Well, friends, this episode marks the last for the pod. We give you a short list of things we love about Shakespeare and about making this podcast together, we play a few games, and we say our goodbyes. With lots of bird-walking and rabbit holes along the way because when we promise Vintage Whamlet, we deliver. Thank you for making the last 6 years so fantastic. Whamlet OUT!
10 Things We Hate About Shakespeare
This week, for our penultimate episode, we decided to get some sh*t off our chests and make a list of 10 things we hate about Shakespeare. That’s it. No other segments. Oh and we list our bottom 5 plays in the canon, too. But don’t worry, as the saying goes, hatred isn’t the opposite of love, it’s indifference. We bitch because we love.
House of Desires 101
For our final 101 episode, we take you back to the Spanish Golden Age with House of Desires and its proto-Mexican, female playwright Sor Juana (a nun!). We tell you a little about this Metal AF nun in Meet the Contemporary, and we summarize the play and read a very silly cross-dressing scene from the second act for A Taste of Text. We compare translations of the scene a little bit, and then gossip a lot about yet another Oxfraudian, anti-Stratfordian overture made by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (aka SAC - which, like, LOL at your dumb acronym, bros). Listener beware: if the authorship “debate” fills you with white-hot rage, you may just want to skip the last 15 minutes of the episode. That aside, someone please produce House of Desires so we can go see it. We think it’s a delight and we hope you agree.
Here’s what we featured in our Happy Hour segment:
Aubrey’s rec: Himalayan yak cheese dog chews for the adorable extreme chewers in your life
Jess’s rec: this is so dumb, but changing your highlight color on your computer/phone :)
Here’s what we talked about in our ShakesBubble Gossip segment:
That dumb survey Jess and a bunch of other Shakespeare scholars got from the anti-Strats of SAC. (We’re not going to dignify their nonsense with a link to their site. You’re smart. You can find it if you want to.)
A King and No King 101
CW: Today’s episode involves one of our classic tangents, this time into the topic of incest and incest porn.
That said, today’s episode is a 101 all about dynamic playwriting duo Beaumont and Fletcher’s “tragicomedy” A King and No King. We summarize this bonkers play for you - spoilers: it’s only a fake incest plot to lure you in - and ready a portion of act 3 for a Taste of Text. We talk a little about why incest tropes are so popular in modern media, particularly in pornography but also in early modern drama, we gossip a little about the still-unraveling Cleveland Playhouse debacle, and call it a day. Also, there’s a minor character in the play whose name sounds like BI-CURIOUS, so start the fan fictions engines NOW.
Here’s what we featured in our Happy Hour segment:
Aubrey’s rec: Ancient History FanGirl podcast
Jess’s rec: Louise Erdrich, The Future Home of the Living God and Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief
Here’s what we talked about in our ShakesBubble Gossip segment:
Cleveland Playhouse debacle
Love's Labour's Lost 201
It only took us 4 years, but we have finally circled back to Love’s Labour’s Lost for a deep dive into what some fussy Victorians - Hazlitt and Tennyson - had to say about the play, plus a little bit about the moral implications of the ladies’ “homework” for the boys at the play’s conclusion. There also may or may not be some extensive bird walking into a little-known whodunit called The Moonstone #sorrynotsorry. We gossip a little and also deliver A Big Announcement About the Podcast.
Here’s what we featured in our Happy Hour segment:
Aubrey’s rec: Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race by Ian Smith
Jess’s rec: Anti-Racist Shakespeare edited by Ambereen Dadabhoy and Nedda Mehdizadeh
Here’s what we talked about in our ShakesBubble Gossip segment:
That dumb tweet about pronoun use in Shakespeare eye roll
Southwest Shakespeare’s LLL production runs March 24 & 30
LLL plays at the Stratford Festival from August 23- October 1
Asolo Rep’s LLL production runs April 4-23