The Macbeth Death Clock

I apologize if you're sick of looking at dead stick figures, but I'm having a hard time stopping now. 

You'll note that Macbeth's death procession is a fairly steady one. Unlike Hamlet, where most of the dying is crammed into the last scene, the murder and mayhem in Macbeth is fairly evenly spaced out. Some notes:

  • I've included Macdonald, who doesn't appear in the play at all, but is famous for being the poor sap who Macbeth unseams from the nave to the chops.

  • I've also included the Thane of Cawdor, because he's important to the plot.

  • The precise number of Macduff's children who are slaughtered is not specified, but it's definitely more than one, so I've added a random baby Macduff to make them plural.

  • It's not specified exactly how Lady Macbeth dies. Malcolm says she "by self and violent hands / Took off her life", which I've interpreted to mean "she stabs herself", because I'm getting really good at drawing stick figures stabbing themselves.

If you want to see how I drew this death clock, check out the latest edition of my e-mail newsletter, and then subscribe, so you never have to miss another sneak peek again!

A Good Tickle Shoppe note: I will be at the Ohio Light Opera for part of this week. All orders placed between August 5-8 will be fulfilled next Monday. Sorry for the slight delay!

The Hamlet Death Clock

I don't want to flog a dead (ha ha) horse, but you sick, sick people seemed to really enjoy my Titus Andronicus Death Clock from Tuesday, so I thought I'd try putting together another one. Here's a deathographic for Shakespeare's most famous play:

20150730-S-HamletDeathClock.jpg

I hate to say it... but in this particular sphere, at least, Hamlet really pales in comparison to Titus Andronicus. Look at that big empty bit with absolutely no deaths! Lazy, that's what I call it. 

Shameless Plug: Don’t forget to check out my t-shirts and comics in the Good Tickle Brain Shoppe!

The Titus Andronicus Death Clock

Have you ever said to yourself, "Wow, I really wish there was a handy way to keep track of all the deaths in Titus Andronicus"? Well, are you ever in luck! I am here unveiling the first ever Good Tickle Brain deathographic! (It's like an infographic, but with more death.)

Starting with Alarbus and proceeding clockwise, this chart gives you a chronological rundown of who gets killed when, and by whom. Print a copy out and bring it along the next time you go to a performance of Titus, to help you keep track of where you are in the play.

Don't forget to check out my goodies in the Good Tickle Brain Shoppe! There's no actual Titus death clock available yet, but you never know...

An Egregiously Brief Overview of Original Pronunciation.

First of all, I apologize for this post being a bit late. I was JUST ABOUT to upload it when the internet at my house cut out. This should not have been a surprise, given all the various technical difficulties in the US yesterday...

Anyways... today's comic deals with one of the more interesting topics in contemporary Shakespeare studies: Original Pronunciation!

O.P. and the amazing ways in which it has been reconstructed deserve a lot more space than six stick-figure comic panels, but hey, barbarically reducing things of great literary and scholarly merit to their bare bones is kind of my "thing". At the very least, now you know that when Hamlet tries to rhyme "move" and "love", it's not actually him pretending to be mad. 

The super-linguist in question is David Crystal, whose praises I've repeatedly sung. In his O.P. endeavors he has been ably assisted by his son, Ben Crystal, an actor who, armed with Shakespeare's O.P., can make the prologue of Romeo and Juliet sound sexier and more piratical than you could have ever imagined. If you don't believe me, just take a listen:

Seriously. That's gorgeous. Here's a longer video, featuring Papa Crystal and Ben at the Globe:

It's easy to get snobbish about Shakespeare and to believe it works only when performed in the elegantly trained received pronunciation of an Ian McKellen or a Benedict Cumberbatch. But, as the Crystals point out, received pronunciation is even further away from Shakespeare's original accent than American accents are from it. 

Shakespeare can be performed in any accent. English, Welsh, Scottish, American, Canadian, Singaporean, I don't care. His words still have immense power. However, when you hear it spoken in O.P., you really get a sense of what it must have been like for those first groundlings at the first Globe Theatre.

If Shakespeare had written... Jurassic World

If you haven't seen Jurassic World, this comic probably won't make a lot of sense. Sorry.

If you have seen Jurassic World, this comic probably still won't make a lot of sense. Sorry.

SPOILERS. 

While there are many things wrong with Jurassic World, I think Indominus Rex's story is positively Shakespearean. Held captive for her entire life, murders her sister, escapes and attempts to seize control of island, convinces those dedicated to hunting her down to join forces with her against a common enemy, ultimately betrayed by those she trusts and dragged to a watery doom...

Jurassic World - the dinosaur's version of a Shakespearean history play.