My Mom always wanted to start a class at my high school that she called cocktail party culture, where you would learn things like basic plots of major operas and such. I imagine there could be a whole week on "Bible stories you should know the gist of."

I believe there is a reference somewhere in the text that implies Hamlet is 30. However, he has supposedly just come home from school, and it doesn't make sense to many scholars that Hamlet would be still studying at 30. I don't remember all of the specifics anymore.

clears throat, puts on Hamlet Hat

In the 2nd Quarto's first court scene, Claudius & Gertrude ask Hamlet to not return to Wittenberg, as he had supposedly been planning. Also, as noted above, his age is specifically set at 30 in the Gravedigger scene. However, in both the First Quarto and the First Folio, there is no mention of that, and Yorick has only been in the ground for 12 years, not 23.

There's a school of thought that the "good" quarto, Q2, contains Shakespeare's revisions after Richard Burbage originated the role of Hamlet at the age of 32.

I read the bible, but not the KJV, when I was growing up Methodist. Somewhere or other I have a split Bible, with the KJV text in one column and a more modern text in the next column. I might go back and compare some things when I have more free time.

I sometimes wish I'd been through some Catholic instruction for art appreciation. You can tell the woman in suchandso painting is Saint Catherine because there's a wheel there? Oooooh-kaaaay. Not quite intuitive.

Speaking of Hamlet and the right age to play him, David Tennant's in talks to star in a movie adaptation.

[link]

I think a Hamlet where the title character is deliberately portrayed as being Way Too Old For This Shit would be fascinating and wonderful (and has probably been done), but that's not the movie KB made. He was playing the standard issue Young And Brash Hamlet, but doing it as a middle-aged actor in a stupid wig.

Was it Number the Stars by Lois Lowry?

[or] Bernie Magruder and the Case of the Big Stink

Couldn't be either of those, since I read the book back in the late '70s, and those were both written long after that. It was more of a fluffy "kids stumble into a crime in progress and escape using their mad secret communication skillz!" plot than those titles.

Thanks for the suggestions, though!

Beats bitching about the nation's architecture and shagging Camilla Parker Bowles while you wait for your parent to shuffle off this mortal coil.

I would gasp at your outwardly, treacherous attitude toward the lovely Prince Charles, if I wasn't laughing so hard.

Sadly, that is all I can contribute to the Shakespeare conversation as my ignorance of The Bard is known throughout these parts.

Which is sad for one going to school to be a lit teacher.

Interview with the guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

And if you read through the original book it's startling and a bit eerie how many opportunities Jane Austen left in her original work for ultra-violent zombie mayhem.

ha!

So says you!

No, I kid. For me, coming from the extreme religious backwaters of the Deep South, reading the Bible was instrumental in being able to learn to call bullshit on the excesses of religious rhetoric. And to losing my religion, because I think it's fair to say that God as a character in a story is more capricious with his rages and affections than a million Odysseuses. But it's also a fascinating source document for our culture, arguably the most important touchstone for huge unexamined aspects of secular life. The more you know...

Hey, there's a town where the streets have names from the Disc World.