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A South African anthropologist has asked permission to open the graves of William Shakespeare and his family to determine, among other things, what killed the Bard and whether his poems and plays may have been composed under the influence of marijuana. But while Shakespeare's skeleton could reveal clues about his health and death, the question of the man's drug use depends on the presence of hair, fingernails or toenails in the grave, said Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who floated the proposal to the Church of England. Thackeray...

William Shakespeare was probably a Catholic, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who discussed spirituality and secularism in the Bard’s plays with the actor Simon Russell Beale.Little is known of Shakespeare’s life and there is no direct evidence of his religious affiliation, but Dr Rowan Williams said he believed him to be a Catholic. “I don’t think it tells us a great deal, to settle whether he was a Catholic or a Protestant, but for what it’s worth I think he probably had a Catholic background and a lot of Catholic friends and associates. “How much he believed in it,...

Reading lists for middle school and high school students routinely include Shakespearean plays, but most teens find themselves struggling to translate the plays into language they can understand. However, from day one back in October, Mrs. Mary Raithel assured the St. Alphonsus Liguori middle school students that they would not have to read Macbeth. They would be learning by performing Macbeth. And so they did, as the entire St. Alphonsus Middle School staged their outstanding performances of Scenes from Macbeth on Wednesday, January 26, for an audience of nearly 150 proud parents, family members and guests. Eight scenes from this...

LOS ANGELES — A notorious criminal case that waited 400 years to go before a jury resulted in no definite answer to the question of whether the defendant — Hamlet Prince of Denmark — was sane when he committed murder.

Sir Derek Jacobi is wrong to think that Shakespeare could not have written his own plays; the greatest poet and dramatist of all times was an Englishman and a CatholicThe actor Sir Derek Jacobi is currently acting the part of King Lear to great critical acclaim at the Donmar Warehouse. I must get to see it before the production closes just to see if he gets my personal imprimatur or not. But there is one matter on which I cannot agree with Sir Derek: the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. Apparently the knighted thespian takes a benighted view on this one:...

Enter the KING WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work to-day! KING. What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin; If we are mark'd to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such...

Our former NR colleague, Joe Sobran, passed away today after a long battle with a variety of ailments. He was relatively young, just 64, and while physically beaten at the end, he also departed spiritually triumphant.   Surely, in short order, there will be ample reflection — much of it critical — on the hyper-talented, hyper-controversial writer. There will be a recounting of his history at NR, the break, the following years, and Joe’s soured relationship with WFB (happily, they rekindled their friendship before Bill passed away). Good, let’s discuss all that, and more. But later. Right now, let us,...

Following a London West End run in December 2007, a sold-out limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March 2008, and a subsequent eight-week run on Broadway, director Rupert Goold’s gripping stage production of Macbeth was filmed for television at the end of 2009. The co-production between WNET.ORG and Illuminations Television, in association with the BBC, stars Sir Patrick Stewart in his triumphant, Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his coldly scheming wife. The production, though retaining the Goold’s exciting concept of relocating the bloody action to a nameless 20th-century militaristic society, has...

ARLINGTON, Va.- In the United States, where many people can't speak English properly, a Washington acting troupe says it will perform Shakespeare in Klingon. During its annual benefit Sept. 25, the Washington Shakespeare Company in Arlington, Va., will perform selections from "Hamlet" and "Much Ado About Nothing" in both English and the language invented for Klingon characters of the Star Trek films, The Washington Post reported Sunday. The effort was inspired by a line spoken by English actor David Warner in "Star Trek VI," in which his Klingon character declares, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him...

I am thoroughly taken with Sarah Palin’s neologism. People often incorrectly use the word “refute” to mean something like “deny” or “reject”, only stronger. We could do with a new word to fill this gap and, since both “refute” and “repudiate” are already occupied with their actual meanings, neither can be pressed into service. “Refudiate” occupies the space perfectly, and deserves to become part of every politician’s vocabulary. The handsome Alaskan politician is quite right to say that Shakespeare came up with countless new-fangled words – including “countless” and “new-fangled”. Among his coinages, as far as we can tell, are...

MARK COLVIN: William Shakespeare is one of the most significant figures in history about whose actual life we know the least. Very little survives in his handwriting and the records of him are scanty but mostly concerned with money and lawsuits. This absence has proved the breeding ground for all sorts of conspiracy theories, mostly suggesting that someone much more aristocratic wrote the works of the man we call Shakespeare. Some have said it was Francis Bacon, others the Earl of Oxford. There's even a school that believes Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare even though he was stabbed to death years...

