I came across a review of a show that was very intriguing to me. It’s called Choose Your Own Shakespeare.

Did you ever read those action series novels Choose Your Own Adventure when you were younger? Or maybe you still do. It’s sort of like that. The actors have many scenes and monologues in memory and ask the audience which way they want the story to go. It sounds really really cool.

The reviewer here, however, thought that the performance was lacking. Not energy or talent from the cast but in the structure of the show. He complains that much of the show seemed to be pre-planned already and that certain scenes and soliloquies came out of nowhere. Either way I’d really like to see something like this.

I think it’s a really good idea. Shakespeare wrote so much, scenes to cover the entire scope of multiple stories of people’s lives. Shakespeare’s writing can inform against all occasions. There are dozens of parallels between his plays and it wouldn’t necessarily be too difficult to pick multiple ways to transition to a scene in another play, if you have a very clever team putting together the show.

Productions such as this one can really point out the universality of Shakespeare’s works. How enormous the breadth of his canon is and how wide is his influence and even the versatility of his words. It’s awesome. Not awesome like a well played baseball game — full of awe. AWEsome.

Happy July everyone! The days are getting hotter for me and places with air conditioning are very appealing. So is staying inside and reading, but I’m much too busy for that. I’ve noticed that I haven’t been setting enough time aside to post here as often as I’d like so I’ll try to be more diligent about that and keep you entertained at least every couple days. In this fourth edition of the Blog Carnival there are a few posts that I will be sharing with you that will hopefully educate or entertain you in some fashion. So here it is!

nandita shares the post, Justice, Scalia and The Merchant of Venice. It’s a law blog (say that 5 times fast) but it ties it in to certain legal actions taken in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Think about the questions it raises. Discussion welcome in the comments.

Hannah discusses some interesting casting decisions in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in her blog post, When I a Fat and Bean-Fed Horse Beguile.

Did Shakespeare’s plays originally use horses on stage? Craig Bryant explores the possibility in “A horse! A horse! My kingdom…”. Who knows for sure? It may have been a big crowd pleaser to ride through the groundlings…

Duane Morin wonders What Exactly Is A Collier?. This simple question sparks an interesting discussion on Shakespeare bawdy wordplay and intentions.

That concludes this edition. Stay tuned for more Bardy Bawdy fun here and elsewhere in the ShakesBlogosphere. And now Feste the clown will wrap it up with a [slightly edited] song…
A great while ago this post began
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one — the carnival’s done;
And we’ll strive to please you every day.

Happy June, everyone! The month of May brought in quite a few interesting posts from around the ShakesBlogosphere. Not many of them were on this blog; a lack of internet prevented me from posting too often (that horribly problem has been corrected, thank goodness). And there are lots of posts elsewhere that were not submitted to me, so feel free to follow links everywhere you find something Shakespeare related. And without further ado about nothing… the blog carnival begins!

In the post, SHAKESPEARE IS IN DA HOUSE! about Martin Baum’s book, To Be or Not to Be, Innit, A Yoof-Speak Guide to Shakespeare, Naomi shares her thoughts about this satirical “translation” of some of Shakespeare’s plays into modern slang.

Craig Bryant shows us that something wicked this way comes in the post By the pricking of my thumbs… His blog is mainly about Thomas Middleton, but Middleton happened to edit Macbeth so, as he said, that makes this post “fair game” for this carnival.

Duane “Shakespeare Geek” Morin presents an interesting bit (and comments) about interpretation of Shakespeare’s text and the different words used in different versions. The post is When I Shall Die? When *I* Shall Die? Duane says, “I liked this post because the conversation made the leap from Shakespeare on film (Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet) to choices in interpreting the text, and even motivated me to go start doing side by side comparisons of the speech in question, Folio v. Quarto. Always good to learn new things!”

Stephen Evans, uthor of the comic novel The Marriage of True Minds, has a short post on Directing Shakespeare. It’s very brief but still gives some good advice. I might expand upon these ideas sometime soon.

That concludes this edition! Remember to submit your blog article to the next edition of shakespeare blog carnival using our carnival submission form. I’d like to include more posts in the future, but I won’t unless you submit them! Speaking of submissions, I’ll be updating the rules slightly of what I will include. I’m changing the rule from “Shakespeare related” to “about Shakespeare.” I don’t want to link to a post that’s about something of a different genre entirely but happens to include a Shakespearean quote that sort of applies, or just a post of some of Shakespeare’s text without any comments. Past posts and the submission guidelines can be found on the blog carnival page. Submit those posts! Let’s have a big one next month.

Technorati tags: shakespeare, blog carnival.

I’m a little late in posting, but it’s been a hectic week for me… I’m moving! My muscles hate me for being such Shakespeare nerd and having all those heavy books. But enough about me!

Let’s see what the month of April brought in the ShakesBlogoSphere! Not a bad turnout this month. I’m posting only things that were submitted, so if you missed it: too bad! There’s always next time!

Ioan Draniciar presents us with a poem entitled Shakespeare Created the World in Seven Days. It made me smile, how about you?

Ashok posted some very interesting reading material: The Coming Age, an essay on Macbeth. He said, “[it's] a reading of Macbeth - if the first part bores you, take a look at parts 3 & 4, which contrast Duncan and his son. The argument I’m advancing attempts to explain who the witches are ultimately, but takes a circuitous route.”

