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.
[more inside]
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.
[more inside]
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.
[more inside]
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.
[more inside]
posted by feelinglistless
on Jan 25, 2008 -
29 comments
To honor the
Greatest's birthday, one could consider his greatest work by reading this
excellent post by matteo which touches upon the religious issues facing our
confused Protestant hero, the student at
Wittenberg, who
doubts orthodoxy, cannot decide
if he is a
scourge or
minister, but ultimately accedes to a
belief in
divine Providence.
Or, if you would rather dive into an
intriguing amusing royally f'ed up "unique" analysis of the play, check out this
extensive theory (?)
[cache] of Hamlet which corrects our accepted and flawed interpretation by explaining that a literal reading of the play tells us, among other things, that King Hamlet was never killed; that Horatio--our narrator--is the King's son and prince Hamlet's half brother; that the guy we incorrectly think of as Claudius is in fact King Hamlet; and that prince Hamlet's father is Fortinbras. Oops. Boy do we have egg on our faces.
posted by dios
on Apr 23, 2007 -
40 comments
Beware the
Ides of
March. Almost everyone knows that the phrase comes from the story of the assassination of Julius Caesar, most familiarly in the
Shakespeare version, although
"The Life of Augustus," written by Nicolauas of Damascus, contains what is thought to be the earliest narrative of the plot to murder Julius Caesar, based in part on eyewitness accounts. But, not everyone knows that The Ides Of March is also a
band [flash intro] (best known for the song
"Vehicle")
[YouTube], an epistolatory
novel by Thornton Wilder (with forward by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.), an
instrumental song by Iron Maiden [YouTube], and two paintings, one by
Edward Poynter and one by
Andrew Wyeth.
posted by amyms
on Mar 15, 2007 -
10 comments
"Another useful analogy might be with a clearing in the jungle. The web is certainly a jungle, and without a few clearings it is hard to see how the innocent can stay sane in there, and it might soon be hard to see anything at all." The words of poet and essayist
Clive James, whose eponymous site is an online galley/anthology of breathtaking writing, art, and video interviews. My favorites include Ophelia Redpath's
paintings titled after Shakespeare quotes, Laura Noble's
photos of rusty things, and, of course, a collection James's
outstanding poetry.
posted by eustacescrubb
on Mar 3, 2007 -
8 comments
This evening, I entertained myself with these clips from YouTube and Google Video.
Come inside if you like Bette Davis, Charles Laughton, Kubrick, Frankenstein, Shakespeare, and company...
posted by grumblebee
on May 21, 2006 -
46 comments
The things I will not do when I direct a Shakespeare production, on stage or film. "32. I will not employ a conception of Caliban which would require him to wear a ghastly furry costume reminiscent of a hypothetical offspring of Chewbacca and the Wolf from
Into the Woods." "358. If cast members, especially fairies, are supposed to sing, I will make sure they can actually sing before opening night."
Some of these appear to have been agreed to through bitter experience. I don't know about you but I'd like to add 400. I will not set
A Comedy of Errors in a climbing frame which is meant to represent a lunatic asylum and have lookalikes played by the same actor in both parts as if has a split personality (watching that show was possibly the longest two hours I've spent in a theatre).
posted by feelinglistless
on Feb 26, 2006 -
90 comments
The Birds of Shakespeare No, not Juliet and Ophelia. "The eagle is cited some forty times. The two birds of this kind native to Britain [are] the golden eagle and the white-tailed or sea-eagle. [Shakespeare] may have occasionally seen…[eagles] on the wing, though his allusions hardly suggest any personal familiarity with the birds. Recognizing the lofty rank of the eagle and its acknowledged dignity above the other birds of prey, he makes the birds themselves, in the arrangements for the obsequies of the Phoenix and Turtle, admit this supremacy."
posted by feelinglistless
on Feb 4, 2006 -
5 comments
