Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare

I know that Fonzie played Hamlet, and Henry Winkler played Scrooge, but until this moment I’d never heard a peep about 1977’s Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare.

It appears to have been part of something called The CBS Festival of Lively Arts for Young People

Look at the cast — Kevin Kline as Petruchio?! This would have been one of his earliest television roles.

Challenge extended, Bardfilm – find us some footage!

The Verona Project

Fans of Two Gentlemen of Verona cover your ears, because this reviewer has no kind words for Shakespeare’s “weakest, deeply weird” ending.  That’s ok, though, because Amanda Dehnert has gone ahead and rewritten it.  Her Verona Project “transforms Shakespeare’s shallow, nonsensical play into a joyous and affecting story of flawed people stumbling into love.”

I don’t often blog about individual local shows, because most folks simply won’t ever have the chance to see them. But the amount of scorn heaped on poor Two Gents in this review made me figure that perhaps there are some fans of that one who might like to defend it?

For Done Are Shakespeare’s Days

Those hands, which you so clapt, go now, and wring
You Britaines brave; for done are Shakespeares dayes :
His dayes are done, that made the dainty Playes,
Which made the Globe of heav’n and earth to ring.
Dry’de is that veine, dry’d is the Thespian Spring,
Turn’d all to teares, and Phoebus clouds his rayes :
That corp’s, that coffin now besticke those bayes,
Which crown’d him Poet first, then Poets King.
If Tragedies might any Prologue have,
All those he made, would scarse make a one to this :
Where Fame, now that he gone is to the grave
(Deaths publique tyring-house) the Nuncius is,
For though his line of life went soone about,
The life yet of his lines shall never out.
H U G H H O L L A N D.

(source link)

Somebody tell me about this. I’m interested lately in the dedications of the First Folio. Other than Ben Jonson’s portion, I really had no idea there were so many.  This is actually really good stuff here that I’ve picked, and I’m quite surprised that I don’t hear more about it.  “which crowned him poet first, then poets’ king?” That’s good stuff!