Verily, thus Shakespeare tweeted

Shakespeare characters tweet, verily they do!

Shakespeare puts out a new play

Shakespeare may have written an heretofore unknown work, with a dubious and complicated past. Torrid! Shocking! So Shakespearean!

Unearthing more of Shakespeare's world

Digging up Shakespeare's lawn was not enough, reader types! Archaeologists have excavated both the Rose and the Globe, and have found...things. Like food remains: oysters, crabs, mussels, periwinkles, cockles, Walnuts, hazelnuts, plums, cherries, peaches, dried raisins and figs. But class ruled all:

The distribution of food remains over the site suggested that there was a class divide in the consumption of snacks. [Julian] Bowsher explained that remains found underneath the gallery seating suggested that the wealthier classes munched on crabs and sturgeon, as well as imported treats like peaches and dried figs. Meanwhile, oyster shells were found scattered all over the yard area, where commoners stood.

"At that time, oysters were indeed the staple diet of the poor," Bowsher said.

There was also a lot of pipe smoking, proving that the Globe and the Rose were mostly in use before the smoking ban in New York. Or they weren't in New York. Science!

Dude looks like a lady?

Everyone has a Shakespeare theory, and the new one is that he was really the bastard Jewish daughter of an Italian court musician, Amelia Bassano Lanier. This is meant to explain Shakespeare's musical references, his knowledge of court, his hints of Hebrew and his references to Mediterranean locales. However:

“John's evidence is entirely circumstantial, or depends on quasi-allegorical readings of the texts,” says Kate McLuskie, director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. “It is elegant and ingenious, but has no documentary foundation – a beautiful story that is not less beautiful for being entirely false.”

The article also contains a list of Shakespeare contenders (besides, you know...Shakespeare).

Pride and Prejudice and spin-offs

Kate Ward is mad, because there are too many Pride and Prejudice spin-offs, and a lot of them suck. But, to quote Joel McHale, "Our mantra is that 90 percent of all television is bad, and ten percent has never been better. We make fun of that 90 percent." Books are mostly the same: 90 percent crap, 10 percent worth my time (which means every year 30,000 books or so worth reading come out, which clearly is 29,950 more than I can aspire to read).

So maybe we should ban spin-offs. But then we wouldn't have Gregory Maguire's Wicked (book or musical!), or "Clueless," or "Bride and Prejudice," which may be the single most watched movie by me. Hell, even Shakespeare borrowed plots. And, as we saw in the previous post,Shakespeare is the golden standard for modern action.

Drawing from a classic

PW has a great article about adapting graphic novels from classics. Although the earliest adaptations were in the 1940s, they have seriously picked up steam, with traditional comic book publishers, trade publishers, and academic publishers jumping on the bandwagon.

But, as the author Ada Price writes:

But some of the biggest problems in adapting Shakespeare, as well as other classics, remain the abridgment of the text and the work's original language, which can be difficult and off-putting for modern readers.

And while editor Thomas LeBien says, "The graphic novel doesn't cannibalize sales of the original. They re-energize the originals," do we agree? Does this add to people reading classics? I liken this to the Twilight/Wuthering Heights phenomenon, in which Twilight boosted Wuthering Heights' sales. It might just make people ask if the classic is "in old english or mordern understandable english."

Santa and Shakespeare: Friends of yore

McSweeney's has a series of letters to Santa written by Shakespearean characters (which is such a McSweeney's thing to do, but I digress). Although a friend of mine says that, like most things at McSweeney's, the title is better than the content, I did like this letter from Macbeth:

Hail, Santa, King of the Elves!

Many thanks for the male-enhancement products you brought me last year. But as my wife has since forsworn me, I will not be needing them again. Hence, I devote this year's list to her Christmas wishes. She demands the following items:

— A gift certificate for LATTICE eyelash treatment

— A Wonderbra (size: 36D; color: Midnight Animal)

— Arctic-raised Reindeer Pâté

— "Buns of Steel" DVD

— Dolce & Gabbana Bling Sunglasses

— One ticket to Barack Obama's 2010 New Year's Day Brunch [or another exclusive political event]

Santa, may I be frank? My Lady says that if she does not receive all of these anon, she will fly into a murderous rage. Just thought you should know.

— Macbeth

P.S. If you find a posset of cocoa labeled "For Santa," do not drink it.

HA. Click on through for the rest.

Digging up Shakespeare's trash

Archaeologists are digging up Shakespeare's lawn, in the hopes of finding his shit. His literal shit. Ahem:

Richard Kemp, of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said: “We are hoping to find organic debris that will teach us what the great man had for dinner. Our dream find would be the first draft of The Tempest, which we know Shakespeare did write here.”

I don't know if Shakespeare would approve, but, hey, he's dead. Any bets on what they find? Slash what he might have had for dinner?