Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Shakespeare/Archive 4

Wikipedia:Signpost interview

Right! Thanks for agreeing to do this! Let's get started. Be aware that I may have to edit down the responses a bit, but I will not do so misleadingly, and will link to this conversation.

Before we begin, tell us a bit about yourselves

[Answer here]

WikiProject Shakespeare is a fairly recent project, can you tell us a bit about what led to its creation?

A few of us were having trouble deciding whether to add infoboxes to all the Shakespeare play articles. We decided there were enough of us to create a project. From there, we could draw up some guidelines for Shakespeare plays to help future editors. We also wanted to collaborate and get Shakespeare articles to a higher quality using the expertise of editors who joined. Wrad (talk) 15:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Shakespeare was neglected on Wikipedia for many years - before this project was founded in April 2007, there doesn't appear to have been a single Shakespearian Featured Article, and perhaps not even any Good Articles. Tell us about what progress the project has made towards improving coverage of Shakespeare.

After we got ourselves organized, our first big project was bringing William Shakespeare to FA status. Most of the editors in the Shakespeare project had never tried to bring an article to FA status before, so it was pretty hard. We found though, that as we showed we were serious about our goal, other editors more familiar with the process showed up to help. It took a couple tries at FAC and a lot of discussion and compromise, but we made it. It united our project and showed us all what we were capable of. Romeo and Juliet became a GA not long after, and Hamlet became an FA, both thanks to similar collaborations. Wrad (talk) 15:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Shakespeare is, of course, one of the most academically studied playwrights in all of history. How does the sheer amount of material available affect your work?

It is really weird sometimes. As a test, a few of us brought Rosaline and Sycorax (Shakespeare) to GA status, just to see if we could. Both Rosaline and Sycorax are extremely minor characters in Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, respectively. In fact, they have no speaking parts and do not appear in any of the stage directions, so most audiences watching the play would never even see them. They are only talked about by other character in the play. In most cases, articles about such minor characters would be deleted because there would be so little information about him. However, with the Bard, everybody seems to talk about everything, so even the most minor characters have a lot of scholarly analysis behind them.

With articles such as Hamlet and William Shakespeare, it was more tricky. A lot of research was needed and there was an endless supply of things to read. It was just a matter of deciding what to keep in the main article and what to split off into sub-articles. Wrad (talk) 15:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

What recent achievements are you particularly proud of?

Getting Hamlet and William Shakespeare to FA. Wrad (talk) 18:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

If someone reading this was interested in joining WikiProject Shakespeare, but wasn't quite sure, what would you want to say to them?

I think this is one of the best WikiProjects out there because it has real goals and people that are serious about meeting them. We aren't here just to settle the occasional argument, we're here to really improve Shakespeare articles to the best quality we can. Wrad (talk) 18:09, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Shakespeare is also an under-represented subject on Wikipedia, with a wealth of sources available for research. The articles within the scope of the project cover biography, linguistics, literature and poetry, visual arts, performance art, geography, bookbinding, and even computer programming and gardening; whatever your particular interest is, the odds are you'll find articles that interest you in this project. Being a relatively young project with a wide and well researched subject there is also an abundance of Stub articles that can be improved a lot with a minimum of effort, and I can personally vouch for the fact that working on Wikipedia's coverage is great way to get started learning more about Shakespeare! --Xover (talk) 19:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Notes

Just reply in the sections normally, and I'll edit it into newspaper-format later. I'll probably add a few more questions based on the answers to the other ones, too. Thanks for helping out! Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Headsup: Banner tweaks!

A quick headsup: I've switched the WikiProject banner over to using Template:WPBannerMeta instead of the hand-crafted original. This ought to give us a whole bunch of stuff — the new C-class quality rating, for one; non-article ratings, for another — for free, without having to maintain a moderately complicated piece of template code ourselves.

If this change breaks anything: revert it! --Xover (talk) 20:47, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Ghost character

This article is up for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ghost character. Dalejenkins | 20:04, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Shakespeare

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Kinda weird that Banquo has a top importance rating... Wrad (talk) 22:33, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Genre issues from Richard III page

• Copying this discussion from the Richard III page as it involves issues relevant to the project at large. Comments?

From the talk page

It seems like this sentence "The play is sometimes interpreted as a tragedy (as it is called in its earliest quarto); however, it more correctly belongs among the histories, as it is does in the First Folio." might have a POV issue. The emphasis is mine. Unless scholarly debate is closed on the issue, stating where it belongs seems to be adhering to a certain POV. I would like to change the second half of the sentence to something like "however, it is more often labeled a history (as is the case in the First Folio)." However, I have no citation stating that such is the case. So the best I can probably do is "The play is sometimes interpreted as a tragedy (as it is called in its earliest quarto), and sometimes as a history (as is the case in the First Folio). It is a brilliant written play, and is great to wathc at the theatres! i advise you to watch it if you are studying it for SATs."

The sentence immediately proceeding this one may also be statement of POV. "It is a Shakespearean attempt to adapt history into theatre."

Thoughts? - ACodispo 03:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree that the sentence "It is a Shakespearean attempt to adapt history into theatre" is unhelpful. The categorization of Shakespearean plays into "histories" and "tragedies" is fairly well defined, though, I'd have thought. It's not a question of whether the history is accurate; none of his "history" plays are. Deb 17:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm changing the intro sentence to address ACodispo's concerns, which I share, about the word "correctly"; it's not correct, just normal. DionysosProteus (talk) 01:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I see that amendment has been altered. Please discuss here. The log claims "primary source" and "contemporary reference". This argument is clearly flawed in two ways: firstly, the folio is not a contemporary source, as it was prepared and published in 1623, some seven years after the author's death; secondly, the quarto qualifies on both grounds claimed: it is a primary source and it is contemporary, published in 1597 while Shakespeare is still alive. DionysosProteus (talk) 19:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

