Friday, October 19, 2012

William Shakespeare in “Peabody’s Improbable History” (from The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show)

“The Last Angry Moose, Part Two / A Punch in the Snoot or The Nose Tattoo.” By George Atkins, Chris Hayward, Chris Jenkins, and Lloyd Turner. Dir. Gerard Baldwin et al. The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (a.k.a. Rocky & His Friends). Season 2, episode 44. ABC. 16 April 1961. DVD. Classic Media, 2004.

William Shakespeare and his biography—and a purported war with Francis Bacon—make their way into the classic television show Rocky and Bullwinkle.

In the clip below, Peabody and Sherman travel back in time to Stratford in 1611 and “help” with a production of Romeo and Zelda.  Admittedly, this is very late in Shakespeare's career and at the wrong location for him to be working away on Romeo and Juliet, but the show generally demands a pretty liberal suspension of disbelief.

To tell you any more would be to spoil the clip below; therefore, you should simply proceed to the clip below and enjoy it for all it's worth.


“O, hark, what hallow light burneth in yonder patio?”
“Egad, the lad's an ad libber.”

Links: The Episode at The Big Cartoon Database.


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2 comments:

Elizabeth R said...

LOL, who knew the Globe was apparently in Stratford-upon-Avon?

kj said...

Perhaps history has it wrong. Perhaps the Globe didn't burn down in 1613—perhaps it was moved to Stratford in 1611!

No, probably not. Just a little bit more suspension of disbelief.

Take care, Elizabeth R!

kj

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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