Datamining Shakespeare ---
Othello is a Shakespearean tragedy: when the hero makes a terrible mistake of judgment, his once promising world is led into ruin. Computer analysis of the play, however, suggests that the play is a comedy or, at least, that it does the same things with words that comedies usually do.
On October 26, 2011,
Folger Shakespeare Library Director
Michael Witmore discussed his recent work in Shakespeare studies which combines computer analysis of texts, linguistics, and traditional literary history. Taking the case of Shakespeare's genres as a starting point, Witmore shows how subtle human judgments about the kinds of plays Shakespeare wrote — were they
comedies,
histories or
tragedies? — are connected to frequent, widely distributed features in the playwright's syntax, vocabulary, and diction. (approx. 30 minute lecture.)
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posted by crunchland
on Dec 8, 2011 -
29 comments
Peter Greenaway's "Prospero's Books" (NSFW) is not a movie in the sense that we usually employ the word. It's an experiment in form and content. ... The books, their typography, calligraphy and illustrations, are photographed in voluptuous detail. ... "Prospero's Books" really exists outside criticism. ... It is simply a work of original art, which Greenaway asks us to accept or reject on his own terms. -
Roger Ebert
posted by Trurl
on Dec 4, 2011 -
32 comments
NPR's food blog gets wordy:
for the origins of "pie," look to the humble magpie. Though the
etymology of pie doesn't present one clear path, the possibilities are fascinating. English surnames point to pie and pye as a baked good in the 1300s, with
a Peter Piebakere in 1320 and Adam le Piemakere in 1332. Chaucer referred to "pye"
as both a baked good and a magpie (Google books). Or perhaps the fillings were like a magpie's collection of bits and bobs, similar to haggis. You know,
like the French "agace," or magpie (Gb), and similar to
chewets, those baked goods, or
another name for jackdaws (Gb),
relative of the magpie.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Nov 22, 2011 -
21 comments
Shakespeare was not a full-time writer without other responsibilities, like O’Neill or Williams. But what might look like a distraction for such authors—acting in his own and other people’s plays, coaching fellow players, helping manage the ownership of the troupe’s resources (including its two theaters, the Globe and Blackfriars)—was a strength for Shakespeare, since it made him a day-by-day observer of what the troupe could accomplish, actor by actor. [...]
'According to Pacini,' Julian Budden writes in The Operas of Verdi, 'it was the custom at the San Carlo theatre, Naples, for the composer to turn the pages for the leading cello and double bass players on opening nights.' The composer had to change his score to fit new voices if there were substitutions caused by illness or some other accident. In subsequent performances, he was expected to take out or put in arias for the different houses, transposing keys, changing orchestration. He was not a man of the study but of the theater.
Shakespeare and Verdi in the Theater.
posted by shakespeherian
on Nov 18, 2011 -
48 comments
Original Pronunciation (OP) "...performance brings us as close as possible to how old texts would have sounded. It enables us to hear effects lost when old texts are read in a modern way. It avoids the modern social connotations that arise when we hear old texts read in a present-day accent." The site includes
transcripts of Shakespeare plays and other writings with
IPA notations, indicating how to pronounce them in OP. It also includes some audio
recordings.
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posted by grumblebee
on Sep 11, 2011 -
38 comments
Actor Jim Meskimen reads Clarence's monologue, slightly adapted, from Shakespeare's Richard III [
text] in
25 celebrity impressions. Bonus points for using Ron Howard's voice for the line "Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days," and Barack Obama's for "Such terrible impression made the dream." (via
@craigyferg)
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posted by maryr
on Jul 21, 2011 -
28 comments
How To Make Anything Signify Anything "By the time he retired from the National Security Agency in 1955, Friedman had served for more than thirty years as his government’s chief cryptographer, and—as leader of the team that broke the Japanese PURPLE code in World War II, co-inventor of the US Army’s best cipher machine, author of the papers that gave the field its mathematical foundations, and coiner of the very term cryptanalysis—he had arguably become the most important code-breaker in modern history."
