I don’t know what Light of Truth is, exactly, but it’s definitely Shakespeare, and definitely geeky. I’m not even going to try to describe it, because I don’t understand it.

Tags: shakespeare

Ok, I’ve got to show some love to Irregular WebComic, a comic strip that’s basically Lego characters with dialogue balloons over their heads. I’m digging it because he didn’t just do a Shakespeare gag, he has a whole Shakespeare theme.

(I do wish it was a bit funnier, though! Lord knows I love a good Shakespeare pun, but they have to be quick and off the cuff, you can’t think of the pun first and then fit the comic to the punchline. Then again I haven’t read every one so maybe some of them are better than others.)
Thanks to whoever stumbled me, by the way! I hope people stick around and browse awhile!

I got a message today about Clusty’s Shakespeare Searched engine. Althoug such things exist all over the place, it’s nice to see some major search engine love bestowed upon our favorite bard.
It appears to work well enough, allowing you to break down your search by play (or sonnet) as well as character, which is a nice touch. For kicks I just told it to picK Rosencrantz and sure enough it gave me every line of his. Reads like a Tom Stoppard play :).

Unfortunately this one fails in the same way most others do, and that is spelling. Shakespeare often got creative with his spelling, particularly when doing his iambic pentameter thing, and often would skip lett’rs complet’ly. So if you search all the works for “If it were fill’d” you’ll correctly get Sonnet 17, but if you didn’t know that and searched for “If it were filled” then you get nothing.
Failing #2 is when to use quotes and when not. Search for “to be or not to be” and the appropriate Hamlet soliloquoy pops up – but search it without the quotes and you get King John and Timon of Athens before Hamlet shows up at number 5. But on the other hand search for “is this a dagger that I see before me” with the quotes and you’ll get nothing. Search it without the quotes and you’ll properly see that the word is “which” I see before me, not “that”. So depending on what you’re searching you’ll often have to try both ways.

shakespeare

Shakespeare on … retirement? Ok…Couldn’t resist a link to this article on How to Retire Rich and Happy, mostly because it starts out by using Shakespeare’s cash management strategies to make a point. Cute idea.

I have no idea how to determine how old this interview with Stephen Greenblatt is, but I just found it so I’m linking it. Greenblatt is the author of “Will in the World”, if you don’t recognize the name. Normally I’d put up an Amazon link for that but I’m sitting in the waiting room at my garage and just don’t really have the patience to do the necessary cutting and pasting :).

Anyway, many of the reviews of that book accused it of being something close to a love letter to Shakespeare from Greenblatt (fill in your own insinuations, there), and after reading it, I can see what they meant. It’ll be interesting to see what the man has to say.

It’s interesting right from the first paragraph.Did Shakespeare know that he was writing masterpieces? Probably not. According to Greenblatt he was just trying to keep the butts in the seats, so he had to appeal to everybody. Not the sort of answer you’d expect about Hamlet or King Lear. Titus Andronicus, maybe :). (I say that for the benefit of the oft-ignored Titus fans in my audience :)).

Another good quote, regarding “the reader who has enjoyed some Shakespeare but is not at all familiar with the mountains of scholarship and endless debates and has no theoretical background”, which is the space I’ve always tried to play in:

“First of all Shakespeare is about pleasure and interest…The idea that you actually need an advanced degree to understand Shakespeare is a joke.”

Exactly.