Director preparing play on Shakespeare’s personal life

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=208386

Iranian director Khosro Amiri announced on Tuesday that he is currently preparing a play that tells the story of the personal life of Shakespeare entitled “Mystery of Shakespeare’s Dolls”.

“My new play is a modern tragicomedy which reveals hidden aspects of Shakespeare’s life,” he added.

“Shakespeare is blind drunk in this play. He has four dolls and writes all his masterpieces based on his own personal life. For example, he writes Macbeth because he has problems with his wife and her family; that is, Shakespeare appears totally different on stage,” he explained.

All the Shakespeare Stuff You’d Hope to Find

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Shakespeare’s Den is great for a laugh even if you’re not in the mood to buy. Anything and everything that’s ever had Shakespeare’s mug plastered upon it (including mugs, natch) can be found here. Of course there’s also every book, wall hanging and statue you might imagine as well.

Some gems:

  • Shakespeare bobblehead doll
  • Shakespeare action figure
  • After Shakespeare mints
  • Hamlet finger puppets
  • Shakespeare “celebriduck”

I don’t get an affiliate fee, either, so there :-P. I just wish my wife would let me buy half this stuff.

Starring Karl Rove as Falstaff

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I don’t have enough of an opinion on the politics surrounding the whole Rove thing to really take a stand either way. But when somebody makes such an articulate case comparing Rove to the “calculating, corpulent and very good at self-preservation” Falstaff it merits a mention. I wasn’t about to pass up an article that has gems such as this one: “It’s time for Bush II to be less Prince Hal and more Henry V. There is no better, smarter or meaner political operative than Karl Rove. But Bush II cannot afford to keep Falstaff on staff.” It even reads like a Shakespeare lesson :)!

Now is the winter of Iraq’s discontent?

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Here’s a great way to get people talking about Richard III again — portray him as Saddam Hussein. Biggest complaints are coming from the Richard III society, who are quoted as saying “We already have our work cut out for us as it is without going to this extreme.”

I’ll bet that if they’d portrayed him as Bill Clinton nobody would bat an eye. 🙂

What, no parseltongue translation?

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Harry Potter fans aren’t that nuts, says this article about just how nuts they are. They haven’t, quote, “gone the Star Trek route and translated the works of Shakespeare into parseltongue yet”. Referring of course to the fascination with the Klingon language that has inspired so many a Trekkie/Trekker over the years. (Parseltongue, by the way, is the snake-language of Harry Potter, in case you’re not much of a fan.)

But maybe that’s not so far off, if you look at your Star Trek history. A few words of the Klingon language were specially commissioned for I believe it was the second movie. The producers found a real linguist, Mark Okrand, to do the work. It was a hit, so they included more and more in the movies and the series. And before you knew it, a cult following was born.

Why not in Harry Potter? Stranger things have happened.
More Harry Potter / Shakespeare …