regardless - in keeping with numerous discussions on these and other pages, we have adopted the First Folio classifications thru-out. If you want to change that, please build a consensus at the Shakespeare project page. Until then, I am reverting the change. (First Folio is certainly a contemporary document - quibbling over the authors date of death aside.) An equally silly quibble would be that Shakespeare's name isn't even ON the quarto! Heck - why not get into who might have actually wrote these works....but I digress... :) Smatprt (talk) 20:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Seriously - I am just asking you to do your homework better. This has been well discussed and is currently outlined on the Shakespeare project page. Howeer, I think you are also being disingenuous in that you attacked the log, but took it out of context. The log starts with "We follow the First Folio classifications here" , then went on to explain that a few reasons. You ignored the first sentence and attacked the second. I don't know if it's just stubbornness or ownership issues that are in play, but I think you know darn well that the Folio classifications are, by consensus, the ones being used on these pages. Another point regarding the FF - it clearly states that it has corrected and augmented earlier versions, which it labeled as stolen and/or surreptitious versions. I think the editors of the Sh project are simply taking the FF at its word. So - again - if you want to change the consensus, feel free, but until you do, the FF classifications should stay. Smatprt (talk) 20:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I seem to remember something in the Wikipedia guidelines concerning good faith, no? You make many assumptions about my motivations, which are unjustified. I didn't decontextualise your log entry. It reads, in full: "no - not "POV" at all - we follow the First Folio classifications here. Primary source, contemporary reference, etc., etc." I understand you to be offering "primary source" and "contemporary reference" as reasons for "we follow..." Hence my objection to its faulty reasoning, as detailed above--there is nothing disingenuous about engaging with the reasons that you offered. "We follow" is a statement of practice, not a reasoned justification for that practice. Your suggestion that I am motivated by ownership issues is easily dismissed by a quick glance at the article's edit history--I am not aware of having contributed to the article at all (if I did, it was so long ago I've forgotten). Dismissing my concerns over the reasoning behind the removal as "quibbles" fails to address those concerns in any reasonable manner. The reasoning offered about the history of the folio itself, too, is flawed. I assume that you are not suggesting that there was an earlier folio, in which the editorial divisions of genre were authorised by Shakespeare. I'm sure you know that the earlier versions to which the folio refers are individual playhouse sides and quarto editions of individual plays, not a collection arranged by genre. It doesn't follow from the folio assertion that its editorial designations of genre are authorized by the dead author. The POV issue remains: to describe it as a history play in the opening sentence recognizes the critical tradition that follows from the decision of the editors of the folio; it does not indicate the genre in which it was written (necessarily) nor that with which it may have been advertised or understood by its original audience in its first production (again, necessarily). The sentence that follows in the introduction a couple of sentences later seems reasonable, and, I would suggest, could even be stated more firmly/boldly in support of it as a "history" as the normal, usual, common, etc. understanding. But I can see no good reason for having "history" in the first sentence; this seems particularly inappropriate given that it goes on (rightly) to outline the conflict, thus making the article appear inconsistent; this sense of inconsistency is further exacerbated by the presence of the illustrating image from the quarto describing it as a tragedy, in my opinion. DionysosProteus (talk) 23:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

In addition, I'd like to point you to the inconsistencies internal to the folio itself. Compare:

Folio gives genre as Tragedy

Folio gives genre as History

DionysosProteus (talk) 02:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks but I was already familiar with these images. Clearly the wording "Tragedy" is part of the title shown, and just as clearly, the play is classified as a history. And as I have repeatedly pointed out, it is the classifications that we have standardized to, and built a consensus for - a point you continue to ignore. Now, if you know anything about WP it's that consensus is the ultimate deciding factor. So, as I keep saying, and as you keep ignoring, simply build a new consensus and you will get no argument from me. (Personally, I believe that the FF is full of misstatements and was more of a marketing tool for the profitable Shakespeare corporation of the early 1600's - but it's not what I (or you) believe that is important, it's what the consensus of editors decides. Dems da rules.) :) Smatprt (talk) 02:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that is not true. Content in wikipedia articles are not guided by consensus; quite the opposite (hence the unfairness of the accusations of its truthiness). There may be an agreed format, but we are not discussing format, but content. Kindly point me, too, to the relevant information on the Wikiproject page to which you refer. I see no agreed upon standard for designating a play's genre according to it's listing in the contents page of the folio. DionysosProteus (talk) 02:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

No idea, I just know it's been discussed on numerous occasions - check the archives, perhaps. Also the talk pages of the plays themselves. Finally, check with editor AndyJones, as I am pretty sure he has been in on several of these discussions. In the meantime, why don't you just post the debate on the project talk page and get some dialogue going. It's a good question. (Although I disagree about content disputes not being decided by consensus. I've seen it too many times as the ultimate deciding factor). Moving on now :) Smatprt (talk) 03:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

(Copying to project page as suggested): Indeed, I too have seen it happen, and objected most vigorously (and often unsuccessfully); but that doesn't change what's meant to happen. I did check the archives. I believe (without going to check again) that you yourself made a single comment once that implied that you thought that was an agreement. I've yet to see any discussion of the issue. There was a discussion about the genre of Cymbeline, and discussion about the arrangement of the template, but that's not the same thing. A lot of discussion, too, about titles of plays, but not genre. Even if we were to agree that the folio should be followed, why should the "Catalogue" page carry more authority than the play's title page in the folio? I know it's pedantic, but I try to take POV seriously. I started lecturing today on a post-grad history of tragedy course, so the issues that our disagreement raises are very much on my mind at the moment; what we mean by "tragic form" turns on what plays, from Aeschylus to the present day, we decide to select as belonging, and this selection has "political" consequences, particularly since tragedy has served such an important role in the West's sense of self, high art, etc., in a way that "histories" just haven't (without implying that they are inconsequential, of course). I'm not arguing that we should call it a tragedy (at least not yet... reserving the right ;), merely that we should tell it like it is... DionysosProteus (talk) 03:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

(Copying more over from RIII talk page)

• I see my name taken in vain above, so I suppose I ought to comment. I think you really are making far too much of a meal out of this. Richard III is clearly one of Shakespeare's history plays. It has been widely classified in that way by many, many, many writers ever since the first folio did so nearly 400 years ago. Yes, statements like "sometimes interpreted as a tragedy [but] more correctly belongs among the histories" have POV problems. It's very obvious that the play is both a tragedy and a history: the terms aren't mutually exclusive. Of course the lead sentence should call it a history, with a link to Shakespearean history. AndyJones (talk) 07:50, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

