The Complete Deaths: all of the Bard’s 74 scripted deaths in one new play.

Over the past four centuries, the brutality of Shakespeare’s plays has become the subject of endless academic study, but his contemporary critics didn’t approve of the on-stage gore. Michael Dobson,  director of the Shakespeare Institute, said that Elizabethan drama was known for being gruesome: “The English drama was notorious for on-stage deaths; they were thought crass.…

Recording Christmas Stories for WAOB Audio Theatre

For WAOB Audio Theater, my family spent an afternoon recording “The Little Match Girl,” “Papa Panov’s Special Day,” and a new story, “The Executioner.”  Already online — Ozma and the Little Wizard, and The Monkey’s Paw. Similar:Yesterday my wife took this last known picture of our two teenagers. The boy is 20 today. PersonalWho is the…

CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest Of Day

Kicking around ideas ranging from an uptick in child kidnappings to a new link between laptops and cancer, senior CNN staffers held their regular daily meeting this morning to decide which topic viewers should panic about for the rest of the day.  —The Onion Similar:'Wear a mask.' Trump predicts coronavirus will 'get worse' as he…

The Post drops the ‘mike’ — and the hyphen in ‘e-mail’

When I announced these style changes, another Twitter user wrote, “wait, it’s 2015 and there are still people who write e-mail?” Not everyone is on Twitter, of course. For every online Post reader snickering at mike, there might be a longtime print subscriber baffled by mic. Because it would be impractical to edit each article separately…

Shakespeare’s Choose-Your-Own Adventure

If meeting three strange ladies in the swamp Seems ample cause for murthering the king To take his crown, turn to page 86. If this seems kind of sketchy, turn to 12. Shakespeare’s Choose-Your-Own Adventure. Similar:Talkback session after the matinee and my brother and faculty colleagues after the evening…Talkback session after the matinee and m…AwesomeBrett…

“This paper is going to read like smooth jazz.”

  Similar:Another very rough day. Students are cheerful and patient, obviously happy to be here.Another very rough day. Students are che…AcademiaBeam me up, Chewie!AwesomeBrilliant, Troubled Dorothy Parker by Robert GottliebIn 1915, Parker, aged twenty-two, went t…CultureWriting School Papers: Does Your First Version Say It All?My colleague Mike Arnzen talked about th…AcademiaSomewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining…

After lights out, the girl is knitting.

Similar:Me (glares in iambic pentameter)Me: I need to post the opening lecture f…AcademiaPuns really matter to us over here in English.I swore I would wield my powers only for…AcademiaThat time three-year-old me spotted a Mary Cassatt painting at the Art Institute of Chicag…My mother had a framed print of Mary Cas…AestheticsLovely #greebles give attractive details…

Irrational Geographic : snopes.com

Boosting the signal. This is a real National Geographic cover, but this issue was likely planned and implemented months before Murdoch purchased the franchise. No, National Geographic hasn’t begun covering nonsense since their merger with Fox. Source: Irrational Geographic : snopes.com Similar:Work / Life Balance: UnlockedI think I must be doing something right …AcademiaI've Stopped…

Smith College Protesters Bar Journalists From Covering Sit-In Unless They Support the Cause

Reporters planning to cover the sit-in arrived at the Massachusetts college’s student center on Wednesday only to find that the protesters intended to keep them out. Alyssa Mata-Flores, a Smith senior and a sit-in organizer, elaborated on the decision to The Republican: “We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate…

Why Is Othello Black?

To us today, the word “black” carries with it a specific cluster of associations informed by history, culture, stereotypes, and literature. Othello may have started in conversation with Shakespeare’s definition of blackness, but today, he speaks with ours. A much more interesting question, really, is: Why is Othello black? Why did Shakespeare write a domestic…