Shakespearean Christmas Carols, part 3

You've sang through part 1 and part 2, so here's the most recent set of Shakespearean Christmas carols! 

Happy holidays to all of you! I will be taking next week off to spend time with my family, but I look forward to seeing you here again in the new year!

2016 has definitely had its full share of heartbreak, but it was also a year of adventure and excitement (and stress and euphoria and terror and learning) as I started working full-time on Good Tickle Brain. Thanks again to all of you for reading and supporting and laughing and generally being a fantastic audience. I look forward to another year of sharing Shakespearean silliness with you. 

A Modern Major Shakespeare Fan

Are you familiar with the song "I am the very model of a modern major general" from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirate of Penzance?

Are you familiar with mathematician and satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer's parody of that song listing all the elements in the periodic table?

Well... this is kind of like that, only with Shakespeare plays. 

If you send me video of yourself or some friends singing this song, I will totally share it with the world.

Cardenio (in 3 Panels)

We continue our 3-panel play journey through Shakespeare's "apocrypha" with a closer look at Shakespeare's infamous lost play, Cardenio!

GET IT? BECAUSE IT'S LOST? HAHAHAHAHA I AM SO FUNNY

...ahem. But seriously, folks...

Cardenio, based off an episode from Miguel Cervantes's novel Don Quixote, is a lost play attributed to Shakespeare and his frequent collaborator John Fletcher. It is "lost" because, while we have a record of its existence and performance, it does not exist in manuscript or published form.

In the 18th century, editor Lewis Theobald claimed to have come into possession of several manuscripts of a hitherto unknown Shakespeare play, which he edited into Double Falsehood. The manuscripts he used have mysteriously disappeared. It's impossible to say if Double Falsehood is, indeed, Cardenio, but it seems to be as close as we're going to get to the lost play. 

If you really want to know what happened to Cardenio, you should read Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. I can't recommend Fforde's Thursday Next series of books enough, by the way. Lots of Shakespeare and literary in-jokes wrapped up in a totally surreal universe.

Sir Thomas More (in 3 Panels)

Continuing my 3-panel play journey through Shakespeare's so-called "apocrypha"...

Sir Thomas More exists as a heavily revised manuscript showing evidence of collaboration by around six different people, with playwrights Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle credited with the bulk of the original material.

It is generally agreed now that Shakespeare contributed three pages of material covering Sir Thomas More's confrontation of the rioters threatening to evict and murder Flemish immigrants. Sir Ian McKellen has been particularly active lately in highlighting More's most impassioned speech to the rabble. I've shared this video before, but it's still worth a look:

Those three pages of material - housed, with the rest of the Sir Thomas More manuscript, in the British Library - are probably the closest we're going to get to any Shakespeare manuscript. PRETTY COOL, EH?

Edward III (in 3 Panels)

I've pretty much run out of standard Shakespeare plays and epic poems to turn into three-panel plays, but fortunately there's still a lot of kinda-sorta Shakespeare material out there! Let's take a look at the anonymously-published Edward III, which is now generally accepted to have been at least partially written by Shakespeare:

OK, so I (a) haven't read Edward III, and (b) haven't read any of the scholarship surrounding Edward III, so I can't tell you anymore about which bits may or may not have been written by Shakespeare. As a huuuuge history play geek, however, I would absolutely love to see this at some point, as it serves as a very nice prequel to Richard II. 

Edward III geeks out there (and you know who you are), feel free to geek about Edward III in the comments. If you have any easily-digestible reading material on Edward III to recommend, do share!

And Ever Thanks?

It's Thanksgiving Day in America! Let's take a closer look at one of Shakespeare's most famous "thanks" quotes...

Some thoughts:

  1. No, this isn't the only instance of editors messing with Shakespeare's language. OBVIOUSLY. This is just a fairly prominent one that I hadn't noticed before.

  2. I have to say, I think I like Theobald's alteration better than the original.

  3. The next time someone says "Thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks" to me, I'm going to respond with "Ever oft good turns are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay." And then I'm going to sigh deeply.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And, if I can be serious for a moment, thanks to ALL of you for reading and supporting Good Tickle Brain. I wouldn't be doing this without your enthusiasm for my work and your appreciation for the silly side of Shakespeare. A special shout-out to my supporters on Patreon, who have helped give me a certain amount of security as I navigate the exciting but occasionally treacherous waters of being a full-time Shakespeare comic artist. You're all marvelous human beings and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Black Friday at the Good Tickle Shoppe!

Starting at 12:00am EST on Friday, everything in the Good Tickle Shoppe is 20% off when you use the extremely originally-named discount code BLACKFRIDAY2016!  The sale will last through 11:59pm on Monday. In addition, several items will be going on clearance.

But Wait! There's More!

It's starting to slide into winter for those of us in the northern hemisphere, with grey skies and the days growing shorter and the threat of snow on the horizon. So, in a fit of brilliance, I decided it was the perfect time to debut a new item of Good Tickle Brain apparel...

...the Complete Works of Shakespeare TANK TOP!!!

My timing is impeccable.

Anyways, starting tomorrow you will be able to pick up one of these extremely soft and comfy unisex tank tops. I've printed a limited number of them this time around, so if you want one, act quickly! If they sell well, I'll definitely print more of them in the future, but that could be several months away...

...just in time for the return of warm weather, possibly, come to think of it...

ANYWAYS.

BLACK FRIDAY.

COMMERCIALISM AND STUFF.