posted by puny human
on Feb 4, 2011 -
10 comments
The Dancer and the Terrorist. When Peru’s most wanted man,
Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, was captured in 1992, a young ballerina,
Maritza Garrido Lecca, went to jail
too, for harbouring him at her studio. The story was turned into a
novel and
film, “
The Dancer Upstairs” (
trailer). This year, the author of the novel,
Nicholas Shakespeare, flew to Lima to meet the dancer at last — and to ask her whether she was guilty.
posted by zarq
on Jan 20, 2011 -
13 comments
"
I HEREBY REQUEST that my body or any part thereof may be used for therapeutic purposes including corneal grafting and organ transplantation or for the purposes of medical education [...] with the exception of my skull, which shall be offered by the institution receiving my body to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in theatrical performance."
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posted by oulipian
on Sep 11, 2010 -
17 comments
Amazing to see how differently Shakespeare's work has been dealt with in music: there is Jerry Lee Lewis doing a
blues on Othello.
David Gilmour, former Pink Floyd lead singer, guitarist and songwriter, turned Sonnet 18 into a touchingly beautiful
ballad.
The Metal Shakespeare Company wrote a heavy metal song about Hamlet (III/1), "
To bleed or not to bleed".
And yes, there is Shakespeare rap, too: William Shatner (the very same!)
raps about Caesar and British rapper Akala thinks he is a
reincarnation of the bard.
Last but not least, the Beatles tried their luck at Shakespeare, too (no music this time): they did a
skit on the famous Pyramus and Thisbe scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream (very rare footage!).
posted by Matthias Rascher
on Sep 22, 2009 -
37 comments
"Theatre," says Professor Lorraine Moller, Artistic Director of
Rehabilitation Through the Arts at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in her foreword to
Laurence Tocci's The Proscenium Cage [pdf], "may well be one of the few antidotes to the de-humanizing climate of prisons." The use of theater in prisons has many forms: from projects designed to let prisoners tell their own stories as shown in the Austrian film "
Gangster Girls" (
trailer in German), to the
elaborate, high-concept costume dramas of Italy's
Compagnia della Fortezza. Some base their work on Boal's
Theatre of the Oppressed, others on Moreno's
Psychodrama, but many programs use a more direct approach: put on classic plays, and let the play do the illuminating. That's the approach of
Shakespeare Behind Bars, the troupe at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Kentucky.
Watch the entirety of Shakespeare Behind Bars,
a compelling 2005 documentary that follows the troupe for a season as they produce a production of
The Tempest.
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posted by ocherdraco
on Aug 4, 2009 -
8 comments
Should you find yourself wandering around the city of Leiden, the Netherlands sometime, you may
notice some curious markings on the city's walls.
These
Muurgedichten ("Wall Poems") adorn many of the town's streets
(clickable map), and many English-language poets are represented:
one John Keats, for instance, inside a bookshop;
Dylan Thomas,
E. E. Cummings,
W.B. Yeats, some guy
called William Shakespeare, or this
ode to Charlie Parker by American
William Waring Cuney.
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posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Apr 5, 2009 -
15 comments
Martha Nussbaum
reviews three recent books on Shakespeare and philosophy. The essay offers an excellent analysis of love in
Antony and Cleopatra and
Othello, and an excellent discussion of the interaction between philosophy and literature.
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posted by painquale
on May 5, 2008 -
17 comments
The Case for the First Folio For centuries, editors of Shakespeare's plays have conflated different published editions (
quartos and folios) in an attempt to create one true text as the writer intended. In this essay (.pdf file) Jonathan Bate, one of the editors of
The RSC Shakespeare makes the case that in fact what they're doing is editing together different drafts of the play originated by the bard at different times in his life attempting to make better dramatic sense. Essentially that none of the texts you studied at school are what Shakespeare intended to be performed at all.
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posted by feelinglistless
on Jan 25, 2008 -
29 comments