• • Agree with Andy wholeheartedly on this. Regarding your other comments - Yes, I have made several comments on this, but no, I did not make a lone comment implying an agreement was in place that was not -(if that is what you are saying - you are rather unclear). In any case, there have indeed been numerous discussions regarding titles, templates, and genres all of which were resolved by a reliance on the FF. Winter's Tale, I believe was another. And you yourself noted Cymbeline as a genre discussion. But back to Richard - I believe the lead does indeed tell it like it is. Most all scholarly research calls Richard a history. So I still think we should stick with that in the opening sentence. On that note, do you know of any researcher or academic that has labled it a tragedy instead? (Also agree with Andy that it is both a tragedy and a history, and personally I think Henry IV is both a comedy and a history!) Smatprt (talk) 21:06, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
    • I also agree with Andy. Maybe just call it a history with tragic elements. The lead can be really simple and then we can go into more depth in the article body if we need to. Wrad (talk) 21:24, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Project discussion

The First Folio rule is only for templates and lists. That is all our consensus decision covered. Period. Obviously in the article itself you'd have to have a deeper discussion. Sticking with the old Folio isn't going to cut it at all in that case. Wrad (talk) 04:10, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

um - but the template discussion was all about genre and title - should we not be consistent with our own templates? Smatprt (talk) 21:13, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

In the lead, sure. The lead should be a simple summary. But if there is significant debate surrounding the genre of a work then that should be discussed in the article body. Can't really leave it out. But it sounds like the above is mostly a lead argument, so just keep it simple. Wrad (talk) 21:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree with this, too. Where there's debate about genre, the article has to cover it, sometimes in some detail. How else would it be possible to deal with plays which the folio called comedies but which most modern writers classify as romances or problem plays, really? It's not for us wikipedians to make a "ruling" to settle the debate. But the folio classifications should be good enough for lists, for templates, or for the opening words of an article. AndyJones (talk) 12:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Portal:Theatre

Portal:Theatre is currently undergoing a portal peer review, and comments would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Theatre/archive1. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 22:13, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Depictions of Richard II of England

Just thought I'd post here as Richard II of England is at FAC, and I was pushing for a cultural depictions section - was surprised that there are no film versions of Richard II, only TV ones. Anyone know which TV versions are most notable and how they changed or interpreted RII shakespeare vs other historical info? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, I have got some sources on that. There are scholarly commentaries on An Age of Kings, the BBC Shakespeare and the English Shakespeare Company versions. I'll have a look at those for you this evening, if I remember (feel free to discuss at my talk during the weekend). I can't promise to improve your article in time if it's already at FAC, though. If I feel I can't help much, maybe I'll drop citations for my sources on the talk page. There's even a recent low-budget version of RII which is just awful: they've tried to perform it rather in the style of Rambo. AndyJones (talk) 07:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • PS I have seen your subsequent comment at the FAC. AndyJones (talk) 12:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, 'twasn't a deal-breaker and the it wasn't on the nominator's priority list. I was just a passing-by reviewer. Still, my interest is piqued a bit....Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I have continued this conversation at Talk:Richard II of England#Depictions of Richard II. AndyJones (talk) 06:43, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Henry Compton (actor)

I put up a stub for this Shakesperean actor from the 19th century, but he's out of my area of interest. Feel free to expand if the spirit takes you! -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:33, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Different sort of collaboration

I was thinking what if we all commit to get one article of our choice to GA status within a month? Then, as we're all working on it, we can ask for help from each other if we need help with copyediting or small research points or even just aren't familiar with GA stuff. We can list our commitments below so we don't double up. Wrad (talk) 17:45, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'm taking Fleance. Wrad (talk) 17:49, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm having trouble finding a picture for this one. Might need help there. Wrad (talk) 19:56, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
• Alright then. Romeo and Juliet on screen. AndyJones (talk) 19:08, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
• I am, sadly, not able to commit that amount of time right now. Do however feel free to drop me a note on my Talk page if there's anything specific you'd like me to take a look at. --Xover (talk) 23:16, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Something that the LGBT project does is Jumpaclass - within a set period of time, (I think a week is too short) take a stub article to C-class, or a start article to B-class. (Thus "jumping" a class.) They have a 'points' system set up to choose the next collaboration, but I'm not sure we need that part of it. I'm not sure how well it works, primarily you'd need the prompt attention of assessing editors to decide if the article has jumped a class, but it might be more attainable than GA class within a month (especially given the backlog). B-class is now much closer to GA than it was before, so it's still a worthy goal. -Malkinann (talk) 19:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds pretty cool. I like the idea of trying to get rid of our stubs. By the way, anyone in the project can review GAs within the project as long as they haven't edited them at all. Wrad (talk) 20:13, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Reassessment

I've been reassessing articles within the project since the new C-Class has been created. B-class criteria is now quite a bit more stringent. C-class takes on a lot of the lower-quality B-class articles. I went through all of our B-class articles and about half of them are now C-class. Any B-class article would be an excellent candidate for a GA push, since B-class is now pretty close to GA class in terms of quality.

I am surprised at the increase in quality of many Shakespeare articles since the beginning of the project. We have a lot of articles that are right on the edge of reaching the next level of quality. A lot of people are doing work behind the scenes. If you are one of these people, let us know so we can help!

Anyway, stepping off the soapbox now. Wrad (talk) 22:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Othello and Macbeth templates

Hello all. I noticed the Macbeth and Othello templates had appeared since last I looked, and had a couple of pictures I thought might suit them. The new versions are here for Macbeth and here for Othello. The old version of Macbeth is here while the old version of Othello is here. Feel free to revert if you're not keen. DionysosProteus (talk) 16:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I like how these nice-looking templates are springing up everywhere! Wrad (talk) 22:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree. They're looking good. AndyJones (talk) 22:12, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree and disagree. Agree that its great that the templates are springing up and are a great addition. But I simply hate the new images. Little toy soldiers and the big-headed Othello simply don't do justice to the greatness of the works. Since it says feel free to revert if not keen, then I will. Hopefully as much thought can go into these images as went into the Shakespeare image, which, thankfully, is not a picture of one of those toy bobbleheads they sell in novelty shops! Smatprt (talk) 01:29, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

