Kurt Vonnegut Maps Out the Universal Shapes of Our Favorite Stories

in Books, Literature | July 31st, 2015

Imag­ine a hat. Flip it upside down, and you’ve got your­self the out­line of a sto­ry the pub­lic will nev­er weary of, accord­ing to author Kurt Von­negut, who maps it on out a chalk­board in the video above.

His Y‑axis charts a range between good and ill for­tune. Von­negut rec­om­mends posi­tion­ing your main char­ac­ter slight­ly clos­er to the good (i.e. wealth and bois­ter­ous health) end of the spec­trum, at least in the begin­ning. He or she will dip below mid­line soon enough.

As for the X‑axis, Von­negut labels it B‑E, from begin­ning to end.

Now plot your points, remem­ber­ing that it’s all about the curves.

Some pop­u­lar themes include peo­ple get­ting in and out of trou­ble, and the ever­green boy gets girl. (The always pro­gres­sive Von­negut reminds his view­ers that the gen­ders in the lat­ter sce­nario are always open to inter­pre­ta­tion. Again, it’s the curves that count…)

Think­ing about my favorite books and films, it seems that most do fol­low Vonnegut’s upside-down hat nar­ra­tive arc.

Are there excep­tions?

Hor­a­tio Alger’s rags to rich­es sto­ries, for exam­ple. We should all be so lucky to find our­selves pow­er­ing up such a steep uphill grade.

Of course there are excep­tions!

Von­negut him­self iden­ti­fies a par­tic­u­lar­ly high pro­file one, whose geom­e­try is less an ele­gant curve than a stair­case that ter­mi­nates in a free fall. (SPOILER: it involves a fairy god­moth­er and ends in an infin­i­ty sym­bol.

Those weary of pars­ing sto­ry using the Hero’s Jour­ney tem­plate should inves­ti­gate Vonnegut’s graph­ic approach. It works!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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12 Classic Literary Road Trips in One Handy Interactive Map

in Literature, Maps | July 30th, 2015

on the road mapped

Fan­ta­sy fic­tion invari­ably includes a map for read­ers to under­stand the hero’s jour­ney, lit­er­al­ly. We know that Hob­bits had to walk a long way into Mor­dor, but see­ing it car­to­graph­i­cal­ly real­ly hits home. But what of the great road trip nov­els, where the coun­try is Amer­i­ca, the jour­ney is long and often cir­cu­lar, and self-actu­al­iza­tion awaits the hero, and not an army of orcs?

Atlas Obscu­ra, Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras’ blog of dis­cov­ery and adven­ture in the mod­ern world, have come to the res­cue with an inter­ac­tive map that plots out the trav­els of road trip-filled books, some non-fic­tion, oth­ers fic­tion­al­ized real­i­ty. Where a loca­tion is men­tioned in a text, it has been pinned to the map, and by click­ing on the pin, the rel­e­vant text is revealed. Clever stuff.

For exam­ple, the map for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (see snap­shot above) plots out the five trips con­tained in the nov­el, and one can see the main hubs of the sto­ry: NYC and San Fran­cis­co, of course, but also Den­ver and the crazed detour town to Mex­i­co City, where Sal, Dean, and Stan Shep­hard par­ty hard in a bor­del­lo and Sal winds up with dysen­tery for his trou­bles.

zen road trip
For some­thing more straight­for­ward, check out the North­west trav­els at the heart of Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance. Writ­ten in the first per­son, the novel’s nar­ra­tor trav­els by motor­cy­cle with his son from Min­neso­ta to North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, end­ing up in San Fran­cis­co, tak­ing 17 days. The philo­soph­i­cal jour­ney, how­ev­er, cov­ers wider ter­rain.

koolaid road trip
Anoth­er Bay Area tale, Tom Wolfe’s account of Ken Kesey and the Mer­ry Pranksters in The Elec­tric Kool-Aid Acid Test starts in La Hon­da, Cal­i­for­nia, a moun­tain get­away to the west of San Jose, and, as one can see, com­pletes a cir­cle of the States, includ­ing trips to both Cal­gary, Cana­da and Man­zanil­lo, Mex­i­co, where every­body is “uptight,” man, head­ing north­east to both Gua­na­ju­a­to and Aguas­calientes, where Acid Tests are admin­is­tered.

