TS Eliot does not like Hamlet

Thomas Stearns Eliot is famous for his poetry. “The Waste Land.” “The Hollow Men.” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” All classics. Less known to most (save for English majors and their ilk) is that he was also a literary critic. Not a “thumbs-up/thumbs-down’ kind of reviewer, but one who delved deeply into the concept of criticism, laying the foundation for the creation of a new brand called “new criticism.”

What does any of this have to do with Hamlet or Hamlet?

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Titus AND Dronicus, get it?

quick break from Hamlet:

this looks fun…

Titus and Dronicus…

love a good parody of the whole buddy cop/crime-solving duo thing… I actually chuckled aloud a couple of times (rather than just smiling amusedly)…

back to Hamlet

The Bill / Shakespeare Project presents: This Week in Shakespeare news, for the week ending Monday, May 11th, 2015

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This week’s Shakespeare news review includes J. Caesar, Ugly Shakespeare Company, a bawdy French song in Love’s Labor’s Lost, plus Helen Mirren, Lily Rabe and Matt LeBlanc(?). PLUS our usual recap of this week’s daily highlights in Shakespearean history.

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Gertrude’s Guilt

In Hamlet, Claudius is one bad, bad man (there may be some doubt through the first half of the play, but with his confessional soliloquy in Act Three, Scene Three, that doubt is removed). But what about Gertrude?

Is Gertrude guilty? And if so, of what crime?

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Podcast 101: Hamlet and sucking the fun out of Bawdy

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[EXPLICIT CONTENT AHEAD… This podcast contains adult language and adolescent humor … yeah, this podcast has some rough language ahead, and it’s a long one (that’s what she said–cue rimshot)]

This week’s podcast continues our three month-long discussion of Hamlet with a long stretch of bawdy, and a little discussion about text (not sex, but text).

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Hamlet: parallels, right angles, and a glimpse into the future?

Some random thoughts of character parallels and the seeming quantum situations of being both parallel and at odds in Hamlet

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Hamlet: Return to the Nunnery

Before we leave the “nunnery scene”–as the Hamlet/Ophelia conversation that occurs after the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Act Three, Scene One of Hamlet is often called–I want to dive into something of interest:

Pronouns.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: “Bill, you said this would be interesting… pronouns? Really?”

Yes, gentle reader, I am totally serious. You should listen up; thou might learn something.

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News Flash: Shakespeare’s Bawdy. (No kidding.)

We interrupt our usually scheduled entry on Hamlet for this breaking news:

Shakespeare has some bawdy stuff in it… and more than we realized just a few months ago.

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The Bill / Shakespeare Project presents: This Week in Shakespeare news, for the week ending Monday, May 4th, 2015

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This week’s Shakespeare news review includes a Artistic Director for Shakespeare’s Globe, Derek Jacobi as Mercutio, Wittenberg the play, and Elsinore the video game. PLUS our usual recap of this week’s daily highlights in Shakespearean history.

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