Hamlet Act II

Act II is a lighter part of Hamlet. More jokes, fewer ghosts. We find out a lot about our characters.

Anne Barton, a Shakespeare critic, recently died, if you want to find some of her writing, try out her page on the New York Review of Books, she's pretty good!

Thanks to everyone out there for all your support, next up is Act III! (Unless someone suggests something else good.)

PS.
Just updated the feed. Anyone having issues with downloading the podcast, please try again. Only the latest episode is on the new service, but we will be adding the backlog as space becomes available. Sorry about the difficulties.

Interview: Much Ado About Nothing

We're happy to reveal our secret project: an interview of the Six Elements Theater Company! They're putting on Much Ado About Nothing soon, and we were very fortunate to be able to interview them about it.

Our next episode is Hamlet: Act II.

Information regarding the production
Ticket Info
http://www.tediousbrief.com/
http://www.sixelementscompany.org/

Hamlet Act I

We're doing Hamlet in a series of five Acts. I think it's a way that we can look at the development of the story and characters as we go through it. Here's Act I.

Warning, if you haven't seen Hamlet, or know the story, I'd strongly advise seeing it before doing literally anything else. That may not be too practical because there aren't a lot of theaters performing it at any given time, but it's still nice to dream that someone could see it completely fresh, even today.

We're hoping to have our next episode be a very special edition. I'm keeping it a secret right now, but we're very excited!

BardCast BookClub

Our new episode is about some Shakespeare books.


Kill All the Lawyers?: Shakespeare's Legal Appeal Narrow interest matter, but well written and some interesting sections

 Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human Full of opinions, some of them insightful, some of them outrageously unfounded. The book never actually explains what the "invention of the human" is, or how it happened.

 Shakespeare in Kabul A very good book about a story in Afghanistan that isn't about terror or war. Lots of good details about what went into this very unusual production of Love's Labours Lost.

 How Shakespeare Changed Everything Mostly wrong, occasionally interesting. Should have been titled What's the Minimum Word Count for a Book? or All this Shakespeare Research Must Be Worth Something!

Our next scheduled episode will be about Hamlet, but we may have a surprise episode before then!

The Taming of the Shrew

iTunes link doesn't seem to be working at the moment, but the episode is still available through this link. (Is there anyone out there who runs a server that could host these episodes? Our current solution may not be working.)

I think that Taming of the Shrew is changed by our modern perception of gender more than any other Shakespeare play.  When Petruchio says that his wife is his property, that seems shocking to us, but was a defensible position at the time.

We came down pretty hard against Taming on its anti-feminst position. We admit that you can play it in another way, but the text doesn't provide for a sarcastic interpretation.

Like I said in the episode, if you or someone you know needs a position filled, I'm available to take on a new job. Just send an email to bardjob at gmail.com

Make sure to vote on Hamlet or Coriolanus!

Shakespeare's Histories

Shakespeare's Histories are an odd category; they don't encompass all of the Shakespearean plays that are from historical events. I prefer to think of them as "Shakespeare's modern history", since they are events whose effects still mattered in Shakespeare's time.

Please Support the SHIELD Act

If you want to hear more of Tom's Shakespeare recordings, here's one to start off with!

Measure for Measure

Sorry about the delay everyone. We both have part time jobs that make it difficult to find a time to work together, and we had to scrap an episode that didn't work, and we got discouraged about the whole process, but here's a new episode!

Measure for Measure is about justice, and how law and justice can be opposed. Particularly, it's about how laws about sexual conduct aren't followed, so this one isn't for kids.