There’s more at the link, includ­ing maps for Wild, A Walk Across Amer­i­ca, and Trav­els with Charley. It might inspire a repeat read­ing of a favorite book. Or it might inspire you to just light out for the ter­ri­to­ries.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Acid Test Reels: Ken Kesey & The Grate­ful Dead’s Sound­track for the 1960s Famous LSD Par­ties

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Orson Welles Reads From Moby-Dick: The Great American Director Takes on the Great American Novel

in Film, Literature | July 30th, 2015

If you took a poll to deter­mine in whose voice most read­ers would like to hear their audio books, I imag­ine Orson Welles would land pret­ty high on the list. And if you took a poll to deter­mine which book most read­ers would rather approach in audio form than paper form, I imag­ine Her­man Melville’s weighty but unde­ni­ably impor­tant (and still lit­er­ar­i­ly fas­ci­nat­ing) Moby-Dick would land pret­ty high on the list. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for us, Welles nev­er sat down to get the entire­ty of Moby-Dick on tape, but he did give the book a few read­ings on film, round­ed up today for your enjoy­ment.


Most famous­ly, Welles appeared in John Hus­ton’s 1956 adap­ta­tion of the nov­el as Father Map­ple, deliv­er­er of the ser­mon on Jon­ah heard by the nar­ra­tor Ish­mael and his bunk­mate Quee­queg ear­ly on in the sto­ry, just before they sign on to the Pequod. Pos­sessed of an inter­est of his own in Melville’s mas­ter­work, Welles used his pay­check from the cameo to bring Moby-Dick to the stage. But he also want­ed to do some­thing cin­e­mat­ic with the mate­r­i­al, as evi­denced by the oth­er two videos here: read­ings he shot in 1971, dur­ing pro­duc­tion of The Oth­er Side of the Wind. In them, he speaks the nov­el­’s immor­tal open­ing line, “Call me Ish­mael.”


Though he may sound even more com­pelling in Ish­mael’s role than in Father Map­ple’s, these clips do make you won­der what, or which char­ac­ter, stoked Welles’ fas­ci­na­tion with Moby-Dick in the first place. Cer­tain­ly we can draw obvi­ous par­al­lels between him and the Pequod’s Cap­tain Ahab in terms of their ten­den­cy toward grand, all-con­sum­ing, impos­si­ble-seem­ing projects. Then again, Ahab labors under the idea that man can, with suf­fi­cient will, direct­ly per­ceive all truths, while Welles made F for Fake, so per­haps he was a ques­tion­ing, skep­ti­cal Ish­mael after all. Whomev­er he iden­ti­fied with, this pil­lar of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma must have had big plans for this pil­lar of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture — which, alas, we can now only strug­gle to per­ceive, just as Ahab and Ish­mael strug­gle to per­ceive the form of the whale deep in the water.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ray Brad­bury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

The Moby Dick Big Read: Celebri­ties and Every­day Folk Read a Chap­ter a Day from the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el

A View From the Room Where Melville Wrote Moby Dick (Plus a Free Celebri­ty Read­ing of the Nov­el)

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

Orson Welles Reads Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in a 1977 Exper­i­men­tal Film

