Book Note: Sleep No More

James, P. D. Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales. New York: Knopf, 2017.

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Apart from the title, there's not a lot of direct Shakespeare in Sleep No More, P. D. James' collection of short mysteries, but there is one story that I think provides an interesting take on Macbeth.

To tell you about it, I have to provide so many spoilers that you'll know most of the story.

In short, spoiler alert!

If you don't want to know what happens in the short story "The Victim," pause this blog until you get a chance to read it. Don't worry—this post will be waiting for you when you get back.

Everyone caught up (or at a point where they don't mind spoiler)?  Good.

The narrator of "The Victim" is the first husband of a now-famous film star / socialite. She left him for her second husband, the man the narrator later kills. For months beforehand, he sends threatening notes to the second husband.

When the police try to figure out who did it, we learn that the socialite has an alibi—she was at a performance of Macbeth at the time of the murder—and the first husband manages to get away without leaving any evidence. The police are suspicious of him, but they are unable to pin anything on him. It's an unsolved case.

Three months later, the widow comes to visit her first husband. That's where there's a possibility of a Macbeth connection. She had received all the threatening letters, knew who they were from, and kept them to herself. She desired his death so that she could be free of him and so that she could inherit his wealth.

It turns out that she was emulating Lady Macbeth (after a fashion) all the time!

It might be a stretch, but I think there's something in it. Let me give you the last few pages of the story so you can decide for yourself:

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Hamlet in WKRP in Cincinatti

“Les on a Ledge.” By Hugh Wilson. Perf. Gary Sandy, Gordon Jump, Loni Anderson, Richard Sanders, Frank Bonner, and Howard Hesseman. Dir. Asaad Kelada. WKRP in Cincinnati. Season 1, episode 3. CBS. 2 October 1978. DVD. Shout Factory, 2014.

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It didn't take long for the exceptional show WKRP in Cincinnati to turn its attention to Shakespeare. In the third episode, Les Nessman (news director, roving reporter, and hog report expert) is banned from the Cincinnati Reds' locker room because a player assumes that he's gay (he's not). He's upset enough to threaten to jump from the building, to recite lines from Hamlet, and to ponder the meaning of the word "fardel."

Here's the key scene:

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Book Note: The Shakespeare Requirement

Schumacher, Julie. The Shakespeare Requirement: A Novel. New York: Doubleday, 2018.

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I've read and enjoyed Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members, a clever epistolary novel whose plot advances through various letters of recommendation from a college professor.

Because of that, I was looking forward to The Shakespeare Requirement, a novel set at the same fictional institution (Payne University).

And the concept of the book is particularly telling and relevant. An antiquated English professor refuses to sign off on what is essentially a new curriculum (the "Statement of Vision") for the university's English major because it contains no specific requirement of a Shakespeare course for graduation.

The chair has to talk to each of the faculty members and negotiate and compromise in order to pass the curriculum unanimously—and you all can imagine just how hard that might be.  And our ancient professor is, of course, determined not to compromise in any particular.

It's a good plot, and we gain insight into the politics of the modern university, but I did find the book to fall a bit flat. The plot is somewhat plodding, and there's not much passion in the professors' protestations.

Still, it carries itself along—even if the ending is on the anti-climatic side.

Here's a quick sample set of pages. In them, it is argued that Shakespeare is still going to have a place at the university—after all, a manga version of Macbeth is part of one professor's course!

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Book Note: Shakespeare and London

Salkeld, Duncan. Shakespeare and London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

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I'd just like to call your attention to this fascinating scholarly work on Shakespeare and London (note: not Shakespeare's London or Shakespeare in London). I just finished reading it, and I learned an enormous amount from it. Shakespeare in London relates biographical details of Shakespeare's life, but it connects those to the biographies of others who doubtless surrounded him in London. It also tries to find as many connections between London events or personages and Shakespeare's plays.

I'm providing a few pages of the introduction to give you a feel for the book.

The book then moves on to chapters entitled "Stratford to London," "Places," "People," "Art / Authority," and "Diversity" before bringing the subject to its conclusion.

I highly recommend the book as an endlessly intriguing examination of Shakespeare in London and London in Shakespeare.

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Bonus! A nifty map of London included in the book:

Book Note: Imagining Shakespeare's Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway

Scheil, Katherine West. Imagining Shakespeare's Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

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If you're looking for a book that will make you want to run out and read a bunch more books, try Katherine West Scheil's Imaging Shakespeare's Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway.

This scholarly, well-written, engaging book takes its readers on a journey through what we know of Anne Hathaway's history—and then on a fascinating tour of all the ways she has been appropriated, characterized, and fictionalized through the centuries.

