I see that Alan, who just posted a comment or two, has a Shakespeare blog of his own called “Shakespeare Experience”. Cool. I particularly like the angle it takes: My reflections and thoughts on the works of William Shakespeare, how he inputs the world (dreadful way of putting it isn’t it?) and how my world reflects on and is reflected in his work.

Librivox is a great project that attempts to cross Project Gutenberg (the world of public domain literature) with audio books by getting volunteers to read the classics. How does Shakespeare fit in?

• A Personal Anthology of Shakespeare, compiled by Martin Clifton
• Sonnet 23 (multiple readings)
• Richard II (coming soon)
• All Sonnets (many done)
• Taming of the Shrew (possible – one person has volunteered to read the whole thing!)

Technorati Tags: podcast, podcast review, Shakespeare

Dead White Males: Here’s a neat little podcast worth recommending. It’s not specifically Shakespeare, but “Dead White Males” is produced by Eric Jean, a literature student who is “considering teaching this stuff some day.” I listened to him do just under an hour on Merchant of Venice, which was pretty cool. Mostly a plot summary, but also some commentary on the characters, as well as readings of key passages.

This is not a Shakespeare only podcast, though, so I can only hope that he covers my favorite subject frequently enough that I don’t end up dropping him off my list. Other authors currently mentioned on his homepage include Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Blake, Thomas Hardy and others.

Technorati Tags: podcast, podcast review, Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Standard Biography Could Shatter into “A Million Little Pieces”: I suppose this is a logical thing to expect after the whole Oprah / James Frey fiasco. The Oxford Society issues a press release saying that all existing Shakespeare biographies are fiction.

Keeping in mind, of course, that the whole purpose of the Oxford Society is to basically claim that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is the real author of the complete works.

Technorati Tags: a million little pieces, Shakespeare

Spero News | William Shakespeare: Catholic playwright:

Wow…here’s an article that goes to great depths in its analysis of Hamlet, attempting to extract evidence for or against the case for Shakespeare’s Catholicism. What makes it even more interesting is that it looks at multiple versions of the play and compares notes over how and where it changed. This includes an almost entirely different version of “To be or not to be”:
“To be, or not to be: ay, there’s the point.
To die, to sleep: is that all? Ay, all.
No to sleep, to dream: ay marry, there it goes.
For in that dream of death, when we awake,
And borne before an everlasting judge,
From whence no passenger ever returned,
The undiscovered country at whose sight
The happy smile and the accursed damned –
…

I have no time to read this all now but I’m definitely bookmarking it for study. I’ve just noticed something very interesting. There is a big gaping question that many people have with the speech as it is traditionally known — why does Hamlet use the expression “The undiscovered country from which no traveller returns” when in fact his father has come back and told him all about it? But in this version of the speech the differences are important — borne before an everlasting judge, from whence no passenger ever returned, the undiscovered country at whose sight the happy smile and the accursed damned. So here he’s explicitly saying to go before God and get into Heaven. But his father was actually in Purgatory. So it is correct to say that he did not return from Heaven. I suppose then the question would be whether someone in Purgatory has supposedly already gone before God and been judged. I honestly don’t know.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare