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Shakespeare
Online
To Bardly
Go...
I wasn't really aware of many Shakespearean references in
the original Star Trek, but in Star Trek: The Next Generation,
the captain was a Big Shakespearean Actor, and besides which,
it first aired at the time I was first reading Shakespeare in
high school. Anyway, now that I've read more Shakespeare, I realize
that both the first and second series are replete with references
to the Bard's work. Eventually, I'd like to catalogue them all,
but I'm quite far away from that for now. (There's that pesky
school thing, and that pesky work thing.)
For now, here's a link to Surfing
with the Bard's take on the matter, a usenet posting to rec.arts.startrek.misc
by a Mr. David Learn. Click here
to go directly to the Star Trek page.
There are some other interesting Shakespeare-and-Star-Trek
related sites out there, too.
- The Klingon Language Institute.
(I am not making this up, I swear!) Here
you can read the latest news on their "Klingon Shakespeare
Restoration Project" (which "has as its goal the restoration
of the complete works of Shakespeare to the 'original Klingon.'").
Already fluent in Klingon? Maybe you'd like to read their versions
of Hamlet,
Much Ado
About Nothing (Klingons in Love?), or selected Sonnets.
- Othello,
produced at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., starring
none other than our beloved Captain Picard as the Moor himself.
Wait a second, you're saying, this isn't going to be another
one of those ridiculous things where they've got some white actor
in blackface makeup, is it? No, actually. They did something
rather interesting here: he's the only white member of the cast.
In the interview,
Patrick Stewart calls it a "photo negative" production.
- Another Patrick
Stewart interview is available at the NPR website. You need
the RealAudio® plug-in
to hear it, but if you don't have it, you can download it from
the link for free. The interview is from January 11, 1998, so
he talks a lot about his role in Othello. Be warned, though:
the interview is about nineteen and a half minutes long. Of course,
long interviews is why we listen to NPR in the first place, isn't
it?
- Speaking of long interviews, a search of the NPR archives
turns up a gem: Patrick Stewart's December 16, 1997 appearance
on Talk
of the Nation. This file is even bigger: almost fifty minutes
long!
- The
Captain James T. Kirk Singalong Site. What happens when good
captains sing badly? Here, you can find out. You can also hear
clips from William Shatner's interpretations of Henry V, Romeo
and Juliet, and Hamlet. The site also has pages devoted to other
Star Trek cast members and their audio (mis)adventures. As before,
you'll need the RealAudio plug-in to make the most effective
use of this site.
If you'd like to help build this page (i.e., if you know of
references to Shakespeare in Star Trek), please email
me! Please put "BardTrek" in the subject line. |
