Ides Of March Madness

Published by austin on March 26, 2024March 26, 2024

What’s Shakespeare’s best speech? That question gets answered on this epic episode by director Nate Cohen and actor/educators Elizabeth Dennehy and Gregory Linington, who agonize over every match-up in this Sweet 16 selection of soliloquies and monologues. Highlights include remorse over the many speeches that didn’t make the tournament; the differences between speeches and soliloquies; how Juliet is the female Hamlet; origins of the phrase “rolling thunder;” the unsurprising dominance of fulcrum speeches; a brief “Rap Othello” interlude; and most importantly, how a full March Madness field of 64 would have included many many more of your favorite Shakespeare monologues. (Length 1:22:47)

BRACKET SEEDINGS (and links to speeches)

#1 – Henry, St. Crispin’s Day (Henry V 4,3)

#2 – Hamlet, “I have of late, but wherefore I know not” (Hamlet 2,2)

#3 – Richard, Duke of Gloucester, “I that have neither pity, love, nor fear” (Henry VI, Part 3 5,6)

#4 – Queen Margaret, “What, was it you that would be England’s king?” (Henry VI, Part 3 1,4)

#5 – Rosalind, “And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother” (As You Like It 3,5)

#6 – Edmund, “Thou, nature, art my goddess” (King Lear 1,2)

#7 – Emilia, “I do think it is their husbands’ faults” (Othello 4,3)

#8 – Richard, “No matter where. Of comfort no man speak” (Richard II 3,2)

#9 – Jacques, “All the world’s a stage” (As You Like It 2,7)

#10 – Phoebe, “Think not I love him, though I ask for him” (As You Like It 3,5)

#11 – Marc Antony, “Friends, Romans, countrymen” (Julius Caesar 3,2)