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  Their list of Shakespeare films is way out of date (it ends with the  Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet from 2000) but the rest of the material is still relevant.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.

Coming This Friday--Special Nora Ephron edition of FFF

Nora Ephron
1941-2012

Because you know someone who's had breast cancer

Breast cancer pretty much decimated the women of my mother's and grandmother's generation. It got my beloved Great-Aunt Helen (and a cleaner-living, more God-fearing, gentle woman you would never meet) and it also claimed my Great-Aunt Marie, who was a newspaperwoman in Chicago and during the war captured a spy!!
My Aunt Mabel died of breast cancer. An aunt on my father's side died of it too.
Two friends, one of them a very close friend, have had bushes with the disease and are now cancer-free.
But it's a sneaky disease. And 1 in 8 women are expected to develop it. (Here are some statistics.)
A charity anthology of seasonal essays: Write for the Fight, is now out and the proceeds are earmarked for breast cancer research. Right now it's free, though, so help spread the word.

Alias Shakespeare

Most survey courses in Shakespeare don't really get into the question of whether "Shakespeare" was actually someone else, but I had a college professor who was sort of fascinated by the topic, so he added in writings by all the top contenders--Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon. For me, it doesn't really matter. It's like the debate over who "Jack the Ripper" might have been. The plays exist; they're wonderful, and whoever wrote them chose to use the name Shakespeare.
Wikipedia has a great synopsis of the whole authorship question here.
You probably missed it, but last year director Roland Emmerich's movie Anonymous weighed in on the question,  making the claim that Edward De Vere (the Earl of Oxford) was the author. Rhys Ifans played the Earl with Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth I.

A different kind of Zombie Novel

I am a fan of Rachel Caine's weather Warden novels and did not know about this book in advance. (And there's already a sequel to Working Stiff, due in early August.) So another for the TBR pile.

Pulp Ink 2 is coming!

So Pulp Ink is free!  Get it here. Like it! Review it! Spread the word. And then get ready for a second helping of inky pulpy goodness. And while you're on Amazon getting your free copy of Pulp Ink, why not pick up a free copy of Nigel Bird's third collection of short stories, With Love and Squalor.