The Macbeth is from a Victorian toy theatre, the same one currently being used for the Romeo and Juliet template, and the Othello is of Salvini, one of the most famous interpretations of the role in the history of theatre. FYI. DionysosProteus (talk) 12:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Great to know - but they still look - frankly - silly (imho). Might there be a better image of Salvini, instead of a charicature? Better yet, might there be an image that does not need explaining...?Smatprt (talk) 07:19, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe either do require explaining. They both appear clear and iconic, I think, which is what is needed for a template. The old ones seemed wishy-washy and unclear at the size needed and the present Othello seems a little silly. DionysosProteus (talk) 23:05, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I like the coloured Macbeth better - he looks striking. I don't like either Othello. -Malkinann (talk) 22:32, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I posted a new Othello image on the template - its the Keene poster. Then someone moved the same image to the lead image. This raises an interesting possibility - what if the template image was the same as the lead image (which gets the most scrutiny, BTW)? There is something to be said for consistency. What do you think? Still don't like the toy soldier Macbeth. Can anyone suggest some other options? Smatprt (talk) 00:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not quite the same image as before: The new Othello image has about 50 times more resolution. =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 00:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Way to stay on topic!Smatprt (talk) 01:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Heh. I mean that I found a much larger copy of the Keene poster, and uploaded that over the old one (it's from the same LoC scan, just the person didn't know about how LOC works and how to get the full-sized ones). Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 02:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Romeo and Juliet now at FAC

You can see it here. Wrad (talk) 16:22, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The Merchant of Venice: "A Babolonian-Islamic reading"

The Merchant of Venice contains a section heading "A Babolonian-Islamic reading".

(A) This is presumably misspelled.
(B) The text doesn't seem to clarify what this phrase is supposed to mean.

Can anybody take a look? -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 14:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Wrad has altered the spelling to "A Babylonian-Islamic reading". This is presumably correct, but I'm not really sure because I can't figure out why this section heading is used. The section is about Clare Asquith's "analysis of Shakespeare's writing from the perspective of Catholics toiling under the nascent Reformation movement in England, in her book Shadowplay." I don't think that I can be the only person who doesn't think that a "Babylonian-Islamic" (or, for that matter, "Babolonian-Islamic") connection is very clear here. Can anybody do anything with this? Thanks. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 14:45, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Academic compares wikipedia to other sites using the Shakespeare article

Dr. Mark Humphrys compares Wikipedia to other online encyclopedias on his site focusing on their articles on Shakespeare. See [1]. His conclusion? "Wikipedia clearly seems the best, even though at any moment it may be vandalised." Another point for Wikipedia in the academic world, thanks in part to this project! Wrad (talk) 05:53, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Next steps?

Do we want to send out a bot-delivered note that Romeo and Juliet is now FA and that the next target is The Tempest for GA? And judging by what I'm finding after a brief trawl of it, GAC will essentially just be a peer review on the way to FA (it's in pretty good shape already); so we should probably figure out what to start on after/along with Tempest. Did I hear someone mention Macbeth? --Xover (talk) 17:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I think it's the obvious choice. I also think that we're going to need help from our theater experts on the Tempest. I'm having trouble following a lot of the stuff I've researched on it. It is very theater focused. More so than other plays, I think, because more of the stage directions have survived. Wrad (talk) 20:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and I also think a good target date for Romeo and Juliet as WP:TFA on the main page is Valentine's Day, and I think Malkinann should nominate it when the time comes, since she's never had a TFA. Wrad (talk) 20:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Oooh, good idea! And absolutely high time Malkinann got a TFA! --Xover (talk) 21:30, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry fellas, I can't do the nomination - I'll be visiting my relatives and so won't have access to the internet during January and February. --Malkinann (talk) 19:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Macbeth is good for me. Following my usual procedure you'll find me starting out at Macbeth on screen, then working on the screen section of the main article, then the performance history section(s), then any other Afterlife sections (which is pretty-much the method I adopted at Hamlet, The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet). As I've mentioned elsewhere, during my current work assignment I am unlikely to be on Wikipedia except at weekends, for a time. AndyJones (talk) 17:42, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion for Sonnet 151.

Please note that an editor has proposed that the Sonnet 151 article be deleted. The discussion is happening at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sonnet 151. --Xover (talk) 15:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The decision is that it is to be kept--TimothyJacobson (talk) 02:00, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

To W.H. nominated for Deletion

FYI, To W.H. has been nominated for deletion. The discussion is here. --Xover (talk) 15:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Romeo and Juliet TFA for Valentine's day

I left a note on the TFA requests talk page requesting this for Today's Featured Article on the main page. There's a scheduling conflict, though. Comment if you like. Wrad (talk) 19:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Hamnet Shakespeare

I'm having some trouble with this article's GA review. Please comment. Wrad (talk) 19:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Hamnet Shakespeare up for deletion

Please comment. Wrad (talk) 19:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Coriolanus

Coriolanus, Act V, Scene III. Engraved by James Caldwell from a painting by Gavin Hamilton.

Just a little surprise gift. Be warned: It's a bit big (about 40 megapixels). Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 09:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way,, they also ahve an excellent Troilus and Cressida. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 09:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Textual integrity

THere is a spelling mistake which changes the entire meaning of Sonnet 29. The correct text has "Fortune" not "fortune" as in the current text. THis is important because in English the world fortune is a concept, whereas Fortune is a classical Roman god. This is utterly important to the reading of the text.

Fortune is the godess that spins the wheel of fortune to determine your fate in life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liberalcynic (talk • contribs)

• It should be "Fortune". I've changed it. AndyJones (talk) 21:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Project watchlist

Hello. Are the project members interested in using a watchlist to keep vandalism and recent changes in check? I just reverted multiple instances of major vandalism to Sonnet 18, and this had been in place since February 20. Viriditas (talk) 05:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow. Usually I watch that one, but I missed it. Wrad (talk) 06:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

How funny. I was just typing a message to you on your talk page, when you responded.  :) Viriditas (talk) 06:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

George Greenwood or Granville Greenwood

Was this person known as George Greenwood or Granville Greenwood? The ODNB and Hansard refer to him by the latter name, however, in some of his works on Shakespeare he appears to have used the name George Greenwood. Perhaps anyone here can help me out. Tryde (talk) 17:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Cobbe portrait stubbed out

Kindly requesting attention to this newly stubbed out article. Getting an acceptable image would be great. Ronnotel (talk) 16:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:40, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Sources of Hamlet

Could somebody (or many-bodies) jump in and mediate here? We've got a disagreement. Wrad (talk) 13:56, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the current dispute over a "lack of references" for the article, I have just reread the piece and it appears to be properly referenced through-out. If there is a specific bit of info that someone feels is not adequately referenced, simply post a tag on the offending sentence and I'm sure a reference can be supplied.

