Shakespeare : The Comic Book

I just found ShakespeareComics.com so I can’t say I know much about it. But I like the idea. As the newspaper article I saw put it, “Half a loaf of Shakespeare is better than none.” In other words, even though many hardcore fans (like myself) would normally insist that you have to stick with the original language, if the choice is between giving up the language versus losing them completely, I’ll give up the language.

Plays include Midsummer’s, Macbeth, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night. The site even has screenshots which is very cool. I see that the “modern english” version is literally right next to the original, so at least they haven’t totally foregone the source.

Their summary of Macbeth is weird. Is he really an essentially good man? Where’s the evidence of that? Sure, his wife is the one that pushes him into all the really bad acts, but is it true to say that we know he was all that good in the first place? He didn’t take much convincing, after all.

I agree with them, though, that his speech on learning of his wife’s feath is “amongst the most powerful and haunting in literature.” It is so completely and totally unexpected for where it is that (when done justice) just hits you like an emotional freight train.

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Cursed be them that move his bones!

Oh no no no no, tell me that this story about digging up Shakespeare’s body is a Halloween joke. Apparently some American scientists have become convinced that Shakespeare was murdered by his son in law? Would that be the one who married the younger daughter, where Shakespeare deliberately rewrote the will at the last minute to make sure that the son in law wouldn’t get anything? The son in law who was involved in some sort of scandal where he got another woman pregnant?

I don’t think it’s cool to go digging up bodies just to satisfy your own curiosity.

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Book Review: William Shakespeare`s the Tempest by Marianna Mayer

Book Review: William Shakespeare`s the Tempest by Marianna Mayer

I like that The Tempest can easily be converted into a children’s book, which I think I’ve mentioned before. But apparently we should stay away from this one. “There’s little wonder, and less of Shakespeare, however, in this leaden picture-book adaptation of the famous romance.” Oh.

The other night I asked Katherine (who is 3) if she wanted Daddy to make up a story on the spot. She said yes. So I told her the story of a little girl named Miranda who lived on an island with her daddy, a magician named Prospero. Long story short she got very confused, very fast (and did ask where Miranda’s mommy was). Since I was winging it I didn’t have good consistent answers for all of her questions. But it does give me hope that she’s getting to an age where she can understand just a story, without pictures to back it up.

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