Shakespeare conspiracy theorists might still wonder who the real playwright was, but we do know what he would’ve sounded like. Linguist David Crystal and his son, actor Ben Crystal, demonstrate the original pronunciation of the Bard’s best. Bonus: An interview with Ben on the research behind the pronunciation.
Sounding Off
Pale Fire
You can’t write about Robert Lowell without writing about mental illness — the poet went through many stretches of mania and psychosis in his life. In the Washington Post, Michael Dirda reads a “medico-biography” of Lowell, which takes a full measure of his lifelong illness and its consequences.
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The Patriarch
This week, Richard Ford published his first novel in a while to feature Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of his Pulitzer-winning book The Sportswriter. At Salon, our own Lydia Kiesling posits a through-line from Bascombe to a certain TV gangster, arguing that The Sopranos shares its view of manhood with Ford’s novels. You could also read our own Michael Bourne on Ford’s 2012 book, Canada.
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No Bill the Butcher?
If Martin Scorsese develops a TV series based on Gangs of New York but it doesn’t feature Daniel Day-Lewis or Leonardo DiCaprio, will anybody watch it?
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Internet Tendency, Redesigned
The charmingly lo-fi McSweeney’s website gets a redesign and manages to stay charmingly lo-fi.