Will This Stratford-on-Avon Drama Have Any Shakespeare?

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Jo Joyner and Mark Benton

Here’s an interesting twist. How about a modern day murder mystery series set in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford on Avon?  Jo Joyner and Mark Benton (the names mean nothing to me) star in the new BBC (ah, that explains it) show.

The female lead will be named Lu Shakespeare of course, and I’m hoping that means that each episode will have the opportunity for some Shakespeare references, jokes, plotlines, or just general what have you.

I don’t know that I’ll ever get to see the show, being in the US and all with limited BBC access, but I like to look out for my people.  Who knows, maybe it will be a smashing success and spawn a US version based in Stratford, Connecticut.

Also Based On Shakespeare

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Once again the other day I walked into another Lion King is Hamlet conversation. Twice. It always goes like this:

“Lion King is Hamlet.”

“Seriously? I had no idea it was based on Shakespeare.”

“Timon and Pumbaa are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”

Yes, there were three people talking. How the middle person hadn’t previously heard this story I have no idea, it seems like I hear it at least once a week.  There’s always somebody that brings it up, somebody that has no idea, and somebody that goes “Oh, sure…” and promptly parrots back what they saw on Buzzfeed last week.

I’ve decided that I give up. It’s no longer fun to explain to people that the number of ways in which Lion King is NOT Hamlet far outweigh those in which Lion King is Hamlet.  Instead I’m jumping on the bandwagon.  Enlisting the help of Bardfilm (who no doubt will be responsible for the best bits), I present:

 

#AlsoBasedOnShakespeare

Psycho is based on Coriolanus because it’s about a guy that does what his mother tells him.

The Shining is actually based on The Tempest.  They both take place in a remote location and involve apparitions.

Seriously, though, Titanic is really The Tempest.  Not only is there a shipwreck, but at the end an old person throws valuable stuff in the ocean.

Goodfellas is really Julius Caesar because that one guy gets stabbed a lot.

On The Waterfront is a modern retelling of The Merchant of Venice because both are on the waterfront.

The Silence of the Lambs is based on Titus Andronicus. We know all about Hannibal Lecter’s main course of liver with fava beans and a nice chianti, but he never talks about the pie he had for dessert.

Twins (with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny deVito) is really Comedy of Errors because both involve twins.

No Country for Old Men is King Lear, for obvious reasons.

Four Weddings And A Funeral is The Taming of the Shrew, only with more weddings.  (The funeral being for Petruchio’s father, which is technically before the play begins, but when has that ever stopped the movie people? )

The Godfather is King Lear.  I don’t know how, but apparently people really do think this. Hmmm, might require a separate post…

Purple Rain is based on Romeo and Juliet because Prince is a character in both.

The Wrestler (2008) with Mickey Rourke is a sequel to As You Like It, looking at what happens to Charles after the events of the play.

The Wizard of Oz is Twelfth Night.  It’s so obvious. Storm causes girl to be shipwrecked alone in a strange new land? The Wizard is Orsino, and Glenda is Olivia.  The Wicked Witch is a gender blind Malvolio.  Not buying it?  I don’t see why not, it makes about as much sense as saying the meerkat and warthog are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

My goal is to own the Google search results for “Lion King is Hamlet” so we can set the record straight and stop people from including it on all those lists otherwise reserved for 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s The Man.  Help Bardfilm and I achieve this goal by adding your comments below!  More content on the page helps drive up the quality score 😉

Is Romeo and Juliet an Anti-Irish Rant?

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There’s not much Shakespeare content in Neal Stephenson’s The Rise And Fall of D.O.D.O, much to my dismay. But there is a bit that’s new to me and worthy of discussion.  The story is a time travel one, and when our hero is transported back to Elizabethan England to hang out with an Irish prostitute, he wants to talk about Shakespeare. He notices that Romeo and Juliet is currently playing.

“It’s a shite play,” she responds, “Just a court sponsored rant against the Irish.”

