Alien or Alienated? The Monstrous, the Normal, and the Tragic in Our Borders
Shakespeare, Knut Hamsun, Flannery O’Connor, and the Medieval Icelandic Göngu-Hrolfs saga each explore who is the alien, and who is alienated, within our borders.
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Power, Loss, and Madness in Kurosawa’s Ran and Shakespeare’s King Lear
By identifying King Lear with the ancient Japanese warlord Hidetora, whose violations emerge from a breach of publicly identified self-hood, Akira Kurosawa plays with the quintessentially Shakespearean focus on individual personality.
Neil Gaiman’s Faustian Bargain with William Shakespeare
What kind of relationship do Gaiman and Shakespeare have? Is one a parasite on the other?
Marc Maron’s Private Grief on a Public Stage
The risky healing power of Marc Maron's WTF podcast eulogy to Lynn Shelton.
Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair But Geoffrey Wright’s ‘Macbeth’ Is Just Foul
Shakespeare's plays offer endless potential for adaptation, but sometimes, as is true of Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth (2006), when these reinterpretations fail we get a clearer impression of the original's genius.
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Making Troy Great Again: On Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’ and Trump’s Ugly Political Rhetoric
The Trump presidency is Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida made real – only it's stripped of the mythology and just lying bare and ugly for all to see.
The Spoiled Little Man-Child They Made King: Celebrity, Richard II, and Donald Trump
Did Shakespeare predict Trump? No. That's ridiculous. He just wrote a play about a thin-skinned, petty, self-aggrandising narcissist whose poor leadership drove an empire to ruin. Totally different.
Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ Trumps Reality TV
Shakespeare's As You Like It employed every signature reality show convention three and a half centuries before television even existed.
Paul Kelly: Seven Sonnets and a Song
Legendary Australian songwriter Paul Kelly reconciles his trademark acoustic style with the works of Shakespeare on his latest album, Seven Sonnets and a Song.
‘Richard III’ Is Ian McKellen’s Glorious Rendition of an Absolute Villain
With Shakespeare's A Game of Thrones rendered into a Fascist version of '30s Britain, be careful whose side you're on.
Playing the Fool
Cliff Johnson's 1987 classic, The Fool's Errand, is an homage to the tradition of the Fool in the literature and folklore of Western culture.
‘Pop Sonnets’ Is an Evolutionary Leap for Both Vanilla Ice and Shakespeare
This book is clearly a long labor of love, and a terrific feat of will and intellect.