Along the way, she mentions dozens of interesting (and, yes, dozens of uninteresting) fictional Annes.

I'd like to give you a sample of the chapter that starts to deal with these imagined Annes:

It's hard to stop, since the story keeps evolving in such an engaging way, but I should refrain from revealing the rest of the fascinating narrative. You should get it and read it for yourself—and then start filling your bookshelf with the interesting works Scheil mentions.

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Book Note: The Bard and the Bible

Hostetler, Bob. The Bard and the Bible: A Shakespeare Devotional. Franklin, Tennessee: Worthy Inspired, 2016.

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I was a bit skeptical of this book when I heard of it, but I'm quite impressed.

It's a daily devotion that quotes from Shakespeare, provides a relevant passage from the King James Version of the Bible, and then offers some commentary on either the one or the other or the way the two speak to each other.

I've been using it in my Shakespeare class this semester, and I think it went well. Before I realized how the book is organized, I was providing the reading for the day of the year.  Since the class meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, that meant that I was skipping nearly every other day. It worked much better when I figured out that (generally) each play has its own grouped set of days and quotes from each play progress from early to late in the play. I realized that in time to focus on readings from King Lear during our class on King Lear, and I think that was quite effective.

Each reading concludes with an application question and some additional information—sometimes about Shakespeare's vocabulary, sometimes about modern responses to or versions of the plays, sometimes about the world around Shakespeare.

Here's a sample from early October with some words from King Lear:

I think I'll use this with a class again, but I'll ignore the days and stick to the plays (in other words, I'll read the Macbeth devotions even if it's February).

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A Bunch of Amateurs (Burt Reynolds as King Lear)

A Bunch of Amateurs. Dir. Andy Cadiff. Perf. Burt Reynolds, Alexandra Weaver, Elesia Marie, Camilla Arfwedson, Michael Wildman, Charles Durning, Pandora Colin, Samantha Bond, Imelda Staunton, Taz, Lorraine Ashbourne, Gemma Lawrence, Peter Gunn, Tony Jayawardena, Alistair Petrie, Derek Jacobi, and Ciaran O'Quigley. 

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Burt Reynolds in Hamlet and Hutch (for which, q.v.) was pretty disappointing.

Burt Reynolds in The Twilight Zone (for which, q.v.) was a whole lot better.

And Burt Reynolds in A Bunch of Amateurs (for which . . . well, keep reading) is also quite good.

The plot involves an aging actor (Jefferson Steel, played by Burt Reynolds) whose aging agent can't get him the big action-hero parts anymore. To revitalize his career (or just to get him out of the country), the agent books him to play Shakespeare in Stratford . . . without telling him exactly which Stratford:

I'm very fond of the sequence in the plane. Jefferson Steel goes from the Arden edition of King Lear to the Cliffs Notes . . . to something called "Shakespeare in a Page" printed from the internet. 

I also love the dramatic irony of the interview. The journalists know he's there to play with an amateur troupe of actors, but Steel thinks, when they talk of amateurs, that they're just being modest about the quality of British professional actors.

In the next scene, Steel arrives at the theatre and finds out the truth:

"Where's Kenny Branagh?" is a great line—especially when he's just met Derek Jacobi and Peter Gunn (who played Fabian in the 1996 Trevor Nunn Twelfth Night). It also makes me think of Branagh's A Midwinter's Tale (for which, q.v.), which is a similar tale of saving a theatre or rejuvenating a career with a low-budget Shakespeare production.

Jefferson Steel has been acting very Lear-like throughout the production, but he also goes a bit off his head and ends up out in a storm:

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And, finally, we have some of King Lear. I'm avoiding spoilers, so I won't tell you or show you what unexpected things happen during the production. I'll just give you a bit of the show . . . followed by the curtain calls:

All in all, this was quite a good film, filled with good production values, good acting, good names, and a good Burt Reynolds. It's hard to find in anything but a Region 2 DVD, but it's worth it.

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Links: The Film at IMDB.

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Bonus Image: Thoughtful Jefferson Steel

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Brings its Shakespeare Game

“Operation: Broken Feather.” By Dan Goor and Michael Schur. Perf. Andy Samberg, Stephanie Beatriz, Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero, Joe Lo Truglio, Chelsea Peretti, and Andre Braugher. Dir. Julie Anne Robinson. Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Season 1, episode 15. Fox. 2 February 2014. DVD. NBC Universal, 2014.

