"Marlowe! By the power of Shakespeare I cast you out!"

[osprey_archer]

Or, the theater department performed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), which is made of awesome. Titus Andronicus the cooking show! Othello the rap song! Hamlet upside down and backward! I love my school, I love my school, I love my school.

I’m sorry I haven’t gone to more of the performances this year. The only other one I went to was The Shape of Things, which is brilliantly creepy (and evidently has a movie version, according to the gods of Wikipedia). The same girl starred in both plays, and is clearly destined for great things, given that she was convincing both as a Southern Baptist gospel preacher of Shakespeare and a soulless undergraduate artiste with an attitude problem.

The gospel of Shakespeare thing reminded me of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. I only read the first and wasn’t sufficiently impressed to continue, but the worldbuilding had some nifty moments--the machine that let people jump into books, for instance, and (more germane to this topic) the literary Protestant Reformation with split the society into sects based on their differing opinions about who was the One True Author of Shakespeare's plays. Marlowe had a fanatical quasi-terrorist sect fighting for his recognition as the true master of the English language.

The amusing thing is that there appear to be people in the real world who are thiiiiis close to being militant Marlovians. Evidently even five hundred year old fandoms have their crazies.

Comments

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

thoughts:
-i've never seen the reduced shakespeare live, only on dvd, but i do recall it being rather absolutley amazing. ; )

-jasper fforde's books get better as you go in the series, i promise- i read number 3 first when i recived it as a gift, and if i hadn't i might not have gotten past book 1 either. but they really do get very good; you should give them another shot!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, is there a movie version? Because I would totally buy that.

I'll consider the Thursday Next books. I have a To Be Read list about the length of my arm, but perhaps I'll be able to make a dent in it when summer vacation finally arrives.

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

there is! from the original reduced shakespeare company... and i don't know, but i seem to recall it having special features... ; )

ooh, anything good? i'm compiling a special summer version of my to be read list pretty much as we speak...

but of course, do it when you have time. and tell me what you think!