http://syndicated.livejournal.com/riba_rambles/944885.html Riba Rambles onto something cool, a Pokemon style (“gotta catch ’em all”) chart of all Shakespeare’s plays. Told yourself that you’ll see/read/act in every one?  Print it out, hang it up on your refrigerator and get started Xing them out! I think I like Much Ado the best, although The Tempest is cool.  I don’t fully understand why Timon of Athens looks like a pilgrim, though :).  

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/duncan/17606/# An interesting article that I’m not sure I understand about the KLK8 gene being responsible human ability to form language over the chimpanzees.  Kind of neat that we’re getting to the point in our science that we’re learning such things. The article’s got a lengthy Hamlet quote in the middle to back up the title :).

Seriously.  Students walked out of their exam at a Scottish school recently when they came to the question to compare Hamlet and King Lear.  The problem was that they’d never been taught King Lear.  I can sort of see the dilemma.  It’s not like you can get away with saying “Aw come on, you should have studied the entire complete works on your own.”  Especially King Lear, for pete’s sake.  You’ve picked the two greatest plays in the entire canon.  

Well, rather, a quiz about Much Ado.  But I’m bored and haven’t been finding many links lately that haven’t been done to death. http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz2222601972d68.html I only got 9/15, I’m disappointed.  But I did it fast from memory, I didn’t go searching through the text. [Found via Kent Countryside Productions]  

I happened across a review of “Shakespeare The Bard Game” over at the Crazier Letters blog (where apparently someone named Erin had gotten it as a birthday present).  Looks neat.  “Quite possibly one of the most fun games around, ok well that’s a bit much but it is still a great time,” says the author. I have no idea who those people are and whether they are theatre/Shakespeare folk, so I thought I’d post over here and see if anybody knows this game?  Apparently the goal involves collecting money so that you can perform the plays, but first you have to get your props, actors, patron and so on.  I could dig it.  My wife and I currently have a larger supply of board games than we do friends who play board games with us, so it’s not like I’m in the market for more. Back in college I gave a friend a game called “Playing Shakespeare”.  Basically it was charades, only you were acting out Shakespeare quotes.  I’ll always remember the time I got the clue, “Even now that old black ram is…” and watching my partner try desperately to act out the rest before finally putting her out of her misery and saying, “…topping your white ewe.”  How exactly do you act out “topping”?  (I actually remember it as “tupping” with a u, but my searchable text tells me it’s topping, so who knows.  Still hard to act out :)).