It seems that this Ed fellow is doing a whole series. I just yesterday found his Midsummer’s, and now here’s Enjoying “Hamlet”.

I would never have imagined that you could say so much about Hamlet in a single page. Granted it is one mother large page. But he does cover everything you could imagine — scene by scene description, plot and character synopsis, and about a zillion historical sources for what went into the story, as well as people who took the ideas from Hamlet after Shakespeare and ran with them in even more directions.

It’s finding sites like this one that make me sigh and put away my own book project and fall back into “See? It’s all been done already…” mode.

Nothing against Ed – I’m incredibly impressed with this page. I just wish I could do it, too :).

Enjoying “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare

I particularly enjoy finds like this because they are remarkably close to what I hope to someday write. It’s a simple introductory guide to Midsummer’s that tries to make it very fun, and most importantly, very approachable. Within the first few lines the author even states one of my own mantras, namely “Bring your own experience into it in order to decide what it all means to you.”

Tags: shakespeare

Trolling through del.icio.us today I found this Richard II study guide. Since you don’t often find such material on one of the lesser known plays, I thought it worth a link.

Just a quick little acknowledgement and tribute to playwright August Wilson, who has advanced liver cancer.

“…America’s Shakespeare is dying. This is all the more reason to pay tribute while he lives.”

Oh, somebody else please tell me that they’re watching POV – The Hobart Shakespeareans on PBS? I’ve just started it on Tivo, and I’m loving it.

Here you’ve got a teacher that comes right out and says “I teach these inner city kids everything the system wants them to learn…and then I teach them Shakespeare because I love Shakespeare, because my dad read it to me at bed time, because I want them to have my passion for it. I use Shakespeare as a microcosm for everything I want them to learn.” Nice.

These are young kids — fifth grade, maybe? I’m wondering how much they “get” Hamlet a little bit. I just listened to a scene where he summarized Hamlet as saying, “Hamlet is about….what? One word. Starts with a D. It’s about…..death, right?” Until he said D, my one word would have been “revenge”. Before he said one word it might have been “children and parents”. I think it’s about much more than just death.

Either way, it’s still good. I like this guy.

Such Shakespeare Stuff – Blogging Shakespeare Everywhere You Look