I know I’m a bit behind on some stories.  Bear with me while I play catch-up?  You’re the best.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the Bard’s old stomping grounds — ruins of a famous 16th-century theater, buried below the streets of modern London. Known in its heyday as the Curtain Theatre, it’s often been eclipsed by its more famous younger sibling, the Globe.

I saw a whole bunch of links about this one but I’m going to go with the NPR story because you can get the story in whatever way work best for you – audio or transcript, with lots of pictures.

On the one hand I agree that it is cool to have this piece of history.  But I just have to admit, archaeology is not my thing.  They mention “one of the nicest things they found” was a bit of a pot being used as a mousetrap.

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Umm…..oh.  Yay?  I guess if you can’t draw a straight line between a thing and Shakespeare (and his works), it’s just not my cup of tea.  Your mileage may vary.

I tweeted yesterday about the rumor going around that a fourth season of Slings & Arrows might be in the works.  Here’s a link to an interview with one of the writers where he says it is, quote “Well, it’s more than a dream, I’ll tell you that much. I’ll stop now, before I’m hoisted by my own petard.

For those that have never seen it, the short-lived Canadian TV series takes place backstage at a fictional Shakespeare theatre festival.  If you’ve not seen it, you must drop everything and go watch all 3 seasons.  This is not just another random drama that happened to throw some Shakespeare into the background.  This is a show *about* Shakespeareans *performing* Shakespeare.  The jokes are Shakespeare jokes.  You’ve got your overly dramatic Ophelia who throws herself into the river when she’s upset.  You’ve got to the bad director who SET THE TEMPEST IN NAZI GERMANY!  You’ve got an insane director who sees ghosts.  And most of that is just in the first season.

If you have seen it, what do you think of a fourth season?  I mean, they kind of swung for the fences in the first three seasons, tackling Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear (with a bit of Romeo and Juliet thrown in for good measure).  How do you follow that up?

Awhile back I put a question out on Twitter asking which day of the week Shakespeare mentions the most.  Bardfilm reminds me that I never posted the answer.

For simple analytical / search questions I head over to Shakespeare.Clusty.com.  It is here that I punched in the various days, and here’s the results:

Sunday:  9 occurrences in 5 works
Monday: 7 occurrences in 5 works
Tuesday: 7 occurrences in 7 works
Wednesday: 15 occurrences in 9 works
Thursday:  15 occurrences in 3 works
Friday: 5 occurrences in 5 works
Saturday: 2 occurrences in 2 works

So Saturday is the clear loser, mentioned the least frequently across all the plays.

But the winner … should we call it Wednesday, or Thursday?  Notice that Thursday is only mentioned in 3 plays, despite having the most mentions at 15.  This is because 12 of those mentions come in Romeo and Juliet while they plan the wedding.  Comparatively, only 3 mentions of Wednesday in R+J.

I think we can to declare Wednesday the winner.  Mentioned the most often, across the widest number of plays.

There’s certainly no shortage of these lists, but I haven’t linked to one in a while.   Flavorwire delivers their list of Top 10 Ingenious Shakespeare Adaptations, but as always I’m never really sure what criteria these sites use for such a list.

All the usual suspects are on this one, and probably nothing that long time readers hadn’t seen mentioned before (Scotland, PA, which I still haven’t seen, being the most unknown).  But how do you make a list that includes both McKellen’s Richard III and Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet with 10 Things I Hate About You, O, and Strange Brew?

I’d love it if somebody made a list with a constraint that we could all agree upon, like “Shakespeare adaptations as musicals” or something.  Hint hint, content authors.  Get to work.