact, pictures of a girl underwater who, if it’s supposed to be Ophelia, is also a dead girl underwater.

http://english340.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/writing-assignment-three/ I stumbled across this blog the “English 340” class is using to organize their assignments.  It is from the University of Kentucky, thankfully – for a minute I was afraid these were high school questions: Choose one for a short paper of 2-3 typed, double-spaced pages: 1.  Lear declares that he is “more sinned against than sinning.”  Consider his remark and write a brief discussion of whether you think it is accurate.  What “sins” have occurred in the play? 2.  Just as manliness is a live issue in Macbeth, characters in King Lear return repeatedly to the idea of what is “natural.”  Choose one character and discuss his or her relationship to nature and the natural in the play. I am honestly not sure how to answer either question meaningfully.  I don’t know if I’ve just been out of school too long, or if I don’t understand the play well enough, or I’m just offended by the oversimplification implicit in the questions.  I hope this question comes after the students have demonstrated a clear understanding of the overall plot, character development, that sort of thing – that they actually get the story, first and foremost.  Then we can talk about all this meta nonsense not about what the character of Lear meant, but what Shakespeare was really trying to say.  Because as we all know, whenever we in real life say something particularly poignant, it was because we were making a statement on the whole of humanity. Having said that, I really want to take a stab at answering the questions, but I don’t really have the time to do 2-3 typed double-spaced pages :).  I think I would have picked #1.  “Sin” is more character-driven than “nature”.

http://www.bardblog.com/shakespeare-blog-carnival-1/ While I love the visual that conjures up, I’m really talking about a “link carnival” hosted by Gedaly over at The Bard Blog where we Shakespeare Geeks all try to drum up each other’s traffic by aggregating a bunch of good links all in one spot.  Go check it out!  And if you run a Shakespeare site, make sure to get in on the action next time!