• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: Grade Inflation"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: The Abused R&G"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2911  Friday, 28 December 2001

From:           Richard Burt <richardburt@hotmail.com>
Date:           Thursday, 27 Dec 2001 15:17:59 -0500
Subject:        More Perry Mason Shakespeare 1964 Episode 204

The episode, rebroadcast in LA on December 27 at 11:30 a.m., begins with
a performance of Shakespeare bits by various aging members of a
theatrical troupe directed by a professor named Ogden Kramer.  Excerpts
from Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” and Hamlet’s “to be
or not to be” soliloquies are read.  “What’s in a name?” comes up later
when Mason interviews a drunk actor played by George Saunders’s brother
(looking and sounding like an aged Ronald Coleman), and Shakespeare and
Macbeth are mentioned during the trial. the actor played by Victor Buono
(King Tut in the Adam West Batman series), who reads Macbeth, turns out
to be the murderer (interestingly, he does not confess to the crime, as
murderers in the Mason series typically do, but, Iago-like, remains
silent). The episode appears to derive from U.S. 1930s and 40s radio
mysteries using Shakespeare (and frequently Macbeth) and the (loser)
Shakespearean analyzed so well by Douglas Lanier in his fine essay on
Shakespeare and U.S. radio in Shakespeare After Mass Media, ed. Richard
Burt.

For a summary of the Perry Mason episode and info, go to
http://www.oz.net/~daveb/pmbook/pmb_c906_e205.htm

_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@ws.bowiestate.edu
The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu>

DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.

• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: Grade Inflation"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: The Abused R&G"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]