Ides Of March Madness

Published by austin on

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)

#12 – Prince Hal, “Do not think so. You shall not find it so.” (Henry IV, Part 1 3,2)

#13 – Duke, “Be absolute for death.” (Measure For Measure 3,1)

#14 – Malvolio, “Tis but fortune, all is fortune” (Twelfth Night 2,5)

#15 – Aaron, “Even now I curse the day…” (Titus Andronicus 5,1)

#16 – Cassius, “Well, honor is the subject of my story” (Julius Caesar 1,2)

(To view the winners of each bracket, and ultimate champion speech, click here!)

Podcast: Download (94.8MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS | More

Categories: Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast
Tags:

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Related Posts

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern

For his final production as thirty-year artistic director of Chicago's Tony-winning Court Theatre, Charles Newell transforms Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead into an unexpectedly joyful celebration of legacy and theater. Newell reveals his lengthy relationship with not only Stoppard's plays but with the man himself, and shares how he cast two halves of a whole; how he chose to respond instinctively to what was happening in rehearsal rather than adhere to an intricate plan; and how he embraced the counterintuitive and seemingly-oxymoronic phrase “joyful requiem.” (PICTURED: Erik Hellman and Nate Burger as Guildenstern and Rosencrantz in the Court Theatre production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Charles Newell. Photo by Michael Brosilow.) (Length 20:20)

Michelle’s ‘Green World’

Michelle Ephraim – a Professor of English and (with Caroline Bicks), the cohost of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast and the co-author of Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas – joins us this week to talk about her frank and funny new book, Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare. Michelle reveals she discovered Shakespeare surprisingly late; how “fun” is a a perfectly fine description of her sometimes fraught memoir; the shared curse of meeting hero Stephens; how Shakespeare became a source of both pain and solace in the wake of a parent’s death; how her relatively cushy job became surprisingly hazardous; and, finally, how Shakespeare – a dead European white man – became a very relatable force for inclusion. (Length 19:31)

Visiting ‘Shakespeare’s House’

Richard Schoch discusses Shakespeare’s House: A Window Onto His Life and Legacy, his wonderful new history of not only the building in Stratford-upon-Avon that William Shakespeare was born in, but how that building survived and became ground zero in the Shakespeare tourism industry. Schoch reveals how he discovered the dual focus of his book; how it took almost 200 years for people to realize the treasure that still stood in their midst; the shenanigans played by people who first depicted Shakespeare’s birthplace; the important distinctions between restoring a house and remaking it; the trick of hitting that sweet spot between writing an academic history and a popular one; and how the most important person in Shakespeare’s birthplace is not Shakespeare but the visitor. (Length 18:52)