Shakespeare, Time Travel, Macbeth

The Shakespeare Standard has an interview with Invisible Hand author James Hartley today, and his new "Shakespeare Moon" series sounds intriguing. The plot takes a contemporary kid back to Scotland and entangles him with the events of Macbeth. I think that's a fantastic idea. I never understood why high schools insisted on inflicting Julius Caesar on students as their first introduction to Shakespeare. Yes, yes, it's got "Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears" but it's really not one of the most riveting plays. But Macbeth?  It's got sex. It's got intrigue. It's got WITCHES. Start out with Macbeth and you might just end up with a kid who likes Shakespeare.

Here's the sales pitch:

The Invisible Hand is about a boy, Sam, who has just started life at a boarding school and finds himself able to travel back in time to medieval Scotland. There he meets a girl, Leana, who can travel to the future, and the two of them become wrapped up in events in Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, and in the daily life of the school. The book is the first part of a series called Shakespeare´s Moon. Each book is set in the same boarding school but focuses on a different Shakespeare play.

Another Cover Reveal!

Over at the Book Cover Designer, they're' going into their last week of a fabulous 20 percent off sale. (A new coupon will generate tonight at midnight PDT.) I've bought a number of covers for upcoming projects  and still have a pretty long "wish list."

I always try to steer my indie author clients toward BCD because they have a wide range of designers who offer covers for as low as $20. (They also have a few that are inexplicably in the $300 price range without, IMHO being worth it, but eye of the beholder and so forth.)

Later this year I have a whole series of novelettes coming out that are basically retellings of Shakespeare tales with a romantic/gothic gloss. Island of Magic (Tempest meets Beauty and the Beast), Cry, Little Sister (Hamlet), and two as-yet-untitled stories based on Othello and Macbeth.

This is the cover for Cry, Little Sister, my retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view. I liked the cover because I haven't seen the model, who is lovely, all over the stock photo libraries. The cover was designed by Serena Daphn.

Summer of Shakespeare #3 Begins!

Shakespeare and politics...when the bard got political, people died. He would have appreciated our current election cycle, I think.

And so, the third annual Summer of Shakespeare begins!

Shakespeare Fan Fic--Macbeth

Weirdos

by Katherine Tomlinson

 

The cops eventually showed up at school. Cate knew they would. When a guy like Kingman Duncan gets killed, people pay attention. Questions get asked. The police want answers. So we were expecting them and we had answers ready.

It was a week after Homecoming but the posters were still up all over the school.

Go fighting Scots!

Dunsinane H.S. rules!

As far as the cops were concerned, they had a whole high school full of suspects, kids who might have stabbed Duncan. Studies have shown that popular kids get bullied as often as the misfits do. My experience suggests they probably deserve it.

I wasn’t going to shed any tears over dead Duncan and neither were my sisters.

We didn’t do it, but we knew who did.

We weren’t going to throw him under the bus.

Unless we had to.

Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in Macbeth

Yes, #ShakespeareWeek continues with another fabulous YouTube find, the 1978 Royal Shakespeare Company's version of Macbeth starring Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench. Yes, Shakespeare royalty. You can see it here. The production is stripped down, minimalist and intimate, with semi-modern dress. McKellen was 39, when he played Macbeth, Judi Dench, 44. McKellen, at 5'11" is nearly a foot taller than Dench, and that physical disparity makes her seem almost fragile at times. But watching her face as she gives voice to her ambition--bemoaning that Macbeth is so full of the milk of human kindness--and the way she seduces her husband into regicide, you have no doubt that this is one DANGEROUS lady.  It's a terrific production.

I have supped full wuth horrors

That lines comes form Act 5, Scene 5, Line 13-15 - Macbeth. I know it's upposed to be bad luck to quote "the Scottish play" but I always felt like that was an actor's superstition, not a writer's one. I always thought that if high schools had students read Macbeth instead of Julius Caesar, there would be more Shakespeare enthusiasts in the world. But no one asked my opinion. (It's Julius Caesar and Romeo & Juliet, which has a higher body count than Hamlet and I honestly don't think those are the best plays to start with.)

If you haven't supped on any horror lately but would like to, check out my longish short story Unsanctified, which is free on Kindle this week. I did a lot of spider research for that story--yet another example of getting lost in research.  I so love Google.)

