GTB Play Page Updates: Timon, Titus, and Troilus

It’s “T” day, featuring three comparatively marginal plays starting with “T”! Not a lot of comics here yet. Give me time.

….like, a lot of time. You aren’t going to be seeing a Troilus and Cressida scene-by-scene for a while.

Shakespearean Halloween Party I-IV (Remastered)

As Halloween is fast approaching (when did the run-up to Halloween become as involved as the run-up to Christmas?) I thought it would be a good time to revisit some of my earlier Halloween comics and re-draw the earliest ones digitally. Enjoy!

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Original Shakespearean Halloween Party I here. Honestly, after all these years, Desdemona’s handkerchief and the bees are still my favorite Shakespearean Halloween costume ideas.

Original Shakespearean Halloween Party II here. Seriously, butter knife + string + stick is all the effort I want to put into a costume.

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He’s dressed as a lion tamer and is holding a shrew. I’ve had to explain this to everybody, the sure sign that a joke didn’t work. Oh well.

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Pls note bear is mauling his shoulder. Textual accuracy is important.

Stay Home, Stay Safe (Shakespeare Edition)

How should we be acting during global pandemic? As with so many things in life, we can look to Shakespeare for guidance.

Consulting pocket dramaturg: Kate Pitt

Consulting pocket dramaturg: Kate Pitt

This is probably the ONLY situation in which I can confidently say… Be like Timon.

(Except for the bit where he pays prostitutes to go spread venereal diseases. Don’t do that bit. Ew.)

Titus Andronicus: All The Deaths

If it seems to you like I revisit the death toll of Titus Andronicus with disproportionate frequency… you’re right, and that’s because it will never not be hilarious. Here’s a video of me methodically illustrating all of them. (One of my pens started to run out of ink partway through, but fortunately it wasn’t my red pen.)

This video comes to you courtesy of all my awesome supporters over at Patreon. Thanks to all of them for helping make it possible for me to do what is, objectively, a dream job.

I’m taking the next two weeks off! Enjoy your summers and I’ll see you back here in August.

Top Ten Shakespearean Stage Corpses

So, last month one of my Tumblr followers posed the following question:

jmujaneway asked:

Hiya! Someone at lunch said there's a debate as to which Shakespeare character spends the most time dead on stage. I figured you'd know! Please help?

I offered up my best guesses (Caesar and Desdemona) and then Tumblr took over, with nellololol going to far as to do some in-depth research and provide us with some line counts. This was far too fun to leave alone, though, so I've done my own line-counting and here are the results!

Now, Bassianus and Humphrey are somewhat debatable, as they can conceivably spend part of their "dead" time hidden in a pit or behind bed curtains respectively. However, I have seen both languish on stage in person, so they are included. Conversely, I don't think I've ever seen a Romeo and Juliet production that actually included the "real live body" of Tybalt in the final scene, but I have heard of those that have, and that have similarly had a "real live body" of Caesar in the funeral scene. 

If we go by the has-to-be-on-stage-dead-the-entire-time-no-chance-of-being-swapped-out-for-a-dummy matrix, however, the winner is Desdemona. Take a bow Desd-- oh wait, you can't. You're dead.