Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare! (and a bit about comics)

This is actually reposting my most recent LJ post, but I already set up cross-posting so sorry about the redundancy.

This weekend was the calm before the storm as alexx_kay and herooftheage head into the final week of rehearsals before the big production of Henry V, but that doesn't mean we felt as if we had had enough of Will yet.

On Sunday, alexx_kay and I watched the last few episodes of
John Barton's DVD series "Playing Shakespeare," which I will be reviewing for Green Man Review. For now, I will merely point the curious to
the Playing Shakespeare page on AthenaLearning.com
http://athenalearning.com/programs/playing-shakespeare/episode-highlights
and the Playing Shakespeare page at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086780/ .
The Athena Learning page is wonderful and includes all sorts of extras and links to other resources, which is handy as I am hoping to find an etext of Henry V to read this week.

On Saturday, alexx_kay and I watched
Julius Caesar (Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953), which featured Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, James Mason as Brutus, and John Gielgud as Cassius. Here is a nice long video which includes the scene in which Antony confronts the assassins and, if you wait for it, Antony's "dogs of war" speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KXhfjOkKPM
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esUMvBL3gnY

You can read alexx_kay's review here
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/256598.html

Of course, after watching Julius Caesar I had to hear the bit from Free Enterprise in which Bill Shatner performs his version of Julius Caesar, so alexx_kay found that for me on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yerCiByca4

Also scattered throughout the weekend, alexx_kay read me the first volume of the graphic novel _Lock and Key_ by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. It features a trio of siblings who move to Lovecraft, Massachusetts, after the violent murder of their father, only to find themselves exposed to more violence and a very creepy house where sometimes a door is more than a door. I love the house and the lock and key images, and the monster in the story which promises to provide a source of ongoing threat and mystery.

More Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice podcast

A Web site which refers to itself as "The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Source"
http://www.playshakespeare.com/
offers a podcasts page
http://www.playshakespeare.com/podcasts
includes the following podcast focusing on The Merchant of Venice:

block quote start
A one-night only reading of Shakespeare's perpetually controversial The Merchant of Venice featuring commentary from premiere West Coast Shakespeare scholar
Denise Battista. Following will be an audience discussion led by a panel of writers and artists including world-renowned Jewish-American author and fantasist
Peter S. Beagle and John Fisher, Artistic Director of Theater Rhinoceros, San Francisco's oldest queer theater company.
block quote end

I should note here that the
Athena Learning's John Barton "Playing Shakespeare" DVD series
http://athenalearning.com/programs/playing-shakespeare/episode-highlights
includes an entire episode on "The Merchant of Venice" with a lot of serious discussion on the representation of Shylock as a Jew (an episode which includes Patrick Stewart, btw).