Oh, man, now I've read much more of the book -- including the whole chapter on Shylock and The Merchant of Venice, which is titled "Laughter at the Scaffold" in direct reference to the execution of the Queen's Marrano physician. You have to read this book. I think Greenblatt is somewhere in between you and your big chief. I'm enjoying SO much of this book. I'll be sad when it's done. He's taking apart Hamlet now. There is SO fucking much in that play. I don't like King Lear at all, but I fucking love Hamlet.

In an only slightly related tangent, do you see the movie versions of Shakespeare? I've seen quite a few, and am always interested by how they differ. I saw the Brando Julius Caesar with rootlesscosmo, for instance -- what an amazing textbook on the uses of political rhetoric. And I hated that when we read it in high school. For other highlights... I'm a sucker for Branagh's Henry V, and (with even more embarrassment) for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, though I feel like stopping my ears every time I hear that maudlin sickly sweet love song sung at the banquet. I hated Much Ado about Nothing, I think, even though Branagh and Thompson were good as Benedick and Beatrice. Not least because of the blue leather trous that Denzil Washington wore. And I saw Polanski's Macbeth at a young and impressionable age, and was amazed that they showed it to us in high school. That was incredible. I want to see that again. I just missed an opportunity to see it performed live with a good friend of my brother-in-law's in the title role. Boo. Now that I think of it, I think the play company was a joke on one of Shakespeare's contemporary's low associates -- Cutting Ball? Hmm.

Do you have movies of the plays you like? Ones you hate? Or should it strictly be performed on stage for you? And did you see the Ethan Hawke Hamlet? I liked the To be or not to be soliloquy, in the video rental store, with him walking up and down surrounded by ACTION videos.