http://community.livejournal.com/bard_in_boston/62671.html So I notice via  Bard In Boston that a local production of Much Ado begins soon.  It got me thinking, maybe this would be a good time to introduce my kids to a real Shakespeare show?  I’m not sure if the 3yr old could sit still that long, but the 5yr old might.  I saw Much Ado a couple years back when they did it on the Common, and I remember them playing it up very slapstick, almost like a Scooby-Doo cartoon (where Benedick is listening to his friends talk, stalking silently behind them and then freezing like a statue every time they turn around).  There’s no violence to speak of, other than the whole “We think Hero’s dead but not really” thing. Or, she might not be ready for it at all.  So I thought I’d throw it out there.  Got any experience with 5yr olds at Shakespeare shows, particularly this one?  I also don’t want to be disruptive by having her be the only one in attendance (which I’m sure would contribute to making her more uncomfortable than she’d normally be). (Context, for my new readers – my kids know about Shakespeare.  They know who he was, and they know the general plot to many of the stories, including Tempest, Twelfth Night, R&J, and King Lear.  I’ve never tried to work through the text with them at this age, but I have told them the stories to the best of my ability and answered all of their questions, of which there are many.)

http://www.podiobooks.com/blog/2008/03/13/city-of-masks I’m a big fan of “podcast novels”, serialized audiobooks that come straight to my MP3 player.  Beats carrying around big honkin hardcovers.  Plus I can’t read while driving or walking across town, but I can listen. The description for this one calls it “a swashbuckling adventure in a setting reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Italy (complete with twins).”  No idea if it’ll really have any connection to Shakespeare, but I tend to sign up for the new podiobooks as they come out regardless.  I can always cancel after a chapter or two if I don’t like it.

Pardon my breaking from the Shakespeare thing for a bit, but I’m looking to talk to some high school students / teachers about my day job.  As I’ve mentioned my company offers a service for helping kids get into college (research, transcript management, resumes and profiles, all that sort of stuff).  US only right now.  Anyway, we developers have been tasked with doing some guerilla marketing to get more kids signed up and I thought “Hey, I have an audience that’s likely to have high school people in it.” So if you’re a high school student, or regularly surrounded by high school students, and you’d like to do me a favor, please drop me a line at dmorin@connectedu.net (my work address, you’ll note).  I’d love to ask you some questions.  Thanks!

http://blogs.enotes.com/shakespeare/2008-03/staging-shakespeare-the-cast/ I always thought it odd in this play that they do the whole Christopher Sly thing at the beginning (convincing a drunk that he’s actually a wealthy nobleman watching a play), but it never goes anywhere.   I refuse to call it “a play within a play” on those grounds. The above post suggests, and maybe somebody here has details, that there’s apparently more to that story?  It would make a great deal more sense if there was some sort of closure to that meta-story.

http://geek.shakespearezone.com/?p=2397 I don’t think that this blog is particularly Shakespeare related, but I like the way the author is experimenting with the sonnet form.  A sonnet that starts out in iambic pentameter and drops off to mono-meter is cool.