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:

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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. 

Review of "Hamlet" at the Stratford Festival

Last week I reviewed Pericles, the first Shakespeare play of my Stratford Festival season. Today I'm turning my attention towards their production of Hamlet. 

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a particularly critical person and am not always good at analyzing or articulating my reaction to a show. At the intermission of Hamlet I was wondering vaguely what was wrong with me, as the show I had seen was doing everything right (as far as I could tell) and yet somehow was not pulling me in. I still don't know why that was, but I do know that the second act redeemed all that.

Confession: I've had an actor-crush on Jonathan Goad ever since I saw him as Hotspur in Henry IV, part 1 at the Stratford Festival many years ago. Like all Hotspurs, he had a manic energy and dangerous edge, but he also had the charisma and competency that many Hotspurs seem to lack - all qualities that he also brought to his Hamlet.

Again, as is usual at Stratford, the supporting cast members were all uniformly excellent. I particularly enjoyed Geraint Wyn Davies's Claudius, whose brief moments of villainous plotting were all the more alarming for how charming and reasonable he seemed most of the time, and for Adrienne Gould's mad scene as Ophelia, which definitely ranks as one of the more unsettling ones that I've seen.

When you inject this much energy into a production, it is sometimes possible for things to get lost in the hustle and bustle. It is to director Antoni Cimolino's credit that this Hamlet, despite being physically lively and fast-paced, is also accessible, comprehensible, and, most importantly, entertaining.