Happy Holidays, Everybody!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, been a busy few weeks. We’re entertaining at my house for Christmas this year and trying to get the addition finished before everybody shows up. I’m still on the lookout for good stories, but right this moment I don’t have the time to dig through as many sources as I usually do.
So, have a great holiday, whichever you may be celebrating – although I believe some of the major ones all overlap this year, right? First day of Hannukah is the day after Christmas, and isn’t Kwaanza(sp?) always celebrated during that week anyway?

Michigan Shakespeare fans rejoice

Patrick Stewart is coming. As part of a 3 week visit from the Royal Shakepseare Company to University of Michigan in late October, Stewart will play Anthony in Anthony and Cleopatra, and Prospero in The Tempest.

I think I knew that Stewart was doing the Royal Shakespeare thing, but I’m not sure I ever realized that it’s here in the states. I thought it was an England thing.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare

Is this a dagger that I see before me? Shakespeare’s Smoke and Mirrors

As a geek I have to love this article that explains how Shakespeare may have done the “dagger that I see before me” trick in Macbeth. I guess I never really thought about Shakespeare using special effects before, and assumed that maybe an all-black dressed stagehand held the dagger and walked backwards or something.

Not so, says the article, which details the work of Professor Iain Wright. Wright stumbled across the work of John Dee, a scientist during Shakespeare’s time. “I suddenly ran up against this description of a man staring back with amazement at a floating dagger, and of the ‘marvellous glass’ that produced it,” says Wright. He logically goes on to make the case that Shakespeare would have known about such tricks and worked them into plays like Macbeth, not only for the dagger but perhaps for the ghosts themselves.