BardBots, Or, How Did I Miss This?!

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Though the “geek” in Shakespeare Geek refers primarily to our obsession with our favorite subject, I am still a lifelong computer geek by trade and have always kept a special eye on crossover projects that map Shakespeare onto the digital world, be in apps, video games…

Students study monologues from Shakespeare, annotate for characterization and blocking, then they are challenged to program robots to perform the scenes.

…or, sure, why not? Robots performing scenes.  Sounds awesome.

In honor of Shakespeare’s 454th birthday…

Wait, what?

April 23, 2018

This is over two months old?!  I’m slipping in my old age. Can’t believe this flew completely under my radar.

Note that this is a classroom project, not something out of Westworld.  The robots are basic, the environment is basic.  A long time ago, a professor named Terry Winograd made huge advances in natural language processing in a project called SHRDLU that did nothing but move colored blocks (“Put the red square on the yellow rectangle”, “Where is the blue pyramid?”, etc…)  This project reminds me a lot of that.

Just last week we were talking about Patrick Winston’s work in training an AI to understand Macbeth.  Over on this side, we’re training robots to act it out. Can’t wait to see how they meet in the middle.

What’s This About A Wadlow Portrait?

~ duane ~ 8 Comments

I had to double check my archives because sometimes what I think is new, I actually wrote about years ago. But so far the word “Wadlow” doesn’t appear in my archives.

“Could This Be A Portrait of Young William Shakespeare?” That’s what you call clickbait in my universe 🙂

I don’t see the resemblance.

In the linked article above, an art historian makes her case. I’m not going to attempt to debate any of her points, because I don’t exactly have the credentials to do so. But it is a very interesting (lengthy) read, with almost as many footnotes and references as actual content.  I like when historians write because they tend not to offer unsubstantiated opinion, they point to documents.

Anyway, we’re not afraid of unsubstantiated opinions here. If I had to research and document everything I’ve ever wanted to say about Shakespeare I never would have started this site in the first place.

What do you think? Have you heard of this Wadlow portrait? Do you know anything about the “Is it Shakespeare?” question?  Is it?  I don’t think it looks anything like him (not counting the earring). I suppose we could argue that this one is supposedly painted from life rather than after his death, but the other portraits do all tend to look alike – even Cobbe – mostly around the eyes. Having this be a more accurate depiction of Shakespeare would make all those other ones, including the one on the front pages of the First Folio, pretty wrong.

 

Midsummer Movie!

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

I did not see this coming!  Looks like it’s time for somebody to try A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the big screen again:

Interesting.  Looks like they’re going with the original text, which is always a good way to start in my book.

The biggest name attached appears to be Rachel Leigh Cook (Hermia) who seems like she’s kept busy, but was really “big” back in the days of Dawson’s Creek and She’s All That.  Trivia?  I continually confuse “She’s All That” with “She’s The Man” and assume that it’s a Twelfth Night adaptation.  I suppose Hamish Linklater (Lysander) is also a big name now, he’s had steady primetime TV work for years now (Legion, Fargo, The Crazy Ones, New Adventures of Old Christine, Ugly Betty…)

What I’m worried about is the trailer shows none of the Rude Mechanicals at all. I came away from it worrying that they’d be entirely cut. Luckily the IMDB page does list credits for all of them so they’ll definitely make some sort of appearance.

Oh! I knew this guy looked familiar!  Fran Kranz (Bottom) is one of Joss Whedon’s gang, and played Claudio in Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing. That could be cool.

Anybody know more about this movie?  IMDB dates it 2017, but the YouTube trailer appears to be brand new and it looks to be arriving in theatres July 13.  No clue if it’ll be in wide release or not (but I really doubt it).

Is it possible to make a good movie version of Midsummer?  Or is it just too ridiculous (unless you go animated)?

 

Shakespeare Calling (A Geeklet Story)

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This weekend my son and I went to the Boston Calling music festival because he’s a big Eminem fan.  His sisters will be going to see Taylor Swift this summer, and we already dragged him to that once, it didn’t seem fair to doom him to a life of shows like that just because he’s outnumbered.

Anyway, here’s where the Shakespeare comes in.  We’re walking from the hotel to the festival…

Geeklet:  “I told my friend at school that I’m going to see Eminem and he said, ‘Are you going to eat M&Ms?'”

Me:  “I once played Othello *at* Othello.”

Geeklet:  “What?”

Me: “Never mind.”

Later in the evening when we’re trying literally not to get lost in a crowd. Somehow the conversation turns to how you never know, just bumping into somebody or stepping on their shoe might set them off.

A few hours after that, it’s dark, it’s a standing room only crush of people, and he steps on my toe.

Me:  “Yo homes, you just step on my toe?  I will murder you.”

Geeklet: “No you wouldn’t.”

Me: “I can do it, too. We’re in the same hotel room. Smother you in your sleep with a pillow.”

Geeklet:  “Othello.”

Me: “…wait, what? Seriously?”

Geeklet: “Wait what what?”

Me: “That’s the one that ends where the guy smothers his wife with a pillow.  Didn’t know you remembered that.”

Geeklet: “I didn’t, I just picked the one that rhymed with pillow.”

 

Paper Shakespeare : To Date Or Not To Date

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Whenever I see a reference to a Shakespeare inspired video game it immediately catches my attention.  Shakespeare’s works are one of the great places to start for public domain stories, after all.

So when I spotted Paper Shakespeare: To Date Or Not To Date  I had to check it out. In fact, I literally sought out the developers to have a conversation on the topic.  It turns out that they’re planning video games based on thirty-seven of the plays?!  I love that idea.  As a cynical old man I don’t expect to ever see it, but hey, as they crank them out I’ll be sure to post about them here.

How is Paper Shakespeare? I wish I could say I liked it, I really do. It’s apparently supposed to be some kind of dating simulator, whatever that means.  From my angle (that of a fifty-year-old married father of three) it resembles a choose your own adventure book, offering me a few sentences of text at a time, leaving me to just press the space bar over and over again. I meet the characters, all sporting Shakespearean names and high school personalities – Tybalt the bully, Othello the football star, and so on.  Every now and then I get a choice to make – which class should I take? Who should I pass a note to, and what should it be about?

I just don’t know what to do with it at all. There’s a counter in the corner that’s keeping tracking of some sort of interaction I have with the characters, and I get the feeling there’s a goal, I just can’t get into it.  Sorry, developers. Maybe I’ll enjoy the next one more.