How long would it take a monkey typing randomly to reproduce the completes works of William (great name, incidentally) Shakespeare? Once we know that, we can answer how long it would take a barrelful. If that is, we knew how many monkeys would fit in a standard barrel. In experiments conducted by your author, I can tell you the answer is eleven, but you have to press hard. A typewritten work is composed, of course, of words, and in between those words are spaces and the occasional punctuation. Separating the words are headings, themselves comprised of words and numbers. According...

William Shakespeare was born APRIL 23, 1564. His 37 plays impacted world literature. He married Ann Hathaway, had three children, moved to London, and became shareholding director of Globe Theater, writing such classics as Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In King Henry VIII, 1613, act III, scene ii, line 456, Shakespeare wrote: "Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies." In Othello, 1604, act I, scene i, line 108, Shakespeare wrote: "You are one of those that will...

Film director Roland Emmerich, whose last effort was the apocalyptic "2012," has begun shooting "Anonymous." It won't be another disaster movie -- except perhaps for English professors. According to Emmerich, the film is "about how it came to be that William Shakespeare was not the author of his plays," which, he says, turn out to have been written by the "Earl of Oxford." Emmerich calls "Anonymous" a political thriller. "It's about who will succeed Elizabeth and the cause of that thriller, the Essex Rebellion." The film, starring Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth...will have "kings, queens, and princes," he adds. "It's...

Archaeologists believe they are on the cusp of shedding new light on the life of William Shakespeare – by digging up what may have been the playwright’s cesspit. Experts have begun excavating the ruins of New Place, Shakespeare’s former home in Stratford-upon-Avon, which was demolished 250 years ago. Although little remains of the property, the team, led by Birmingham Archaeology, believes it has identified a rubbish tip or cesspit used by the 16th century poet. Fragments of pottery and broken clay pipe have already been retrieved from a muddy hole on the site, which they claim could yield some of...

Until I inherited the Shakespeare course in my department halfway through my career, I assumed that despite certain Christian patterns and occasional biblical allusions in the tragedies, Shakespeare's plays were broadly humanistic in their intellectual allegiance. Nothing has been a bigger surprise in my scholarly career than my gradually coming to regard Shakespeare as a Christian writer. I need to clarify what I am not claiming. I make no claim to know Shakespeare's state of soul in life and death... ...If we ask what counts as evidence in weighing the Christian allegiance of the plays, the answer is that what...

While mainstream Shakespeare scholarship has marginalized the biblical presence in Shakespeare, scholars who pay attention to the data know better. One scholar speaks of biblical phrases and images as "an echo-chamber of the imagination" for Shakespeare. [8] Another speaks of how a lifetime of acquaintance with the Bible provided rhythms and phrases for Shakespeare "in accordance with laws of association too subtle for description;" this same scholar adds, "Of course, the Bible was the . . . most discussed book of the day: it was of all books the best seller, especially the Genevan Bible," forming the "most constant and...

A play which was first discovered nearly 300 years ago has been credited to William Shakespeare. The work, titled Double Falsehood, was written by the playwright and another dramatist, John Fletcher. Theatre impresario Lewis Theobald presented the play in the 18th century as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play but it was dismissed as a forgery. But scholars for British Shakespeare publisher, Arden, now believe the Bard wrote large parts of the play. Researchers think the play is based on a long-lost work called Cardenio, which was itself based on Don Quixote. "I think Shakespeare's hand can be discerned in...

Three mysterious signatures on pages of parchment bound in leather and kept under lock and key may prove the theory that William Shakespeare was a secret Catholic who spent his “lost years” in Italy. An exhibition at the Venerable English College, the seminary in Rome for English Catholic priests, has revealed cryptic names in its guest books for visiting pilgrims, suggesting that the playwright sought refuge there. “Arthurus Stratfordus Wigomniensis” signed the book in 1585, while “Gulielmus Clerkue Stratfordiensis” arrived in 1589. According to Father Andrew Headon, vice-rector of the college and organiser of the exhibition, the names can be...

How many ages hence, shall this our lofty scene be acted o’er, In states unborn and accents yet unknown! Cries Cassius after the murder of Caesar. Shakespeare Damaging emails have been leaked that detail the falsification of data by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The response of those who embrace the Climate Change Hoax of the Left has added to the loss of prestige and integrity normally associated with scientific research. They are citing tremendous pressures exerted from those who rightfully claim the science to be a false science, they were thus finding it ever...