On another subject, comparing this article with the corresponding sections in the main Hamlet article, is there anything new that the article covers? It appears to me that the two articles are almost entirely redundant. Is the separate Sources of Hamlet article really needed?Smatprt (talk) 15:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Ran

I have nominated Ran for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. Andrzejbanas (talk) 00:23, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Further reading / External links?

We're getting pretty good at FA-class play articles in general, but I've a feeling that we're a bit random and slapdash with the stuff that ends up in sections like Bibliography, Further reading, See also, and External links. Could we perhaps come up with some sort of guidelines for what to put in these sections? For instance, for External links, could we come up with a list along the lines of:

• Various versions of the play itself
  • An easy, accessible, modern spelling version of the play.
  • An original spelling version of the play.
  • An annotated version of the play.
  • A facsimile edition of the play (both Folio and Quarto versions, if relevant).
• Online articles discussing aspects of the play that we didn't have room for in the article.
• Online articles discussing aspects covered in the article, but in more depth.
• (And maybe for some articles where it is particularly relevant, link to significant dissenting points of view; e.g. for The Tempest, whose dating is important in that context, link to the Stritmatter-Kositsky paper to note the Authorship view. Don't do this as a standard on all articles, just the key ones where a) it's particularly important, and b) there's a decent online article on the matter. This would be especially important on articles where the Authorship related bits are dropped entirely for NPOV or FRINGE concerns.).

For Further reading we should have some kind of specific plan for everything listed, to avoid a long list of random "I thought this book was cool" books. Probably something distilled by going through the article and thinking (and asking on Talk) "Which book would further illuminate this topic/aspect?" and "We don't cover this bit, what book would fill in that gap for the reader?". It might be hard to set down a set of specific guidelines in advance, but if we could agree to a principle like what I've suggested here.

Make sense? Opinions? Agree/Disagree? --Xover (talk) 20:57, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of further readings, but it might be a good idea to flesh out what we want and what we don't want in Ext. Links sections. Wrad (talk) 21:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Housekeeping and cleanup

Just a reminder, we have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare/Cleanup listing generated automatically by a bot from irregular Wikipedia database dumps. For those looking for useful small tasks that will help improve the quality of our articles, but can't commit to something like taking a play article to FA, there are lots of little neatly packaged stuff to do listed on that page. They're also grouped by importance and quality (from our project banner) so you have automatic priorities to choose from.

In any case, just a reminder that it exists if anyone should be inclined to start whittling away at it. --Xover (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Utility of outlines to wikiprojects

Here's a discussion about subject development you might find interesting.

The Transhumanist 22:59, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Recent page moves for Coriolanus

Dear all. I notice that there have been some page moves around the Coriolanus articles. I have put a request in at page moves to have the Shakespeare play moved to the primary article space, as it is obvious that this is by far the primary topic (compared with the historical person, the Brecht play, an obscure play from the 19th C and a Beethoven piece). DionysosProteus (talk) 22:31, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I wasn't quite sure how to handle that, but the dabs and redirects were looking quite messy. As mentioned on move requests I've placed the tag on Talk:Coriolanus (Shakespeare). --Xover (talk) 04:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Titles of the plays

If a link brought you to this section, see instead: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Shakespeare/Archive 3#Titles of the plays AndyJones (talk) 10:22, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Section order

Prompted by a discussion at the Shrew talk page, I updated the suggested format regarding Section order for the play articles to reflect the consensus developed during several FA processes. It consisted of moving the date and source sections below the synopsis. If anyone has a problem with this, please discuss here. Thanks. Smatprt (talk) 21:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

New Member

I'm new to the project, and just thought I would introduce myself. Sean (talk || contribs) 04:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

William Shakespeare's sexuality?

Please take part in a discussion regarding taking out all references to Shakespeare's sexuality from the William Shakespeare article. Wrad (talk) 16:02, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Tools to help your project with unreferenced Biographies of living people

List of cleanup articles for your project

If you don't already have this and are interested in creating a list of articles which need cleanup for your wikiproject see: Cleanup listings A list of examples is here

Moving unreferenced blp articles to a special "incubation pages"

If you are interested in moving unreferenced blp articles to a special "incubation page", contact me, User talk:Ikip

Watchlisting all unreferenced articles

If you are interested in watchlisting all of the unreferenced articles once you install Cleanup_listings, contact me, User talk:Ikip

Ikip 02:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

"To be, or not to be, that's the question: ....."

The first line of Hamlet's famous monologue about death and its consequences. It is followed by these four lines: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. ................ " The lines describe the classical choice we have to make when we get into trouble: do we accept our fate because we see the suffering as a just punishment for our sins (mere fatality has no deep roots in western civlization), or, do we put up a fight and try to eliminate the problems and perhaps even those who threaten us. It makes you think of the biblical story about Job's submission to God's will. Perhaps it makes you think of how some historians have blamed the Jews for this same passive attitude of submission to their fate which in their view made the holocaust possible, or at least more easily feasible. In their opinion the Jews should have taken "arms against a sea of troubles".

Certainly in Shakepeare's day more than in ours this was a real dilemma. The medieval attitude of humble acceptance of suffering seen as God's will was still considered to be a morally elevated (noble) way of dealing with problems in one's life.

The fact that this dilemma gets so much emphasis at this point in the play is a bit unexpected. Hamlet has already promised his father "to take arms", that is, to revenge his father's murder, hasn't he? Is he having second thoughts on philosophical or moral grounds, then? The answer is clearly negative, his dawdling mainly results from his hesitation about who or what the ghost really is and whether it tells the truth about his uncle.

The four lines state a moral, a philosophical problem. The funny thing, however, is that Hamlet, distracted by intense emotions of sadness (his father's death), fear (the confrontation with his father's ghost) and hatred (his mother's behaviour and his uncle's crime), should bring up this philosophical discussion at all. Also, the wording is out of character: commentators have pointed out the stiffness of the language in these lines and the (very much unlike Shakespeare), mixed metaphor (arms against a sea of .... ). The lines just don't seem to fit in On top of this there is the problem of logical continuity and coherence in the first six lines. I have not been able to find a clear and straightforward explanation, experts give a few more or less acceptable interpretations.

