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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I believe that every child should get a chance to act, but no child should get a chance to act professionally.

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Reposted by Clear Shakespeare

Matthew Harrison @matthewharrison.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

my mistress' dumps are nothing like a truck

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

People will base an entire production of Macbeth around Lady M's dead baby, when there's no indication that's a thing. She's talking about her very alive kid from a previous marriage.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Apparently Neko Case is a super fan of the play Titus Andronicus, and that's all right by me.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I am only just this second putting together that the same actress played Lydia in Breaking Bad and Lavinia in Julie Taymor's Titus.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Every time an "Oxfordian" pops up, I just slide this little number their way...

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

OK, you want a real authorship question? May I introduce you to the Homeric Question? The author of the Iliad and the Odyssey was almost certainly a centuries-long oral tradition, not one guy.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I know everyone's favorite adjective for Brutus is "noble," but personally I'd go with "preening."

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

About time we had a good Wat Tyler movie!

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Shakespeare absolutely goes to town on a sunrise. Never met a metaphor for the sun coming up he didn't love. Like he takes morning as a personal challenge.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I know that "Shakespeare left clues in the text" is largely the way we teach actors to perform his plays. But I'll be honest: I'm fairly skeptical of this approach. Shakespeare was not the Zodiac Killer or Professor Moriarty. This always feels like the people who look for hidden codes in the Bible.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

We are such concrete stuff where dreams are made of

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

The older I get, the more convinced I am that good directing is just good casting + good scene transitions.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

You know that constant feeling that the bad guys are winning, and there's no way to beat them without hopelessly compromising yourself? That's Hamlet.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

One way to think of Shakespeare's tragic heroes is that they're miscast - that they play what The Wire calls "away games." Hamlet is a peaceful person miscast as a revenger, Macbeth is a killer miscast as a murderer, Othello is a general miscast as a lover, Lear is a king miscast as a retired dad.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

I think an Ayo Edebiri / Rachel Sennott Twelfth Night could work.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

An interesting thing is that Julius Caesar was killed in a theater.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Henry VIII is an incredibly bad play, and also it has like five of the best speeches Shakespeare ever wrote. 🤷‍♂️

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

As he becomes increasingly Falstaffian, maybe someone should actually ask Yale MFA Adam Richman to play Falstaff?

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Oh hey this is from that time I directed macbeth

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

I am once again reminding you that Lady Macbeth does not go mad, and does not have a mad scene.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Important update: "wuthering" is when the wind gets real loud

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Reposted by Clear Shakespeare

Jim Marino @jamesjmarino.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Yes, Ian McKellen citing that "Hand D" speech for Thomas More as "William Shakespeare" is, uhh, overly certain. But I've been being very, very polite about *Hamnet* for months. And that was just to avoid being a killjoy. McKellen's trying to make an important point. Let the man cook.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Polonius gives great advice! The trouble is that it's just not advice that he himself has ever followed.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

I find it pretty inspiring that Jessie Buckley had a rock-solid West End acting career, but she decided her technique wasn't good enough, so she just took three years off to go to RADA.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

This is a great joke, but a huge lie (the way you know it's not true is that David Mamet wrote it and Bari Weiss published it). BUT! Stoppard did write two great Spielberg movies: Empire of the Sun and Last Crusade.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

A Shakespeare character I enjoy is Potpan, a busboy in Romeo and Juliet.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

Very solid directing tip from Jim Downey.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

The word bonfire is short for BONE FIRE. Apparently on Midsummer Night they used to burn bones!

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Reposted by Clear Shakespeare

claire m. l. bourne @roaringgirle.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

a tiny bit of good news is that we have secured funding to digitize john milton's copy of holinshed's CHRONICLES (1587). the images will form part of MILTON'S LIBRARY, an open-access site featuring the 10 books positively identified as milton's w/ transcriptions/translations of his marginal notes.

A close-up image of a handwritten note in a sixteenth-century book. The note reads: 'Spenser repor / teth otherwise / [o]f this Knight / [D]ialogue of Ire- / [la]nd / [p]. 76.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Bottom from Midsummer: 1. Works in the garment industry. 2. Has a passion for acting. 3. Shows no interest in the beautiful magic lady throwing herself at him. 4. Is named Bottom. Friends, this is not the resume of a straight man.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

I increasingly feel like you can't perform Midsummer Night's Dream with an intermission. Once you're in magic dreamland, you can't come out until everybody wakes up.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Do the early modernists know that there's a very successful (American) football coach named Ben Johnson now? If I were a sportswriter, I would do nothing but write terrible Jonson-pun headlines all day long, and absolutely no one would understand them.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

In 1877, Frederick Douglass joined his neighborhood Shakespeare reading group. The one role we know he performed for sure: Shylock.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

It remains wild that everyone just assumes we know what Marlowe looked like, when there is zero proof this famous image is him.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

The only Harold Bloom literary analysis I agree with is that the Harry Potter books are trash.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

Top ten things to beware in Shakespeare: 1. Ides of March 2. Jealousy 3. The rope's end 4. My sting 5. The Thane of Fife 6. Your beard 7. Brutus 8. The foul fiend 9. An ass 10. Entrance to a quarrel

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Andrew Garfield's character is named "Henrik Gibson." Not at all kidding.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Had the honor of working a bit on this King Lear (and sharing a birthday cake)

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

For years, I've been dream casting a Wes Anderson Twelfth Night movie. FINALLY, the perfect Sir Andrew has entered the equation: Michael Cera.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

A weird thing is that Malcolm didn't actually succeed Macbeth. Instead, one of Lady Macbeth's kids got put on the throne for a few months (until Malcolm had him assassinated).

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Looks like I've found my new favorite scholarly text

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Let's take a moment to appreciate Val Kilmer's weird little Shakespeare career. Especially that one time he played Orlando opposite Patti LuPone's Rosalind.

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Clear Shakespeare @clearshakes.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Iago probably wasn't even next in line for that promotion.

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