All over the news the last week is Jesse Anderson, a software developer in Reno, Nevada, who’s created a computer program that will type letters at a very fast rate. He claims that, in time, those random letters will type the complete works of Shakespeare accurately, word for word, and that, in fact, his program [...]
Helen Mirren plays the role of Prospero in a new film of The Tempest. In a recent interview with the Huffington Post she said: ‘I played the man role. Shakespeare very often had boys dressed as girls but not so often women dressed as men, but I play it as a woman. I don’t play [...]
Looking something like a serial killers’ notebook, a 20-year-old London girl’s Shakespeare-related scribbles have gone viral this week. Simply writing a bunch of words and phrases Shakespeare invented (admittedly in a somewhat unique font!) in her Moleskine notebook at 3am, taking a photo of it and posting it on Tumblr has got tongues wagging all over the world. We [...]
One question that will never be on any quizmaster’s list is ‘Who was Shakespeare?’ The reason is that it’s too easy. It’s like the question ‘What is the usual accompaniment in England to deep fried, battered fish?’ If you don’t know the answer then you’ve never been in England. And yet the 2007 winner of [...]
I read an article recently about a literature reading in Greenwich, New York, by a group going by the name of ‘Naked Girls Reading.’ The women come onstage in kimonos, led by the delightfully named Nasty Canasta and Gal Friday. They then drop their kimonos and begin their reading, which includes passages from Shakespeare. It’s [...]
The 30th Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival is underway. It’s the longest-running theatre festival in North America and attracts an international audience. One of the major attractions this year is David Belke’s new noir comedy-thriller, Forsooth my Lovely. It’s a wonderful combination of Shakespeare and Dashiell Hamett, author of The Maltese Falcon, with its memorable [...]
It’s always said that there’s something for everyone in Shakespeare’s plays. But if you are an American teenage girl you may have to be convinced of that. Juliet in Romeo and Juliet is a thirteen-year-old, almost fourteen, so she’s a character you can compare yourself with. When Romeo gatecrashes her father’s party he chats her [...]
When I was at high school half a century ago my English teacher brought out a solemn vow from me that I would never open another Shakespeare play again. He sat behind his desk while we all sat in rows in front of him with our books open. He went through Hamlet, stopping at the [...]
There was a famous commercial on British television before the advertising of tobacco was banned in the UK media. The clip showed a decapitated Sir Francis Drake in gorgeous Elizabethan dress, carrying his smiling head under his arm. He was placing a cigar between the lips and the head was sighing with satisfaction. Bach’s ‘Ode [...]
An interesting challenge to readers may be to ask them to think of any life situation that Shakespeare didn’t write about. There are so many things in modern life that haven’t changed since his time: we still have wars and dictatorships, colonial oppression, slavery, military coups, and religious persecution. We have what seems to be [...]