All in all, a confusing business. Maybe, just maybe, a look at a contemporary version of the play, the so-called "First Quarto" of Hamlet can be of some help. Even though this is recognizably the same play, it is radically different. It's much shorter and some of the names are different. So why look at it? Well, the part with the monologue in it is much like our accepted version. Here are some of the lines from this part of the play in the First Quarto:K

King: See where he comes poring upon a book. Enter Hamlet

Corambis: And here, Ofelia, read you on this book And walk aloof; the king shall be unseen. Exeunt the King and Corambis

Hamlet: To be, or not to be; ay there's the point. To die, to sleep: is that all? Ay all.

Yes, the four lines we have just discussed are missing! And yes, Hamlet appears with a book on the stage here. In the commonly used version his mother mentions his being occupied with a book in the second act.

Well, he is a student, isn't he. Students use books. But surely this isn't a time for him to be doing his homework? An explanation could be that he is trying to find advice on how to proceed in the tricky situation he finds himself in in a theological or philosophical work. After all, it is not an unnatural act for a student to try and find answers to problems in books.

Once you accept the possibility that Hamlet is reading a book , a book in which he hopes to find good advice, when he appears on the stage just before his conversation with Ophelia,

a new explanation of the first few lines of the monologue offers itself. The problems of coherence and style would vanish if the four lines did not express Hamlet's thoughts, but were read aloud by him from the book (a philosophical work)he is holding.

Suddenly the passage becomes clear: in his search for an answer to his problems in philosophical literature Hamlet has come across the dilemma of the basic attitudes of acceptance versus resistance in life. Hamlet, however, rejects this dilemma outright. To be or not to be, to live or to die, that is what he sees as the real choice. He rejects the moral/philosophical authority of his book which gives him the choice of passive acceptance or active resistance. That just will not do in Hamlet's view. The real choice for him, at that point in the play, is the one between life and death, not between two different attitudes in life.

Looking at the text in this way, the first line does not explicitly mention suicide but the idea of suicide is implicitly there, of course. The remaining part of the monologue deals with the consequences of the choice for death. Pantar (talk) 07:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

duhdudhudhdudhduhduddhdudhdudhdudhud

Can someone remove the above ("duhdudhudhdudhduhduddhdudhdudhdudhud") from the project template. It's appearing on all Shakespeare pages. I don't know how to access the template to remove it. Paul B (talk) 12:59, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

problems with alternative authorship articles

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Shakespearian fringe theory and some awful articles. Anyone care to try to clear up the mess, ebaring in mind the threads higher up the page where topic bans are beign sought against some editors?

The attempts to silence particular contributors seem to have moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tom Reedy. Meanwhile I have added merge templates to various articles per the consensus at the ANI thread.--Peter cohen (talk) 11:33, 15 March 2010 (UTC) (Sorry I forgot to sign my original post.)

Unreferenced living people articles bot

User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects provides a list, updated daily, of unreferenced living people articles (BLPs) related to your project. There has been a lot of discussion recently about deleting these unreferenced articles, so it is important that these articles are referenced.

The unreferenced articles related to your project can be found at >>>Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare/Archive 4/Unreferenced BLPs<<<

If you do not want this wikiproject to participate, please add your project name to this list.

Thank you.

Update: Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare/Archive 4/Unreferenced BLPs has been created. This list, which is updated by User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects daily, will allow your wikiproject to quickly identify unreferenced living person articles.

There maybe no or few articles on this new Unreferenced BLPs page. To increase the overall number of articles in your project with another bot, you can sign up for User:Xenobot_Mk_V#Instructions.

If you have any questions or concerns, visit User talk:DASHBot/Wikiprojects. Okip 23:35, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Pictures in articles

Hello to the members of this project. Today pictures have been removed from The Taming of the Shrew and BBC Television Shakespeare due to a narrow interpretation of guidelines. The reason giving being "none of these screenshots are discussed in this article and thus cannot be included here". I am not online long enough to try and help in this so I wanted to give the members of this project a chance to rescue these if they it is possible. If not no worries but thanks for your time in reading this> MarnetteD | Talk 21:34, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Discontinuation of comments subpages

Prompted by the Categories for discussion nomination of Category:Shakespeare articles with comments (discussion), I have implemented the discontinuation of comments subpages in the Talk namespace for this WikiProject. The affected talk pages are (links to relevant sections in parentheses):

• Talk:A Yorkshire Tragedy (assessment comments)
• Talk:Richard III (1699 play) (assessment comments)
• Talk:Harriet Smithson (assessment comments)
• Talk:Patrick Stewart (assessment comments)

I also updated the project banner. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:50, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Focus and some tasks (Henry VI)

Hi all,

I note that Bertaut very quietly has put a lot of effort into 1H6, 2H6, 3H6, Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona; to the point that they are all now expanded sufficiently to be good starting-point candidates for a FA push. He's also requested Assessment of the three Henrys. I hate to see such wonderful (and much needed!) contributions go unacknowledged, so I'd like to encourage everyone to go have a look at these articles; do the quality/importance assessment; and comment on the state of the articles. I'm sure he'd also appreciate a note on his talk page if you're as glad of his contributions as I am (I know I get quite chuffed when my contributions are noticed)!

Anyways, in between all the grand drama of the meta-topics, we now have a bunch more potential FA candidates; and we still haven't gotten around to getting The Tempest even to GA, much less FA.