Nigel Beale has shared A Scene by Scene discussion between Prof. Joseph Khoury and Nigel Beale about Hamlet’s first and second acts. Download the mp3, give it a listen when you have the time. It’s 45 minute long so give yourself time to listen and think about it. It’s never bad to hear people’s interpretations. Nigel also plans to host a roundtable discussion on Hamlet next week. Stay tuned!

Craig Bryant introduces his new blog, “Another Shakespeare?” with the post, A beginning is a very delicate time… This blog actually isn’t about Shakespeare at all, rather Thomas Middleton. one of the Bard’s contemporaries and his writing hand plays a large role in the text of Macbeth.

Brent Diggs presents Loves Labor Little - A Tale Perspired By Recent Events, a funny little post. For entertainment purposes only.

Geoffrey posted something that’s hard to ignore: George Bush is Shakespeare. Not literally of course. Don’t blow up, just see for yourself what he has to say.

P.L. Frederick gives us a couple humorous tidbits this month: Shakespeare, Spelling, And 1¢ Gingerbread and The Spoon, Most Noble Of Eating Utensils. I enjoyed them, you might too!

And last, but not least, William S makes us do a little thinking as he talks about “the big book from 1623 that started it all.” The post is Folio? which is, of course, about the First Folio.

That’s all for this month. Be sure to submit the posts you would like to be featured in the next Shakespeare Blog Carnival!

The man himself turns 444 today. Can you imagine that? He’s been around for a long time and is still very much alive in books, theaters, and our hearts. Go Shakey! I lift my glass of juice to 444 more years of fame!

I can’t say that I threw a party today, but just some little things. I could’ve gone out to celebrate if I wasn’t at work but that’s okay. I did write “HAPPY 444th BIRTHDAY SHAKESPEARE” on a very prominent Chalkboard that people use to send messages.

I also was asked to do a review of a book on Shakespeare to post on Dust Jacket Review, an online book community. I chose to do a review of Isaac Asimov’s Guide To Shakespeare, one of my favorite books about Shakespeare. I may transfer the review here at some point, but for now check it out there! And then buy the book because [to sum up my conclusion in the review briefly:] it’s awesome.

Keep celebrating Shakespeare! Don’t drink too much sack. And celebrate St. George’s day, of course. How coincidental that the day of England’s Patron Saint is also Shakespeare’s birthday… and deathday. Very patriotic of old Bill Shakes. So how are you celebrating?

Don’t forget that the next Shakespeare Blog Carnival is coming up! Remember to submit your post.

Come see the monkeys and clowns, ride the rides, and get some cotton candy. April Fools! It’s actually the Shakespeare Blog Carnival making its debut here! Sorry, there are no rides to go on. Now I didn’t get many submissions, but that’s okay. It’s a new thing. In addition to the couple submissions I received I’m also including a few posts that I came across recently that I feel like sharing. For next time: Bloggers - sumbit some posts you wrote! Readers - submit some posts you read! And without further ado about nothing, some links for your edification.

Naomi Stevens submitted COMIC STRIP SHAKESPEARE posted at Diary From England. Makes you think about countless ways we’re trying to expose younger audiences. How much of it is working, I wonder.

Duane “Shakespeare Geek” Morin contributes Why Is Shakespeare So Hard? posted at his blog Shakespeare Geek. I think it’s a great post, and something you should have everyone you know read. Especially people who don’t like Shakespeare “because it’s hard.”

Scott Malia presents Kinder-Bard-en on enotes.com’s very own Shakespeare Blog. Some interesting questions are raised in response to a news article about a youth production of a musical Hamlet. With all the talk of Shakespeare in education, we must take time to ponder [in the words of our current president], “Is our children learning?”

Also at the Shakespeare Blog is a post from Jen, a drama teacher who is doing a bang-up job at getting her kids to enjoy Shakespeare and posts her progress on the blog. I’m featuring her post, Staging Shakespeare: Can pre-teens do Shakespeare? Heck yeah! Strongly recommended for teachers.

And the final post for this edition is from Alan Farrar with his post, Hack adaptor? from his blog Shakespeare Experience. I liked this because he brings up the point that Will Shakespeare may have had inspiration for some of his works from previous plays that he act, in fact, ACTED in. He was an actor after all. I think it’s important to keep that in mind!

That’s all folks! I hope to make this a monthly thing (or more often if the amount of submission increase a lot) in order to Share all the great work that bloggers are doing in the world of Shakespeare. I chose not to include one of my own posts. Not sure why… but since you’re here already you can check out the archives. For more info about the carnival, check out the page with info, or just submit a post for next edition!

Around a third of Shakespeare’s plays take place in Italy. Most scholars assumed that his knowledge of Italy was from writings and contact with Italian merchants. Some authorship debates arise from the suspicion that Shakespeare never went to Italy so someone else must have written the plays about Italy. But now, The Times has an article which asks us, “Hath Shakespeare been a tourist in Venice?”

Now FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER (or so it would seem by the article) some scholars are speculating that Mr. William Shakespeare DID in fact take an excursion out of the country to the land of pasta.

I’m wondering why this issue seems so new. Is it so hard to believe that Shakespeare traveled? The articles says, “There is no concrete evidence that Shakespeare ever left England,” but then again there’s almost no concrete information on 99% of Shakespeare’s life… so who are we to say that he didn’t go places?

For a man that we know very little about I’m not a fan about giving answers about what he did or didn’t do in his lifetime. Maybe he went to Italy. Maybe he went to Cambodia. Probably not, but who knows?