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketches of Mind-Bending Chess Problems

in Games, Literature | July 30th, 2015

20100602_nabokov_chess

Most of us strive to achieve some kind of distinction—or competence—in one, often quite nar­row, field. And for some of us, the path to suc­cess involves leav­ing behind many a path not tak­en. Child­hood pur­suits like bal­let, for exam­ple, the high jump, the trum­pet, act­ing, etc. become hazy mem­o­ries of for­mer selves as we grow old­er and busier. But if you have the for­mi­da­ble will and intel­lect of émi­gré Russ­ian nov­el­ist Vladimir Nabokov, you see no need to aban­don your beloved avo­ca­tions sim­ply because you are one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most cel­e­brat­ed writers—in both Russ­ian and Eng­lish. No indeed. You also go on to become a cel­e­brat­ed ama­teur lep­i­dopter­ist (see his but­ter­fly draw­ings here), earn­ing dis­tinc­tion as cura­tor of lep­i­doptera at Har­vard’s Muse­um of Com­par­a­tive Zool­o­gy and orig­i­na­tor of an evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry of but­ter­fly migra­tion. And as if that were not enough, you spend your spare time for­mu­lat­ing com­pli­cat­ed chess prob­lems, earn­ing such a rep­u­ta­tion that you are invit­ed in 1970 to join the Amer­i­can chess team to cre­ate prob­lems for inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions.

Nabokov Chess Problem

Nabokov was not eas­i­ly impressed by oth­er writ­ers or sci­en­tists, but he held chess play­ers in espe­cial­ly high regard. His “heroes include a chess grand­mas­ter,” writes Nabokov schol­ar Janet Gezari, “and a chess prob­lem com­pos­er…; chess games occur in sev­er­al of the nov­els; and chess and chess prob­lem lan­guage and imagery reg­u­lar­ly put his read­ers’ chess knowl­edge to the test.” His third nov­el, 1930’s The Defense, cen­ters on a chess mas­ter dri­ven to despair by his genius, a char­ac­ter based on real grand­mas­ter Curt von Bardeleben. For Nabokov, the skill and inge­nu­ity required for com­pos­ing chess prob­lems par­al­leled that required for great writ­ing: “The strain on the mind is for­mi­da­ble,” he wrote in his mem­oir Speak, Mem­o­ry, “the ele­ment of time drops out of one’s con­scious­ness.” Puz­zling out chess prob­lems and solu­tions, he wrote, “demand from the com­pos­er the same virtues that char­ac­ter­ize all worth­while art: orig­i­nal­i­ty, inven­tion, con­cise­ness, har­mo­ny, com­plex­i­ty and splen­did insincerity”—all qual­i­ties, we’d have to agree, of Nabokov’s fine­ly wrought fic­tions.

Nabokov Chess Game

In 1970, Nabokov pub­lished Poems and Prob­lems, a col­lec­tion of thir­ty-nine Russ­ian poems, with Eng­lish trans­la­tions, four­teen Eng­lish poems, and eigh­teen chess prob­lems, with solu­tions. He had pur­sued this pas­sion since his teens, and pub­lished near­ly three dozen chess prob­lems in his life­time. At the top of the post, see one of them, “Mate in 2,” sketched out in Nabokov’s hand (try to solve it your­self here). Below it, see anoth­er of the author’s chess prob­lem sketch­es, and in the pho­to above, see Nabokov absorbed in a chess game with his wife.

Though it may seem that Nabokov had lim­it­less ener­gy and time to devote to his extra-lit­er­ary pur­suits, he also wrote with regret about the price he paid for his obses­sion: “the pos­ses­sive haunt­ing of my mind,” as he called it, “with carved pieces or their intel­lec­tu­al coun­ter­parts swal­lowed up so much time dur­ing my most pro­duc­tive and fruit­ful years, time which I could have bet­ter spent on lin­guis­tic adven­tures.” Like the lep­i­dopter­ists still mar­veling over Nabokov’s con­tri­bu­tions to that field, the chess lovers who encounter his prob­lems, and his inge­nious use of the game in fic­tion, would hard­ly agree that his pur­suit of chess was fruit­less or unpro­duc­tive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: What If The Bard Wrote The Big Lebowski?

in Comedy, English Language, Literature | July 29th, 2015

We live in an age of mash ups. A few years ago some mal­con­tent came up with Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies. Our cities are teem­ing with food trucks hawk­ing Kore­an tacos and ramen burg­ers. And chess box­ing is appar­ent­ly a thing. So per­haps it isn’t sur­pris­ing that some evil genius would merge the most quotable movie of the past 20 years, The Big Lebows­ki, with William Shake­speare.

