GTB Play Page Updates: All's Well, Ant & Cleo, As You

Time for some more play page updates! I’ve run out of plays that I’ve done complete scene-by-scenes adaptations for, but I’m putting together pages for the rest, starting with the As:

Stay Home, Stay Safe (Shakespeare Edition)

How should we be acting during global pandemic? As with so many things in life, we can look to Shakespeare for guidance.

Consulting pocket dramaturg: Kate Pitt

Consulting pocket dramaturg: Kate Pitt

This is probably the ONLY situation in which I can confidently say… Be like Timon.

(Except for the bit where he pays prostitutes to go spread venereal diseases. Don’t do that bit. Ew.)

Top Ten Prolonged Shakespearean Deaths

Remember when I put together that infographic on which Shakespearean character spends the most time dead onstage? Well, I decided to do another one, this time on which Shakespearean character spends the most time dying onstage. Here are the results of my haphazard investigation! 

EDIT: Thanks to Brad Filippone, who noted I forgot Salisbury from 1 Henry VI. (My apologies to Nick Asbury, my first and most memorable Salisbury.)

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My initial thought was that the #1 spot would go to Antony, who, as we know, is really bad at killing himself. I totally forgot that Edmund is dying onstage during much of the final King Lear exposition. So, take a bow, Edmund! You're the Prolonged Shakespearean Dying champion!

Special mention to Desdemona, who also made the top ten list of characters who spend the most time dead onstage. That's a really... special achievement. 

Poor Desdemona.

Stick Figure Iconography: Cleopatra

For this "Shakespearean Stick Figure Iconography" series, I deliberately picked characters who were very visually distinctive, and few characters are more visually distinctive than the Queen of the Nile.

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I'm a big fan of Cleopatra's little snake crown. It's iconic and shows up quite often in productions. I can almost imagine the costume designers sketching the crown out and thinking... "yeah, we're adding the little snake, just try and stop us."

The Antony & Cleopatra Death Clock

Like the wheels on the bus headed towards DEATH TOWN, the Shakespearean Death Clocks keep going 'round and 'round...

This was a particularly hard play to make a death clock for, as it has about a bazillion different scenes and at least a million different characters. I've tried to get them all, but if I've missed any, do let me know in the comments below. (EDIT: Thanks to Charmiander in the comments for pointing out that I had missed Alexas!) And now some notes:

  1. Fulvia is Antony's third wife. She doesn't make an appearance. She just dies.

  2. Pacorus makes an appearance onstage as a corpse. He apparently killed Marcus Crassus and Ventidius killed him in revenge. Don't ask me who any of those people are. I don't know and, as far as I can tell, they are all totally superfluous to the plot.

  3. This play might win the award for "Most Natural Deaths in a Tragedy". (I'm counting broken hearts as natural deaths. They're sad, yes, but nobody sticks a dagger in 'em or poisons them or anything.)

Next week I'll be at the Stratford Festival! I'll still be posting Death Clocks (as I still have a number of tragedies to get through) but they'll be ones with low body-counts, to give me some extra time off to enjoy my theatre binge. I'll be documenting my adventures on my various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and my resurrected Instagram) so follow me there to see what I'm up to!