Shakespeare in Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?—Part One

“The Play's the Thing.” By Richard Merwin and Sean Roche. Perf. Rita Moreno, Rodger Bumpass, Jennifer Hale, and Scott Menville. Dir. Joe Barruso. Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? Season 1, episode 10. FOX. 7 May 1994. DVD. Mill Creek Entertainment, 2012.

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I've adored FoxTrot since my earliest days; since then, I've also followed Carmen Sandiego in all her various incarnations—the Brøderbund software, the PBS game show, and the Saturday morning cartoon show.

It's the last of those that's relevant to this post. The show was intentionally structured as an educational adventure; on at least two occasions, the content turned to Shakespeare.

On the first occasion, Carmen leaves a clue with a quote from the opening of Antony and Cleopatra: "Goodly eyes" (I.i.2). The full line, delivered by Philo, is critical of Antony for turning his goodly eyes from their natural, Roman, warlike state to eyes of love for Cleopatra:

Nay, but this dotage of our general's
O'erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes,
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front: his captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy's lust. (I.i.1-10)

The show gives us a bit of that line—while giving us a brief glance at the works of William Shakespeare!  Enjoy!

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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