Richard II: Dramatis Personae

Richard II
Dramatis Personae | Part 1  | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

Richard II in one sentence: A king called Richard II makes everyone angry when he starts raising taxes and seizing other people's lands, so they depose him and put his cousin Henry on the throne instead. 

The challenge: to present Shakespeare's history plays in a way that makes them comprehensible to those who, unlike myself, haven't spent the last ten years memorizing Plantagenet family trees for fun, but have instead been productive and useful members of society. It's not easy, but hopefully this makes Richard II slightly more accessible. 

...oh who am I kidding? It's still totally incomprehensible, isn't it? Stick with me! It's a fantastic play, and I promise you it's worth it! Look for more Richard II cartoons in the near future, partly because it is rapidly becoming one of my favorite plays, and partly because cinemas around the world are still intermittently screening the RSC's recent production of Richard II, starring David Tennant, and you should go see it.

Richard II
Dramatis Personae | Part 1  | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

Eminently Quotable Edgar

A friend of mine was just cast as Edgar in a local production of King Lear, a prospect I find both exciting (because Edgar is an awesome role) and alarming (because, if you're Edgar, you have to spent most of the evening capering about half-naked and covered in mud, muttering some of the most ludicrous gibberish). So... good luck with that, buddy! 

Shakespearean Selfies, part 1

Oh, if only they had had Instagram back in Shakespeare's day.  

Hamlet: Dramatis Personae

I put this together ahead of a planned project to render the entirety of Hamlet  (or at least an extremely distilled entirety) in stick-figure form. It's a handy-dandy reference guide to all the characters in Hamlet , including the ones nobody remembers. Nobody ever remembers Voltemand and Cornelius. Cornelius doesn't even have a line of his own - he just says "In that and all things will we show our duty" along with Voletmand. Voltemand has all the longer solo bits about Norway. Poor Cornelius.

Lobster Shakespeare, part 1

This is labeled "part 1" because I cannot help but think that there will be a sequel at some point in time. Sometimes I worry about me.

Shakespeare's Spooks

Poor old Banquo. He gets killed, comes back as a ghost, and doesn't even get to say anything spectral. He just sits there at the table, shaking his gory locks. (Pardon the pun - I could never resist a bad pun.)

Anyways, happy Halloween! Curl up on the couch with a bowl of candy and watch some Macbeth. 

Jon Finch's Macbeth

Ian McKellen's Macbeth

Patrick Stewart's Macbeth

Not Quite Normal

I saw the National Theater not-quite-Live broadcast of Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth  last night, and realized that, for some unfathomable reason, when I think "three witches in Macbeth", the first line that pops into my head isn't any of the good ones that rhyme or sound awesomely spooky; it's this stupid line in 1.3 where the first witch is telling the others how she tried to bum some chestnuts of some woman, who told her to get lost. My only explanation is that I must have really liked the sound of the word "aroint" when I first heard it, and it stuck in my brain. Try it! Arooooooint aroint aroint aroint aroint.

Anyways, I enjoyed Branagh's Macbeth  a lot, even though they cut the whole "aroint" bit. The staging (basically involving people churning through a long pit of mud running down the nave of a deconsecrated church) was really fun to watch, and the performances of Branagh and Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth, while not as bone-chilling as those of other filmed Macbeths, were very engaging in their vulnerability and brittleness.

Happy St. Crispin's Day!

It's October 25th, which means it's the feast day of Saints Crispin and Cripsian, and, more importantly, the 598th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, the thrilling set-piece around which Shakespeare's Henry V  is constructed. Of course, today St. Crispin's Day is mostly remembered for the famous speech Shakespeare gives Henry in order to inspire his bedraggled troops before the great battle begins. It goes something like this:

For some proper Crispin's Day speeches, check out the following: 

Laurence Olivier (Film, 1944)

Richard Burton (1951)

Mark Rylance (Globe Theater, 1997)

Jamie Parker (Globe Theater, 2012)

Kenneth Branagh (Film, 1989)

Hm. Can't seem to find a clip of Tom Hiddleston's version from the recent Hollow Crown  series. If anyone finds it, drop me a comment and I'll put it up. 

 Edit:  Some Hiddleston, courtesy of vigilant readers! Not the complete speech, sadly, but better than nothing!

Tom Hiddlestone (The Hollow Crown, 2012)