I know everyone's time is limited, and effort tends to be focused where one's interests lie—and I've certainly not contributed much the last year—but consider this a humble plea to at least cast a few sidelong glances at the larger state of the project and where we might improve it. The state of Shakespeare articles on Wikipedia is still quite poor, and there is such a lot of potential for improvement if we manage a somewhat concerted effort. --Xover (talk) 10:54, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Personally I think we should submit The Tempest for GA and respond to whatever comes up. That might kick start things. Wrad (talk) 00:58, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll be happy to do a copy-edit on The Tempest before submission for GA. But I can't do it any earlier than 4 August. (I'll also look at the 3 Henry VIs on the same basis). --GuillaumeTell 23:22, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Good idea; I agree. Let's just nominate Tempest at GAC to kick-start and see how it goes. The article is in pretty good shape overall, so GA should at worst be a good way to get fresh eyeballs on the article. There's a backlog at GA, and I think the prose isn't too bad, so I suggest we just nominate it immediately. Our challenge is going to be for FAC, because we have a number of prose issues, MOS issues, and we're missing several sub-sections under Themes and motifs and Criticism and interpretation. If we nominate immediately and Guillaume just dives in when he's available, this might be a good first step on the way to FA. --Xover (talk) 11:56, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Maybe we should find a suitable newsletter bot and drop a note to everyone on our list of members? I think our biggest problem is that we don't get enough people focused on the project collaboration article at one time to achieve "critical mass". A few gentle nudges when we start in on a GA or FA (&c.) might be helpful to getting more people involved. Thoughts? --Xover (talk) 12:11, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to note: I've now nominated The Tempest for GA. There's a backlog so there might not be a review for quite some time, but if we're lucky someone will find it interesting enough to jump in soonish. --Xover (talk) 17:39, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment on Biographies of living people

Hello Wikiproject! Currently there is a discussion which will decide whether wikipedia will delete 49,000 articles about a living person without references, here:

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

Since biographies of living people covers so many topics, nearly all wikiproject topics will be effected.

The two opposing positions which have the most support is:

1. supports the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, User:Jehochman
2. opposes the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, except in limited circumstances, User:Collect

Comments are welcome. Keep in mind that by default, editor's comments are hidden. Simply press edit next to the section to add your comment.

Please keep in mind that at this point, it seems that editors support deleting unreferenced article if they are not sourced, so your project may want to pursue the projects below. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ikip (talk • contribs) 02:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The RSC Shakespeare?

Hi all,

Has anyone had a chance to look at the various single-play editions of the RSC Shakespeare series? I have the Complete Works edition but that's rather constrained for page count; and judging by the description of the single-play editions they could be convenient sources for things that we've otherwise had trouble finding good citations for in the play articles we've developed. For instance, they appear to contain stage histories (not just of RSC productions) and various director and actor interviews that provide the stage perspective on the plays (as opposed to the scholarly perspective); overall they potentially may represent a view of the plays as plays rather than the plays as literature or history as many editions tend to focus on. Anyways, I was considering getting their edition of The Tempest to have a look, but figured I'd ask whether any of you had had a chance to look at them first. TIA, --Xover (talk) 08:02, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare authorship question and WP:ONEWAY

Although I suspect topic fatigue has set in for many editors, it would be much appreciated if some would weigh in on this discussion about whether inserting the Shakespeare authorship question into Shakespeare's plays is a violation of WP:ONEWAY. The discussion preceding the current one has more information. Same actors, same topic, same arguments, but it would be nice to get this settled so we don't have to go through this on every article. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:57, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Anyone interested in the authorship question should read: Shapiro, James, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? - New York : Simon and Schuster; London : Faber and Faber, 2010. 352 p. - ISBN 1-416-54162-4

The Tempest is GA, what's next?

Hi all,

As some of you may have noticed, The Tempest is now a Good Article. Kudos to all who contributed (and a special shout out to AndyJones who put a lot of effort into it!).

Now that we've reached that milestone, 3% of the articles in the scope of the project is rated GA or higher; which on the one hand is a significant achievement, but on the other hand that means we have 97% still to go. :-)

So… Where should we focus our energies next? Tempest is still the tagged collaboration for the project, and it would be quite natural to keep on the push and try to bring it to Featured Article. On the other hand it might be good to have some diversity to avoid burnout, and we have some excellent candidates for improvement to GA in 1H6, 2H6, 3H6, Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (really. take a look, they're quite good allready!). In addition I seem to recall several people suggested Macbeth, Othello, and A Midsummer Night's Dream when we last discussed what our project collaboration should be.

I would personally like to see us bring The Tempest to FAC, but from experience that requires at least 3-5 editors working in concert for a while to work, and we seem to be critically low on manpower these days (which, incidentally, means any given contribution will have a disproportionally large effect for the project!). Alternately I think if a bunch of us were to put some effort into the Henrys above we could bring them to GA quickly, which would give a nice sense of achievement that I know I find quite motivating.

Any suggestions? Opinions? --Xover (talk) 11:35, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Titles of the plays

If a link brought you to this section, see instead: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Shakespeare/Archive 3#Titles of the plays AndyJones (talk) 10:22, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Shakespeare articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:36, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Question: if they were selected based on their assessed quality, why are more than half (32 out of 59) of start class and C quality? Tom Reedy (talk) 21:52, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

They're chosen based on a variety of criteria, of which the WikiProject's quality assessment is but one. Another criterion is the WikiProject importance rating, and a third is the number of interwiki links (i.e. how many other language wikis have articles on the same subject). That's one reason they're asking the WikiProjects to review the selection: it's made mechanically by a bot, and as such can only assess objective and quantifiable criteria that can be determined by automata (without, obviously, strong AI). --Xover (talk) 06:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah! I see now that I was directing a question to a bot. (Not untypical of me!) Thanks for the reply. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:42, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

to be, or not to be

Will someone knowledgable take a look at this article (when you get a chance) and decide which version of the soliloquy is the one we should be using? I recently reverted an IP's edits (minor things like punctuation, changing "depriz'd" to "despised", etc), and realized later that he was just editing in a slightly different but perfectly valid version of the text. no conflict and no worries over it, I just don't know which is the appropriate version for wikipedia. thanks. --Ludwigs2 22:28, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I would use the version from the current Arden critical edition, which has the texts from both the 1603 and 1623 edition. There's no advantage gained by using original spelling, but if you want to include it you should use the version in the First Folio (1623), since it is the version last edited by Shakespeare. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:35, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment

The Baconian theory article, rated GA, is currently undergoing an reassessment here in case anyone wants to comment. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:24, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Help

This is all going to get confusing — believe me, I barely understand it myself — so please bear with me.

