The Complete Works of William Shakespeare make an outstanding dataset for projects like this, which looked at how often various “couples” in Shakespeare spend talking to each other.

Shortlist has a look at the trailer for the upcoming Macbeth adaptation “Enemy of Man”, starring Sean Bean in the title role (that title being “Macbeth”, not “Man” nor “Enemy”. :))

I don’t like Sean Bean with short hair. Doesn’t seem right.

I really wanted to see this trailer based on something else that Shortlist said a few months ago, when they referred to this one as “cutting back on the dialogue and cranking up the action.” Because that’s why we go to see Shakespeare, for the action.  Maybe they’ll do Hemingway next.

If you’re as curious as I was I’ll save you the trouble – the only text you get is a voiceover of the “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech.  That’s nothing.  They could work that into a high school musical if they wanted. Doesn’t tell us anything about how far they stray from the plot or anything. Heck even Fellowes’ Romeo and Juliet gave us a better indication of why we wouldn’t want to see it.

Oh, and it’s got Ron “Rupert Grint” Weasley in it, swimming in his armor.  No idea what role he plays.  Wait, I can look that up….from the Kickstarter page, he plays Ross.

ROSS? That’s funny. Look at how much screen time he gets in the trailer.  I hope nobody is coming to this one just to see their Harry Potter crush.

I also learned on IMDB that people have been talking about this one since 2003 (at least!) and that Courtney Love was supposed to be in it at one point?  I may have to see it just to see what took them so long.

What many new readers may not realize is that this blog existed in a different form, long since offline, before even June 2005 when Shakespeare Geek was born.

Yesterday I was looking for the story about the very first time I told The Tempest to my daughter as a bedtime story.  I remember how it went, how they knew Shakespeare as “the name of the song that Daddy’s phone plays” because I had David Gilmour’s Sonnet 18 as my ringtone.  She asked me who Shakespeare was, and I told her that he wrote the greatest stories anybody has ever written.

I found this post in my offline archives, from June 20, 2005:

I want my kids to learn Shakespeare, just like I want them to learn about computers.  But at 3years old, I have to pick and choose what Katherine is exposed to.  So if I’m going to pick the first play for her to learn, which should it be? 

The tragedies are all right out because she doesn’t get the concept of people dying yet. 

I think The Tempest is perfect.  One of the main characters after all is Miranda, a naive little girl.  Sure, maybe she’s a teenager in most interpretations of the play (and, I believe, according to Prospero’s math), but I don’t think that matters in fairy tale rules.  All the princesses always end up getting married to a prince and living happily ever after in those.  And that basically happens here, too.

So, it must have been after that :).  But check it out, from January 8, 2006! A story about finding some Shakespeare books at a dollar store.

“Before leaving I came up with Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear (!), and The Tempest. I’m particularly pleased by those last two, because I am not nearly as familiar with the plot points of King Lear as I would like (who is?), and I have in the past attempted to tell The Tempest to my daughter as a bedtime story, and having a mini freeform script of the play in a pocket reference like this will possibly help me succeed in that attempt.” 

In June I was thinking about it, and by January I’d done it.  My plan was in full swing, apparently, by August 2006 when we went to see Taming of the Shrew with some friends in Boston. The poor woman made the mistake of telling me that Shrew was better than Hamlet, because people like comedies, not dark depressing stuff.  No, wait – it gets worse:

“Know what else I hate?” this woman continues, perhaps not realizing or caring how much she has fallen in my eyes. “The Tempest.” 

“I’ve read The Tempest to my 3yr old as a bedtime fairy tale,” I tell her. 

“And did she understand it?” 

“She asked me for it. Repeatedly.”

I don’t know if they ever found her body. 🙂

I was thinking today about how often people accidentally lump Mercutio in with the Montagues, since he’s a friend of Romeo and doesn’t hold much love for Tybalt. That’s of course not true, otherwise his “A plague on both your houses!” would make no sense.

Casual audiences forget that Mercutio is actually a kinsman to the Prince himself. It’s pretty easy to forget, because … tell me again how it plays into the story?

I was trying to figure this out. Mercutio needs to be neither Montague nor Capulet, that’s clear. But Shakespeare could have just given him no affiliation. He doesn’t have to be related to the Prince, does he?

What about Romeo’s banishment? The Prince walks in to the bloodbath that was Tybalt/Mercutio/Romeo. He’s told that his kinsmen Mercutio is dead, murdered by Tybalt. Tybalt, likewise, is murdered by Romeo. Romeo’s gone.

The Prince, despite having promised execution for anybody that disturbs the streets again, decides on banishment for Romeo. How much do we think this decision has to do with the fact that it’s Mercutio we’re talking about? If Tybalt had murdered, say, Benvolio…then what? Does the Prince still call for banishment, or Romeo’s head?

This is the only place I can think of where the relationship between Mercutio and the Prince might have played into the story. Is there another one?

I don’t know why this article exists – it has neither header nor footer telling me, and the headline is merely “Shakespeare” – but the author provides a bullet list of nothing but a bunch of anecdotes about actors performing Shakespeare.

Some favorites:

• While working with Sir Donald Wolfit, Eric Porter ran into a problem at a school matinee performance of “Macbeth.” Wolfit disliked schoolchildren’s giggling during a performance, so he told the schoolchildren before the play started that there was absolutely no reason to laugh during “Macbeth.” However, Porter was playing the porter, who is a humorous character, and he said afterwards, “I had to stand on my head, practically, before I could raise a giggle!”
• While performing Shakespeare in the open air in Africa during the late 1960s, actress Judi Dench received a scare one night. She looked at the audience, saw the silhouette of a figure with horns, and thought, “The Devil’s here!” The horned figure turned out to be a goat that had wandered into the audience.
• Fred Astaire was not a reader. He once asked his son-in-law about the story of “Romeo and Juliet.” His son-in-law explained that it was like “West Side Story.”

No idea if they’re all true or what, I’m just fascinated by the random compilation that I stumbled across.