The result­ing book, writ­ten by Adam Bertoc­ci, is called Two Gen­tle­men of Lebows­ki, and it does a sur­pris­ing­ly good job of cap­tur­ing the lan­guage of the Bard while stay­ing true to the orig­i­nal movie. The author report­ed­ly wrote the first draft of the book in a sin­gle sleep­less week­end. An impres­sive feat that the author dis­miss­es in an inter­view with CNN that you can see above.

“Any­body could, giv­en the lack of a social life,” dead­pans Bertoc­ci, “take a week­end with a movie they admired and an author that they knew well and make a sim­i­lar­ly lengthy mash up of it.”

In Bertocci’s fevered rework­ing (read the first 3 scenes for free here), the Dude is recast as The Knave. His bel­liger­ent best friend is Sir Wal­ter of Poland. The hap­less Don­nie is Sir Don­ald of Greece. Knox Har­ring­ton, Mauve’s grat­ing­ly gig­gly con­cep­tu­al artist friend, is in this ver­sion a tapes­try artist. And of course, Da Fino, the PI, who shad­ows the Dude in the movie, is list­ed sim­ply as Broth­er Sea­mus.

But where Bertoc­ci real­ly shines is in his clever appro­pri­a­tion of Shake­speare­an lan­guage. The film’s copi­ous pro­fan­i­ty has been replaced with more Bard-wor­thy epi­thets like “rash egg” or “var­let.” The word “ver­i­ly” pep­pers the Knave’s dia­logue as the word “like” pep­pers the Dude’s. And when Wal­ter wax­es poet­ic about the rules of bowl­ing, he does so in iambic pen­tame­ter.

To get a sense of the dif­fer­ences, com­pare the clip above from the movie with the Bard-ofied text of the same scene below.

THE KNAVE’s house. Enter THE KNAVE, car­ry­ing parcels, and BLANCHE and WOO. They fight.

BLANCHE
Whith­er the mon­ey, Lebows­ki? Faith, we are as ser­vants to Bon­nie;
promised by the lady good that thou in turn were good for’t.

WOO
Bound in hon­our, we must have our bond; cursed be our tribe
if we for­give thee.

BLANCHE
Let us soak him in the cham­ber-pot, so as to turn his head.

WOO
Aye, and see what vapouris­es; then he will see what is foul.

They insert his head into the cham­ber-pot.

BLANCHE
What dread­ful noise of waters in thine ears! Thou hast cool’d
thy head; think now upon dri­er mat­ters.

WOO
Speak now on ducats else again we’ll thee duck­est; whith­er the
mon­ey, Lebows­ki?

THE KNAVE
Faith, it awaits down there some­place; prithee let me glimpse
again.

WOO
What, thou rash egg! Thus will we drown thine excla­ma­tions.

They again insert his head into the cham­ber-pot.

BLANCHE
Tri­fle not with the fury of two des­per­ate men. Long has thy
wife sealed a bond with Jaques Tree­horn; as blood is to blood,
sure­ly thou owest to Jaques Tree­horn in rec­om­pense.

WOO
Rise, and speak wise­ly, man—but hark;
I see thy rug, as woven i’the Ori­ent,
A trea­sure from abroad. I like it not.
I’ll stain it thus; to dead­beats ever thus.

He stains the rug.

THE KNAVE
Sir, prithee nay!

