Michael Caine, August Wilson, and Oscar Isaac

Plus: Something Rockin’ in Denmark

No newsletter next week, but two editions this week on Tuesday and Thursday.

This newsletter has footnotes.¹ If you prefer not to scroll down, click on the email headline to read in-browser and they will appear when you click on them. I use open access and gift links whenever possible, however you may still encounter paywalls. There are options. If you enjoy this newsletter, please share it and consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

---

Quick Links

• Book roundup: The first two Arden Fourths + Thinking Through Shakespeare.

• The apocalyptic £100 million Henry V film starring Michael Caine that never was.

• Rockabye Hamlet (1976) was originally called Something Rockin’ in Denmark. (Also, Kronborg: 1582.)

• “ART ‘used to do 25-person Shakespeares’” or “Wither the Ensemble?”

• The new Hudson Valley Shakespeare theater is exceptionally beautiful.

• Throne of Blood is Oscar Isaac’s favorite Shakespeare on film.

• Reddit roundup: NAATCO’s Henry VI with muppets and Shakespeare temperature blanket advice.

• Much Ado tickets are on sale and the warnings sound like a party.

• “Come here Jonson you fu–” via many wonderful humans who thought, “Kate will like this.” (I do.)

• Austin Tichenor on Solo Shakes.

• I don’t understand what this means but it sounds cool and the Swaders make pretty things.

  

• Taraji P. Henson on August Wilson: (archive)

  …it has a certain vernacular that you can’t switch out. The way his words are flowing is melodic — it’s almost like Shakespeare. You got to settle down and listen for a minute.

• Why I love Shakespeare. Why I love theatre. via Fergus Morgan.

  Carrick’s imaginative interpretations did not hinder the text, they illuminated it…I remember the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as Jimmy Grimes’ Romeo hurled out the line, “Then I defy you, stars!” to the darkening Suffolk sky….I have seen and reviewed a lot (a lot!) of theatre over the last fifteen years, from the Edinburgh Fringe to the West End to Broadway, but I can trace the qualities I value most in shows back to those productions directed by Carrick in Rendlesham Forest

• Dr Callan Davies on Shakespeare’s weather and recreating a “Shakespearean” chamber for Middling Culture.

• Shakespeare-as-UK-tax-incentive could save you a-lot of money.² (archive)

  Gunton notes that even relatively loose ties to Britain can help accumulate points, such as a project being based on the works of Shakespeare or in the English language. “So even if it’s … an American version of ‘Hamlet,’ entirely theoretical, it’s set in America but we’ve got all the VFX done in the UK, postproduction done in the UK, a British director, a British lead actor and a British composer, suddenly we’ve qualified that production,” Gunton explains.

• “This island’s mine” vs. “Blackstone [1765] goes on to explain that monsters “hath no inheritable blood, and cannot be heir to any land…”

• Chicago Shakespeare will do Midsummer and Winter’s Tale in rep.

• Marin Shakespeare is looking for a muralist to create a “Forward-thinking and Modern: NOT Elizabethan” design for their new theater.

• Someone is going to do this to Shakespeare in 3…2…³

• R&J, the Danish musical.

• Richard II: King, Culture and the Court of Venus via Just History Posts.

• “Can there be murder more foul, strange and unnatural than the murder of one’s own spouse?” Yes. One’s own brother.

• Emma Smith and Kavita Mudan Finn on Henry VI, Part II.

• “With my own tears/hands/tongue/breath” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

• Liberation posted the “moment towards the end of the play that is everything Hamlet seeing the ghost should be…”

Recommendations

• Implosion carving.

• The Silvesterchlausen.

• Phyllis Diller’s joke file.

• Sled dog puppy cam via James Pitt.⁴

• Fans of The Met. & National Park Posters.

• Film more theater. (All the cool kids are doing it and it works.)

• “I have had six shows on Broadway…I were reliant on theatre royalties, I would be broke.”

• “The commercial cultural economy isn’t bigger because more people show up. It’s bigger because each attendance gets monetized at a very different scale.”

  © 2026 Kate Pitt. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.

1. Like this one.

2. So can reusing meats, but taxes are more fun.

3. Why read AI Shakespeare when you could read William Henry Ireland instead? The quality will be roughly the same.

4. Did you know that you can actually hear your blood pressure going down?