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“Halloween II.” By Prentice Penny. Perf. Andy Samberg, Stephanie Beatriz, Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero, Joe Lo Truglio, Chelsea Peretti, and Andre Braugher. Dir. Eric Appel. Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Season 2, episode 4. Fox. 19 October 2014. DVD. NBC Universal, 2014.

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Until Fox cancelled it, I had never heard of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. When the furor over its cancellation spread all over Twitter, I noticed (as did NBC, who picked up the show for a sixth season). My first question was "Does it have any Shakespeare?"

Since then, I've been investigating, and I've found a few instances of Shakespeare in the quirky sit-com about a police precinct in Brooklyn. Here are a couple of instances.

First, in "Operation: Broken Feather," the character Jake Peralta makes fun of the character Amy Santiago, emphasizing the way the last three syllables of her name form the name of a particularly-evil well-known villain. Note: The language in the clip below is not entirely family-friendly.

Second, in the episode entitled "Halloween II," the character Charles Boyle tries out a number of Halloween costumes on his colleagues. Note: The language in the clip below is not entirely family-friendly.

I'll be keeping my eye our for more Shakespeare. But I think there will probably be a lot more in Season Six. The main reason Fox had for cancelling it in the first place was that there wasn't enough Shakespeare.

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Links: The Show at IMDB.

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Hamlet and Hutch

Hamlet and Hutch. Dir. Jared Young and Matthew Young. Perf. Burt Reynolds, Elizabeth Leiner, and Emma Rayne Lyle. 2017.  DVD.  Criterion, 2000.

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Hamlet and Hutch is a pretty forgetful, barely cohesive film about a great-grandfather and his great-granddaughter, a greyhound named Hamlet who almost gets sold to an Alabama racetrack, a theatre that's about to go out of business, and any number of other Saturday-morning feel-good film tropes.

Here's a brief take of the plot. Note: Spoilers will follow, but I bet you could guess the ending of this film. Hutchinson Byrne ("Papa Hutch"), the famous Broadway actor, moves to Georgia to be with his semi-estranged granddaughter because he can no longer take care of himself in New York City. His great-granddaughter is fond of acting and films—notably Audrey Hepburn—and soon arranges for Hutch to put on a play in the theatre that her mom is about to sell because she can't afford to hold on to it and run her flower shop. So they get a greyhound named Hamlet for some reason, and then Hutch starts exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimer's. He wanders off, loses the dog, can't perform without the dog, but eventually puts on the show when the dog turns up again.

Here are two scenes from the film. In the first, Hutch and Liv trades lines from Shakespeare and Roman Holiday.

The next scene gives the grand conclusion. Note: It misleadingly presents the dog as having had a more crucial role in the story of the film, but Launce's dog Crab has almost more to do with the plot of Two Gentlemen of Verona than Hamlet the greyhound has to do with this film

There you have it! There are a few other bits of Shakespeare scattered through the film, but nothing earth-shattering. For example, Liv and Hutch read a bit of Midsummer Night's Dream—until Hutch forgets his lines. All in all, it's not a great film, which is both unfortunate and disappointing. If you want a better engagement between Bert Reynolds and Shakespeare, try the Twilight Zone episode entitled "The Bard" (for which, q.v.).

I'll be taking a look at another Bert Reynolds film called A Bunch of Amateurs. I'm hoping from more and better Shakespeare from it.

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Links: The Film at IMDB.

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A Little Shakespeare Every Now and Then in Pearls Before Swine

Pastis, Stephen. BLTs Taste so Darn Good.  Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003.

———. The Crass Menagerie. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008.

———.  Pearls Falls Fast. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2014.

———. Pearls Sells Out. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2009.

———. Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2004. 

———. Pearls Gets Sacrificed. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2015. 

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We've seen some good use of Shakespeare in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine before (for which, q.v. and q.v. and q.v. and q.v.).

Well, there's even more! I've gathered a few examples from the books listed above. Enjoy!

from BLTs Taste so Darn Good.



from The Crass Menagerie. Please note, Mr. Pastis, that you will find some good crocodile material in Antony and Cleopatra. And Hamlet also mentions one!



from Pearls Sells Out. The Shakespeare is really in the annotation rather than specifically in the comic itself.



from . . . well, I've lost track of where this one is from, I'm afraid. I'll try to track it down. In the meantime, I'll just agree with Mr. Pastis on this one (though I've pretty much always felt that way about the play).



from Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic. It's not exclusively Shakespearean, but he has his share of cuckold jokes. Thanks, Mr. Pastis, for continuing the venerable (?) tradition.



from Pearls Gets Sacrificed. The humor comes in the unexpected cultured quality of Larry the Croc's parents.

Bonus Image: The Strip at the Beginning of this Post in Full Color:

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