BLANCHE
Now thou seest what hap­pens, Lebows­ki, when the agree­ments
of hon­ourable busi­ness stand com­pro­mised. If thou wouldst
treat mon­ey as water, flow­ing as the gen­tle rain from heav­en,
why, then thou know­est water begets water; it will be a watery
grave your rug, drown’d in the weep­ing brook. Pray remem­ber,
Lebows­ki.

THE KNAVE
Thou err’st; no man calls me Lebows­ki. Hear right­ly, man!—for
thou hast got the wrong man. I am the Knave, man; Knave in
nature as in name.

BLANCHE
Thy name is Lebows­ki. Thy wife is Bon­nie.

THE KNAVE
Zounds, man. Look at these unwor­thi­est hands; no gaudy gold
pro­fanes my lit­tle hand. I have no hon­our to con­tain the ring. I
am a bach­e­lor in a wilder­ness. Behold this place; are these the
tow­ers where one may glimpse Geof­frey, the mar­ried man? Is
this a court where mis­tress­es of com­mon sense are hid? Not for
me to hang my bugle in an invis­i­ble baldric, sir; I am loath to
take a wife, or she to take me until men be made of some oth­er
met­tle than earth. Hark, the lid of my cham­ber-pot be lift­ed!

Per­son­al­ly, I’m hop­ing that the Globe The­atre stages a ver­sion of this.

While you are wait­ing for that to hap­pen, you can see anoth­er scene from Two Gen­tle­men from Lebows­ki above where The Knave and Sir Wal­ter com­mis­er­ate about a rug, which was besmirched by a “most mis­er­able tide.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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An Animated Hunter S. Thompson Talks with Studs Terkel About the Hell’s Angels & The Outlaw Life

in Life, Literature | July 28th, 2015

Blank on Blank returns with an ani­ma­tion of anoth­er lost inter­view from the Studs Terkel Radio Archive. This time, they’re breath­ing new life into a con­ver­sa­tion Terkel had with Hunter S. Thomp­son in 1967 — soon after HST pub­lished his ground­break­ing piece of Gonzo jour­nal­ism: Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. The book, built upon the foun­da­tions of a 1965 arti­cle Thomp­son wrote for The Nation (read it online here) gave us a glimpse inside “a world most of us would nev­er dare encounter,” wrote The New York Times in its orig­i­nal review. Thomp­son tells Terkel what he learned from that (some­times har­row­ing) expe­ri­ence above. You can hear the com­plete Terkel-Thomp­son inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Free Online: Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

 

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Harper Lee Gets a Request for a Photo; Offers Important Life Advice Instead (2006)

in Letters, Life, Literature | July 27th, 2015

Harper Lee

Harp­er Lee wrote To Kill a Mock­ing­bird in 1960. More than a half decade lat­er, the nov­el remains one of the most wide­ly-read books in Amer­i­can class­rooms. And stu­dents still write the 89-year-old author, request­ing pho­tographs and auto­graphs.

Occa­sion­al­ly, they get a lit­tle more than they bar­gained for. Take, for exam­ple, a stu­dent named “Jere­my,” who wrote Lee in 2006 and request­ed a pho­to. In return, he got some­thing more valu­able and endur­ing: some pithy life advice. The let­ter Harp­er sent to Jere­my reads as fol­lows:

06/07/06

Dear Jere­my

I don’t have a pic­ture of myself, so please accept these few lines:

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to oth­ers, and don’t think you are the most impor­tant being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look any­one in the eye and say, “I’m prob­a­bly no bet­ter than you, but I’m cer­tain­ly your equal.”