She then cites her evidence:

  • the “villain” is a Catholic friar, and “everybody knows” Catholic is code for Irish.
  • his meddling is the cause of all suffering and the reason why the play is  tragedy and not a comedy
  • the friar’s name is Lawrence, obviously named for St. Labhras, who was martyred by a poison of his own concoction.

Is this a well known conspiracy theory, or did Stephenson make it up?  He’s got other examples, less specific – the one about the “terrible drunk Irish character staggering about the stage wailing about how all the Irish are villains and bastards and knaves” or the “English king who went to conquer Ireland, and he said the Irish live like venom.”

So, did Shakespeare hate the Irish?

 

Cressida and Desdemona Don’t Get Along

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You may recall that the moons of Uranus are named (for the most part) after Shakespeare characters.  Looks like 27 of them at last count with 3 (by my count) not being from Shakespeare.  Ariel doesn’t technically count because Ariel and Umbriel were intended to be a reference to Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (the idea being that those two, along with Titania and Oberon, were the fairies attending Uranus, the god of the sky).

Well, apparently there might be fewer of them very soon.  Popular Mechanics reports that Desdemona and Cressida are going to crash into each other in about a million years.  That’s totally “soon” on an astronomical level 😉

I guess it has to do with the irregular orbits, particular Cressida’s.  It’s bringing her closer to Desdemona, and the great thing about space is that without anything to get in the way, it’s easy to plot the math and physics out over a few million years and predict with pretty good accuracy what’s going to happen.

Something I discovered in writing this up, though, is that nothing is ever new under the sun (ha!) in the astronomical community.  This new article cites a new paper uploaded to arVix.  But the Wikipedia page also references the “Cressida and Desdemona will crash into each other” note. “Wow,” I thought, “Those Wikipedia editors are really up on their links.”  Not really – they’re referencing a 1997 paper.

Given that Cressida and Desdemona were discovered in 1986 (along with 8 others) as part of the Voyager 2 flyby, I can totally imagine the scientists looking at the Voyager 2 data and saying, “Oh cool, Uranus has like 10 more moons than we thought it did.” <pause>  “Those two are totally going to crash into each other eventually.”

Tupac on Shakespeare

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No, he’s not back, he’s still dead.  Maybe he’s got a new album coming out, you can never tell.

I’m talking about Tupac Shakur’s interview in the LA Times back in 1995, where he drops a bunch of Shakespeare stuff.  I probably heard about this and never paid close attention – I never really knew anything about his work when he was alive, so I have no opinion on the man.  I think I basically assumed that he was just being subjected to the “modern Shakespeare” treatment as idol worship after his death.

Here’s the actual snip from the article.  Man’s more articulate than I thought (though maybe articulate isn’t the right word):

Q: You studied at the Baltimore School of Performing Arts. Does your theater background influence your songwriting?

A: It influences all my work. I really like stuff like “Les Miserables” and “Gospel at Colonus.” And I love Shakespeare. He wrote some of the rawest stories, man. I mean look at Romeo and Juliet. That’s some serious ghetto [expletive]. You got this guy Romeo from the Bloods who falls for Juliet, a female from the Crips, and everybody in both gangs are against them. So they have to sneak out and they end up dead for nothing. Real tragic stuff.

And look how Shakespeare busts it up with Macbeth. He creates a tale about this king’s wife who convinces a happy man to chase after her and kill her husband so he can take over the country. After he commits the murder, the dude starts having delusions just like in a Scarface song. I mean the king’s wife just screws this guy’s whole life up for nothing. Now that’s what I call a b—-.

I just realized that I don’t think he completely understands Macbeth (kill whose husband, exactly?) but I appreciate the effort.

So, here’s a question for those of you who know Tupac’s work better than I.  Does he have any overt literary / Shakespeare references that we should be looking at?  I’m figuring that if they were there and obvious I probably would have run across them by now, but you never know.  I’m open to learning more!