The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1248 Thursday, 28 July 2005
From: Al Magary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 27 Jul 2005 00:47:06 -0700
Subject: Shakespeare mined for titles; plus "an amazing anagram"
Mystery novelist Barbara Paul has assembled lists of titles (of plays
and books but excluding critical commentary on Shakespeare) inspired by
the Bard. There is wonderful variety as for example Henry V's battle
cry before Harfleur (3.1) has led to three books called _Into the
Breach_--about Samuel Beckett, American women overseas in WWI, and a
Newfoundland senator. From the same speech others took their cues from
"blast of war" (2), "action of the tiger" (5), "terrible aspect" (2),
and "summon up the blood" (2), one of the last being subtitled "In
Dogged Pursuit of the Blood Cell Regulators." Even King John has a
couple veins of gold, including "Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
/ Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man" (3.4), which has produced books
by Dickens, Hawthorne, and four more including Julia Bolton Holloway.
Hamlet of course has been Golconda for authors with at least 150 books
being titled from the "to be or not to be" soliloquy alone. While the
famous tragedies have been fruitful for genertions of authors,
Coriolanus, Cymbeline, LLL, and Pericles have yet to produce more than a
very small shelf of books.
More at http://www.barbarapaul.com/shake.html The search engine at
http://www.barbarapaul.com/shake/search/search.cgi will hunt down phrases.
The bottom of Ms. Paul's Hamlet page has "An Amazing Anagram":
"To be or not to be: that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the
mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..."
becomes
"In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero,
Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten."
Cheers,
Al Magary
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