(Signed, ‘Harp­er Lee’)

Lee’s sec­ond nov­el, Go Set a Watch­man, was just released last week — 55 years after her debut. You can read the first chap­ter (and also hear Reese With­er­spoon read it aloud) here.

via Let­ters of Note

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Harp­er Lee on the Joy of Read­ing Real Books: “Some Things Should Hap­pen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Met­al”

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

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A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Performed by Great Actors: Gielgud, McKellen & More

in Literature, Theatre | July 20th, 2015

A cou­ple of years ago we pub­lished a post on “what Shake­speare sound­ed like to Shake­speare” which high­light­ed some promi­nent lin­guists’ attempts to recre­ate the Eliz­a­bethan speech pat­terns and accents of the play­wright’s day. There may be some small debate about whether or not they suc­ceed­ed, but we’ll nev­er know for cer­tain since his day is long behind us.

In some ways, the nature of Shake­speare’s lan­guage may have been more French, or more Lati­nate, or more Sax­on, than the Eng­lish we speak today—depending on the pro­por­tion of region­alisms com­min­gling in any giv­en play, like char­ac­ters in a nation­al bazaar.

Our cur­rent ver­sion of the lan­guage may have absorbed anoth­er four hun­dred years of glob­al influ­ence, but in the process it has also become more homog­e­nized and stan­dard­ized. Shake­speare’s lan­guage was both more provin­cial and more riotous­ly diverse–in spelling and pronunciation–than many kinds of Eng­lish we speak today.

Per­haps this is one rea­son we think of Shake­speare as a uni­ver­sal poet—the het­ero­doxy of his speech, and hence a vari­abil­i­ty of char­ac­ters found in few oth­er lit­er­a­tures. Even his stock types seem to have indi­vid­ual voic­es. The degree of inter­play between high and low speech—city and coun­try, com­ic and trag­ic, lyric and prosaic—may be why near­ly every world lan­guage has found a way to adapt his work, accent­ing some qual­i­ties and mut­ing oth­ers. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can see for your­self at the MIT Glob­al Shake­speare’s Video & Per­for­mance Archive, which hosts dozens of Shake­speare stag­ings in dozens of lan­guages, like the mes­mer­iz­ing Japan­ese Lear above, or the heartrac­ing­ly intense one-woman clip from the Argen­tine Ham­let la meta­mor­pho­sis at the top, a melo­dra­mat­ic pro­duc­tion that would thrill David Lynch. Addi­tion­al­ly, the data­base aggre­gates “essays and meta­da­ta pro­vid­ed by schol­ars and edu­ca­tors in the field” of inter­na­tion­al Shake­speare stud­ies.

Even among the thou­sands of Eng­lish-lan­guage adap­ta­tions of Shake­speare’s work we find an inter­na­tion­al diver­si­ty of speech. The Spo­ti­fy playlist above, brought to us by Ulysses Clas­si­cal (mak­ers of the Stan­ley Kubrick Playlist), presents a huge col­lec­tion of record­ed Shake­speare plays and poems, as well as the scores and inci­den­tal music for Eng­lish-lan­guage pro­duc­tions. The actors represented–Sirs Giel­gud, Olivi­er, and McK­ellen, Derek Jaco­bi, Edith Evans–are most­ly Eng­lish stage roy­al­ty, but we also have Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and actor Richard Bur­ton, and Amer­i­cans Paul Robe­son, Ros­alind Rus­sell, and Orson Welles. The val­ue of such a col­lec­tion is inestimable–68 hours of Shake­speare read and per­formed by some of the world’s finest actors. But it is indeed a spe­cif­ic slice of the world. Even in Eng­lish it feels (for­give the puns) that all the world could be rep­re­sent­ed here, doing Shake­speare in every kind of Eng­lish around the globe. Per­haps such a glob­al approach to teach­ing Shake­speare in Eng­lish would add nuance to debates about whether his work is still rel­e­vant in Amer­i­can high school and col­lege class­rooms. In any case, there seem to be few bar­ri­ers to actors and direc­tors for approach­ing Shake­speare with new trans­la­tions and with fresh eyes, ears, and cos­tumes, again and again.

You can access the Spo­ti­fy playlist on the web here. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Orson Welles’ Radio Per­for­mances of 10 Shake­speare Plays

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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