May 21, 2018
Whenever Shakespeare’s plays are performed, there are always
legends and stories which come up right along with them. We have
Macbeth and the Scottish Play, as well as Romeo and Juliet and the
famous misconstrued couplet in the final scene.
Over the years, some of these stories have grown into famous
anecdotes that no one is really sure where they started. No one, at
least, except Paul Menzer. This week at That Shakespeare Life, we
are going to sit down with Paul Menzer, professor at Mary Baldwin
University, to talk about the truth behind the legends connecting
to Shakespeare’s plays, Dr. Menzer is an expert on this particular
topic because he literally wrote the book called Anecdotal
Shakespeare. In this episode, I’ll be asking Dr. Menzer about :
>>Macbeth and why The Scottish Play became such an important
theater legend.
>>We’ll talk about Cymbeline and why smaller plays lack such
strong anecdotes, and
>>you’ll hear a story about Richard Burbage which has spanned
the centuries attaching itself to actors playing Richard III for
centuries.