Casting Shakespeare...Macbeth

There's a moment at the end of Mystic River, a nonverbal moment between Laura Linney and Sean Penn, two of my favorite actors, that made me realize just how amazing they'd be in a production of Macbeth. And just recently I saw a photograph of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and thought--wouldn't they be great as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? I admire Angelina. I remember the wild stuff before she settled down to become the world's most beautiful UN rep and healthcare advocate, and I'd love to see her sink her teeth into one of the juciest roles ever created. In the play, Macbeth describes her as having a tiger's heart, wrapped in woman's hide and that feels appropriate.

Shakespeare for Slackers

I was on the Library Thing site this afternoon, looking over the new list of books available for early review and spotted Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet. Turns out it's part of a series that also includes Macbeth.(And I would bet that the next book in the series will be Julius Caesar because those three plays are the ones most read in high school. (And if you ask me, having to read Julius Caesar is one of the things that turns students away from Shakespeare. But that's just me. I also think it's a bad idea to read Moby Dick in high school. I didn't read it until I was in college and I loved it but if I'd had to read it sooner, I probably would have hated it as much as everyone else.)

Review of Macbeth starring Sam Worthington

There are more than 60 different versions of Macbeth listed on IMDB, which is kind of amazing. This film, a modern-day adaptation set in Australia, is ... intriguing. It opens with three red-headed schoolgirls defacing the gravestones in a cemetery, a sequence that is disturbing and creepy, especially since the colors are so subdued that their red hair and the red paint they're using just pops out like ... blood.
The scene soon shifts to a neon-soaked waterfront meeting place where a drug deal goes sideways in an operatic, balletic orgy of violence that is equal parts Quentin Tarantino and Baz Luhrman.
Director Geoffrey Wright filmed the movie with more Dutch angles than an Amsterdam neighborhood, but the overall effect is incredibly stylish. There's real carnality in the scene where Macbeth is confronted by the Weird Sisters who hail him as the Thane of Cawdor and he who shall be king thereafter.
He has never really considered the idea--we get the impression he's really sort of a drone--but once he's considered the possibility of being the king, the idea will not leave him alone.
The adaptation maintains Shakespeare's dialogue but strips it down to the bare minimum. (That's good because sometimes the actors' Aussie accents get in the way, as in the line, "Takes the reason prisoner," which comes out "Take the raisin prisoner.")  A lot of dialogue is delivered as voiceover, which keeps it from sounding too melodramatic in the context.

Shakespeare Resources

I once wrote a paper comparing the character of Hotspur (from Henry IV, part 1) to Hamlet and got an A because my professor though the comparison was just too weird (Hotspur is all about action and Hamlet is deliberate) but he was entertained by my argument. I was thinking about that as I surfed around looking for resources students can use for writing papers these days. Who needs Cliff Notes?
Shakespeare Online is kind of an ugly site but it's really entertaining. The home page features something called "Bard Bite" which is a Shakespeare trivia question. (Today's is a question about what Edwin Booth thought was teh worst rhyming exit in all of the plays.)  The landing page offers fodder for at least a dozen term papers and it changes daily.
Absolute Shakespeare is another basic-looking site that includes study guides and trivia and summaries and all sorts of other info in a matter-of-fact all text format.  Their list of Shakespeare films is way out of date (it ends with the  Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet from 2000) but the rest of the material is still relevant.
Mr. Shakespeare and the Internet is a livelier looking site that has two goals--to be an annotated guide to scholarly Shakespeare resources; and to provide material not available anywhere else (like a timeline). They also have a store that will link you to DVDs of great Shakespeare plays (including a recording a performance of Macbeth by Patrick Stewart).

Adventures in Shakespeare--Ian McKellen's Acting Shakespeare

Years ago, Ian McKelen brought his one-man show Acting Shakespeare to Los Angeles, where it played to SRO crowds. It was a thrilling night of theater but I only really remember two things about it. The play contains a setpiece in which McKellen explicated the "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" speech from Macbeth, and then acted it out, turning around and around so that with each new line his face grew more and more evil. The physical transformation, which we watched step by step, was astonishing. He ended up with an almost Kabuki mask face.
The other moment that was memorable came near the end when McKellen invited members of the audience to join him on stage to act with him.  Dozens of drama students came up (and I wanted to go too--just to say I'd done it, but I was too shy).
McKellen huddled with the actors and then began proclaiming a speech from one of the history plays, I think.  And at a word cue--everyone else on stage fell down dead.  It got a huge laugh.
Here's McKellen picking the Macbeth speech apart. It's a mini-marvelous lecture.
There's also clip on YouTube of McKellen performing the speech (from a 1979 Trevor Nunn production of the play that was televised). The picture quality is poor but the sound is still quite rich. Check it out.