If you’re not doing the whole podcasting thing yet (you should!) you may not have heard (ha! pun intended!) of the forthcoming Shakespeare by Another Name, by Mark Anderson. This book argues that the works of Shakespeare were actually written by the Earl of Oxford.

Normally I’d consider it no big deal, as I don’t usually follow any of the “who wrote the works of Shakespeare” theories. What I’m digging about it, though, and major credit to the author for thinking of this, is that he’s doing audio excerpts from the book as a sort of teaser for when it is actually published. So instead of publishing a book that I would never have seen or even given a second thought if I had, he’s gotten me to listen to the first 5 chapters.

How is it? He certainly makes an interesting case. He’s got loads of evidence that Shakespeare’s work pretty much parallels Oxford’s life almost identically, right down to Oxford (or somebody he knew, I forget…) crossing paths with two people from Denmark named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. To tell you the truth it gets so obvious the way it’s presented that it makes you roll your eyes and say “Yeah, sure, if it’s so obvious, why has it been a mystery for 400 years?” When I heard the first chapter I immediately thought of that old conspiracy email about “Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln!”

I think that if you’re a collector of such things, this is going to be a good one. The amount of evidence really is staggering. The author’s command of the plays is also outstanding, which makes for the best part of his argument — he always backs it up with sources from the plays, which in turn expands my exposure to select bits of plays like Winter’s Tale that I might not otherwise have ever noticed.

Recently I read (I think it was in Bloom’s “Invention of the Human”) that Claudius does not count as one of Shakespeare’s better villains, because he basically only does one bad thing (which most normal men could also be capable of), and feels guilty for it.

Sure enough I get back from vacation and About.com has their favorite villain poll up. I think this one is skewed a bit, though, as they bill it as “favorite” villain and then in the actual poll call it “most notorious”. I’m thinking that most peole just recognize Iago better than anybody else. How many casual Shakespeare readers could identify Titus Andronicus at all, much less compare Aaron the Moor against Cornwall from King Lear? Iago’s the easy answer.

Claudius, by the way, is not on the list.

I found this little battle of great artists while browsing today, and thought I’d share. The premise is simple, if a bit tedious – define what is important in defining art, then pick two “great” artists (ranging from Britney Spears through Stephen King to William Shakespeare. Then state how well each of your artists attains the goals that you set. See how much work it is? That’s why I’ve linked right to the last page which shows the scores.

Two things that would make the game more fun — be able to add new artists, and let mob rule determine a set of defaults for each artist if you don’t feel like selecting from a dozen checkboxes. There’s really nothing to stop you from just selecting the best values for Shakespaere and the worst for everybody else if you wanted to, but where’s the fun in that?

If you’ve got a moment be sure to check out the Shakespeare Monkey Simulator. What the…? Ever heard the expression about an infinite number of monkeys banging away at typewriters eventually typing the works of Shakespeare? There ya go. People contribute their computing power to simulate some monkeys and see how close they come. Apparently the record is about 24 letters from Henry IV, part 2.
Update: My friend Rob appears to be getting 26 letters on a regular basis. He’s got 2 machines each running 10 versions of the simulator. Somebody needs some work to do! 🙂