Dante, ASL, and Rugby
Plus: L. Frank Baum gets bamboozled
This newsletter has footnotes.1 If you click on the email headline or visit shakespearenews.com the footnotes will appear when you hover over them. I use open access and gift links whenever possible but you may encounter paywalls. If you do, make like Romeo and o’erperch them or check the archive.
Quick Links
The shortlist for the Society for Theatre Research Theatre Book Prize is full of Shakespeare.
The president railed against “lesbian-only Shakespeare” this week and no one knows what he’s talking about.2
The RSC’s Iranian Macbeth video game.
Lili focuses on the story of Lady Macbeth, here cast as the ambitious wife of an upwardly mobile officer in the Basij (a paramilitary volunteer militia within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Iran)…The player is cast as a member of the Hecate Web, a group of hackers who stand in for Macbeth’s witches, and you begin by accessing Lili’s phone and computer, watching her on CCTV cameras inside her home.
“While Conlon’s predilection for antiquity leads him to some indefensible views—he once told a reporter from the Financial Times, ‘The jury is out over whether Shakespeare is important’—I have never seen anyone work magic like his in a language classroom.”
It was the summer of 1980—the first season for American Players Theatre in rural Spring Green, Wisconsin. The company was performing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on the hilltop stage. William Borth, who hated Shakespeare, had been dragged to the show kicking and complaining. It had rained all day, but stopped before showtime. As Puck made his entrance, a mist rolled over the stage until the fairies were “knee-deep in a swirling, firefly-lit fog,” Borth remembers. His partner Bob Kuehlhorn whispered, “Special effects by God.”
Also:
Heat can be another problem…Mark Corkins, who played Kent, had to sit with his legs in stocks directly in the sun for about thirty minutes, wearing a leather cap. His face started turning purple…Arnold wanted to bring Corkins water, but it would have been out of character for the spiteful Regan to show Kent mercy. A solution was improvised—a goblet was borrowed from a production of “Much Ado About Nothing.” It was filled with water, and the Fool gave it to suffering Kent.
We Are Gathered at Arena Stage.
The Bard’s marriage comedies, including “As You Like It” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” have been frequent touchstones for the team.
When a Guardian article results in both a “thrill” and a play.
Did Shakespeare steal from Dante? (really Florio, but who’s counting?)
“I nearly screamed when I discovered the book, but couldn’t because I was sitting in the British Library”
A collection of very pretty dresses.
One of the most awesome rugby players is named after one of Shakespeare’s most boring heroines.
A deep dive on the sets for Antony and Cleopatra at the Met Opera.
Before L. Frank Baum was the celebrated author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he was a gullible aspiring Shakespearean.
…the manager of a Shakespearean troupe claimed to see promise in this well-dressed and very young man, and accepted him into the company provided he "would equip himself with a complete set of costumes for all the starring roles he might be called upon to take." Frank agreed and the manager drew up a long list…Frank ordered several thousand dollars' worth of the finest velvet and silk garments, trimmed with lace and gold fringe, from a noted New York theatrical costumer…
The manager welcomed him warmly and told him to report to the theater an hour before curtain time. An actor appeared in Frank's dressing room, casually announced that he was to play Romeo and his doublet was torn, and asked whether he could borrow one from Frank. By curtain time almost every man in the cast had had a similar emergency and borrowed an item from Frank. Within a few days, all of his costumes and wigs had been borrowed, and none returned. He was given only a few walk-on roles, and after a few weeks he returned home with empty trunks.
The cover of the current NY Review of Books is an edited image of a 19th Hamlet.
Philip James de Loutherbourg designed beautiful 18th c. Shakespeare sets for noted Shakespeare fanboy David Garrick.5
I have exactly zero objection to Shakespeare at train stations but this three-sentence summary of Midsummer is bad and wrong.6 (Improvements welcome!)
Recommendations
Jason Robert Brown on Charles Strouse and Star Wars the Musical.
“In hindsight, yes, the walls of the whale tank should have been thicker.” (h/t to Res Obscura)
Like this one.
& Juliet maybe? Dunno.
Please send me your best Freud-and-Shakespeare jokes. (I tried multiple versions of “when is a [Shakespearean word that sounds like ‘cigar’] not a [Shakespearean word that sounds like ‘cigar’] and ‘Cydnus’ is Not It.)
It does look cool:
de Loutherbourg also created one of the oldest surviving set models.
“Four Athenians run away to the forest only to have Puck the fairy make both of the boys fall in love with same girl. The four run through the forest pursuing each other while Puck helps his master play a trick on the fairy queen. In the end, Puck reverses the magic, and the two couples reconcile and marry.”
And here I was thinking it was only for fish.
"Sometimes, Anna, a bare bodkin is just a bare bodkin."
I don't know what lesbian-only Shakespeare is either, but I'm all for it