Mad Shakespeare is delighted to present an original poem inspired by Shakespeare, written by Dr. Noel Sloboda of Penn State.

Remember Raymond Scott, the Folio thief? The BBC did a documentary. It’s narrated by David Tennant. And the whole thing is on YouTube. See below for a colorful tale of Cuban cigars and bibliographic evidence. It’s as close to Ocean’s Eleven as Shakespeare news ever gets.

Brace yourselves, Shakespeare fans. Roland Emmerich’s new film, Anonymous, is almost here. Have you seen its first trailer?

It hits theaters in the US and the UK on September 30, 2011.

Savage Chickens by Doug Savage, June 22, 2007.

Trevor Nunn and Patrick Stewart discuss two ways Stewart approached played Enobarbus, in 1973 and 1978. Check out all that hair on Sir Patrick.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. In this strip, Calvin announces he likes to verb words, something Shakespeare also did a lot of. Hobbes decides that verbing could make language a “complete impediment to understand”–funny, that’s a complaint we often hear about Shakespeare’s language. But isn’t it beautiful when he says “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle,” as one example?

Savage Chickens by Doug Savage, March 3 2006.

Sheldon by Dave Kellett, August 7, 2007. As we reported previously, Sarah Palin seems to think that Shakespeare made up words willy-nilly, and that she can too. We think her image of Shakespeare must be something like this…

This week we got the first look at the movie poster for Julie Taymor’s new film of The Tempest starring Helen Mirren as Prospera. There’s also a new picture of Russell Brand as Trinculo with Alfred Molina as Stephano…

Getting Even With Shakespeare by Mark Sinderson. This cartoon is actually a promotional ad for a play called Getting Even With Shakespeare. Sometimes we probably all feel this way…