What 'Tis To Love (Valentine's Day Special)

I was debating how to celebrate Valentine's Day on this blog, given that it is, as we know it today anyways, a crassly commercial holiday that potentially generates a huge amount of emotional baggage. However, love is, by most accounts, a wonderful thing, and below is a video clip compilation of one of my favorite bits of love-related Shakespeare from As You Like It.

Some background first... If you've never seen As You Like It, this is what you need to know to understand this scene:

Got all that? Good. Here's a compilation of various video productions of As You Like It, specifically the last bit of Act 5, Scene 2.

0:00 - As You Like it, 1936, Elisabeth Bergner, Laurence Olivier, Richard Ainley, Joan White
2:33 - BBC Shakespeare, 1978, Helen Mirren, Brian Stirner, Maynard Williams, Victoria Puncknett
4:56 - As You Like It, 2006, Bryce Dallas Howard, David Oyelowo, Alex Wyndham, Jade Jefferies
7:02 - Shakespeare's Globe, 2009, Naomi Frederick, Jack Laskey, Michael Benz, Jade Williams

That's love, I suppose: confused, mistaken, heartfelt, frustrated, chaotic, poetical, unrequited, and totally deluded. 

Anyways... Happy Valentine's Day! I'll be back on Monday with some more Three-Panel Plays for you.

 

NOTE: One of the clips is owned by the BBC, and thus the video may be blocked in some countries. I will eventually figure out which one it is (presumably the BBC Shakespeare clip) and try to put up a video without it.

Three-Panel Plays, part 5

I continue our lightning-fast journey through the history plays in today's installment of Three-Panel Plays!

That's Justice Shallow and Mistress Quickly, partying with Falstaff in the first panel. "Falstaff parties" is a recurring motif in these plays.

The trouble with drawing stick-figure archers is that you have to be very clear which sticks are the arms, as opposed to the arrow sticks and the bowstring sticks. If you get them mixed up, nobody will know what is going on. Ah, the subtleties of my "craft"...

Next up, we delve into the Henry VI plays! Yes, it's Wars of the Roses time! 

See all Three-Panel Plays here!

Three-Panel Plays, part 4

I take my scissors to the most famous Shakespeare play of all in this installment of Three-Panel Plays!

I mean, that's basically it, right? Did I leave out anything important?

NOTE: I have received several concerned e-mails from eagle-eyed readers about this panel, and yes, "revenge" is a verb as well as a noun. As Shakespeare himself wrote: "If thou didst ever thy dear father love, revenge his foul and most unnatural murder."

However, that does not excuse my writing "Halmet" instead of "Hamlet" in one of the panels. Thanks to Mary FT for catching that!

The sequel to Richard II. I am itching to complete the octalogy of history plays, but it's going to take me a while. There are just so many of them. 

See all Three-Panel Plays here!

Three-Panel Plays, part 3

It's time for some more "editing with extreme prejudice" in the third installment of my Three-Panel Plays series! 

Oh no, it's Coriolanus again. I'm pretty sure we're all very familiar with Coriolanus now, thank you very much. 

20140207-S-Cymbeline3Panels.jpg

Cymbeline is such a busy play that I had to chop out 90% of it to make it fit in three panels. I'm now itching to do a full-length guide to Cymbeline, because it's an adorable play that deserves more than three panels and I love it. 

Stop by on Monday to see how I handle Hamlet and Henry IV, part 1 ! 

See all Three-Panel Plays here!

Three-Panel Plays, part 2

The second installment of my Three-Panel-Play series mercilessly abbreviates two comedies.

As You Like It is deceptively hard to capture in only three panels. I apologize for my ludicrous hatchet job. I also apologize for leaving Sylvius and Phebe out of the last panel: there was only space for three happy couples, and even then they had to squish together.

Really, I could probably boil down all the Shakespearean comedies to "_______ and hijinks ensue". That covers most of them, don't you think?

Coming up on Friday: Coriolanus (again!) and Cymbeline. I'm already having palpitations about how I'm going to manage to distill Cymbeline into three panels...

See all Three-Panel Plays here!

Three-Panel Plays, part 1

In the four months that I've been working on this website, I have managed to complete two comprehensive, scene-by-scene guides to Shakespeare plays (Richard II and Coriolanus). At this rate, it is going to take me several years to finish the entire canon. For those of you who are too impatient to wait that long, I present to you the first installment of my much-more-abbreviated Three-Panel Play series. 

We will be doing this alphabetically. 

All's Well That Ends Well is generally categorized as a "problem play", mostly because nobody can quite figure out how to handle the ending. Technically it's a comedy because HA HA.

OH NO, SPOILERS! Oh, come on. Everyone knows how Antony and Cleopatra ends. 

I'll be back on Wednesday with As You Like It and A Comedy of Errors. 

See all Three-Panel Plays here!

Coriolanus: One Page Summary

Coriolanus

Dramatis Personae | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Death & Marriage | One Page Summary

Before we leave Coriolanus behind, here's a quick one-page summary of the entire play, for those of you who haven't been paying attention:

And that's a wrap for Coriolanus! Fear not - I am sure he will reappear in various other cartoons. 

Having run the marathon that was Coriolanus in an attempt to get through the entire play in time for the National Theatre live broadcast, I will now be returning to my more sedate Monday-Wednesday-Friday update schedule. Content will still be mostly Shakespeare-related, with the occasional non-Shakespeare one thrown in for variety's sake. 

As for the next Shakespeare play to get the full Tickle Brain treatment? Well, one of my friends just finished his run as Edgar in a local production of King Lear... and the National Theatre's current production of King Lear will be broadcast live in May... and I will be going to see the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's production of King Lear in August... so I think the universe is trying to tell me something.

Gong Xi Fa Cai! 

Coriolanus

Dramatis Personae | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Death & Marriage | One Page Summary

Coriolanus: Death and Marriage Totals

Coriolanus

Dramatis Personae | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Death & Marriage

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a Shakespeare play ends with a lot of dead people, it's a tragedy, and if it ends with a lot of marriages, it's comedy. Let's see how Coriolanus measures up:

For a play that starts out so bloody, it's kind of surprising what a low death toll there actually is in the end. Aufidius doesn't massacre Volumnia and throw Young Martius from the walls of Rome, Virgilia doesn't eat hot coals, Menenius doesn't impale himself on a sword. It's relatively demure. In fact, the only other tragedy I can think of with such a low body count is Timon of Athens. 

Tune in again tomorrow, where I will be presenting a one-page summary of the entire play. 

Coriolanus

Dramatis Personae | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Death & Marriage