The situation is that in the process of doing an Category:Uncategorized articles run earlier today, I found two pages in articlespace which were actually draft revisions of Shakespeare authorship question: namely, Shakespeare authorship question Draft 1 and Shakespeare authorship question Draft 2. Accordingly, I moved them into the sandbox space of their creator, User:Smatprt — and was promptly asked by another user, User:Nishidani, why I had chosen Smatprt instead of User:Tom Reedy. After some back and forth, I was advised that the pages in question were copy-pastes from other pages that were already sandboxed: namely, Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft and Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft2. So I redirected both of Smatprt's pages back to those targets. And then I had a request from Smatprt, asking me where the RFC had gone — followed only just now by a follow-up message confirming that they had located and repaired the problem.

This last followup eliminates the primary question I was about to ask (namely, what the fug is going on here?), but nonetheless I just wanted to ask if somebody who's much more familiar than I am with whatever the hell this is all about could step in and make sure everything's been properly sorted. I don't feel overly inclined to stick my nose any further into this mess than I already have, needless to say. Bearcat (talk) 01:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes - that was really weird. Somehow in the process of all your page moves (for reasons which were perfectly understandable), the RFC actually dssappeared. Poof, it was gone and no where to be found. After much searching, I found it in the old diffs (it had been striked out?), so I restored it here [[2]], where the primary discussion is happening. I think it's fine now, but it sure would be good to know how on earth an ongoing RFC could disappear like that! Totally weird. But no harm done (I think). Smatprt (talk) 01:08, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare's plays

Could some editors take a look at Shakespeare's plays and see what it would take to bring it up to GA or Fa status so that it could be semi-protected? It attracts an awful lot of drive-by vandalism and could be expanded quite a bit. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:59, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I've had a quick look and see that there are only 38 refs - somewhat below par considering the length of the article. As for expansion of the article, I'm dubious, as there is considerable overlap with other articles (e.g. William Shakespeare). Examples are the categorisation of the plays, the collaborations and the apocrypha. The (to my mind) tendentious listing of a mixed bag of plays in the lede is an open invitation to everyone to add their favourite(s), and there is no explanation, AFAICS, of why these plays are listed and not others. I also think the structure of the article needs looking at. Just my groatsworth. --GuillaumeTell 22:21, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, when R&J is listed before Lear and Hamlet something is definitely amiss. Perhaps some merging is called for? IMO an article on every little detail about Shakespeare is a bit much, for example those separate play articles, as well as an article on each of Shakespeare's children and his wife with lots of over-lap instead of one article Shakespeare's family. I'd rather see one FA article than four crappy articles that look to be almost random jottings. Tom Reedy (talk) 23:27, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Too much generalization. What exactly do you want to merge? Wrad (talk) 04:14, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Look at Shakespeare's plays, Chronology of Shakespeare's plays, and William Shakespeare bibliography. There's so much overlapping information in those articles I think they are prime candidates for merger. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:32, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Of the three, I am personally a fan of the bibliography. I think its format has a lot of potential. Wrad (talk) 19:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe what we need to do is reassess exactly where our project is, where there is overlap, and how best to organize what we have. A lot of new articles have popped up recently. We are going on 1000 tagged pages in the project. Personally, I don't see much use in a Shakespeare's plays article. Like others, I really don't see what it would say that isn't already said in other articles. Wrad (talk) 04:18, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Well I could see having a short Shakespeare's plays article as a gateway--just a bare description, then maybe 5-6 short sections: comedies, histories, tragedies, romances, lost plays, apocrypha. That way anybody doing a search using that term would find that article, which would direct the searcher to the right page. As fa as individual play criticism, all that should be in the play article itself. As it is, the article is mush. Sometimes the great advantage Wikipedia has over other references--the ability to go into great detail--breeds articles that are liabilities instead of assets. I think this article as it is illustrates that peril.

Personally I think the main emphasis right now should be on bringing all the play articles up to GA at least. I think the sources should be limited to modern (no older than 50 years) and of course academic, such as the Arden, Riverside, or Oxford introductions. I think that would smooth the editing process quite a bit. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:53, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I can agree with that. Besides the article for Shakespeare himself, play articles seem to be the most visited in our project. Wrad (talk) 23:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Where do you want to start? I'm working on other projects as well as randomly editing Wikipedia Shakespeare articles, but a nice little GA project would help get this funky taste out of my mouth! Tom Reedy (talk) 05:23, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'd hate to divert you from the SAQ article. I think work on that is valuable. I would even say that it is ready for a GA nomination. Wrad (talk) 19:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Not quite; there're still a few loose ends to tidy up, but Nishidani is off in the boondocks cut off from civilisation for three months and I can't seem to get any other editors involved. It desperately needs other eyes to reveal its weaknesses. Work has interfered quite a bit the past few days, but I hope to see it to GA and possibly FA before the end of the year. That's the only way it's going to achieve stability so that editors don't have to be hover over it. Once that happens I think Shakespeare editors might be more willing to cooperate on bringing up some play pages up to GA if they know they won't have to suit up for battle every time they turn their computers on. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:27, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I suggest beginning with King Lear and then Macbeth, then you'll have the top three plays at least at GA status. After that work them in order of popularity and critical acclaim, because those are the ones that are most likely to be vandalised and need protection the most. Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, and Julius Caesar would be my guess. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick drive-by comment… I agree that we should focus on the individual play articles, and roughly in the order of popularity. I slightly disagree with the premise that GA and FA articles have some inherent stability that prevents vandalism—it's not a given that GA and FA articles have (semi-)protection, and there's no rule that one shouldn't boldly edit such articles—but since I do think an article that has reached a certain level of quality and maturity is much much easier to maintain, the end result is much the same. I also have some opinions about the various other types of articles that's been discussed in this section, and I've a feeling I may be somewhat in disagreement on several of them, but as I don't have the time to construct a coherent argument right now I'll leave it at that. If we focus on getting the play articles to a decent standard the point is moot, for now, anyway.
I'm desperately short of time, so my contributions will of necessity be limited, but if we set up a somewhat structured process for this I may be able to bring some small things to the table. I'd propose that we quickly hash out a prioritized list—Tom's list is fine by me, we can use it as it stands if nobody objects (modulo the comment below)—and then just start at the top. If we can agree somewhat in advance that, say, in January and February we'll all work on Lear, then I'll have the time to buy the relevant critical editions (my personal collection is limited, and the local library is… well, let's just say I don't spend a lot of time there) and prepare. It'd also give everyone a chance to focus on it at the same time, so we have somebody to work with rather than trying to get anywhere in a vacuum.
I would also suggest we start by each doing a review of the article and sketch out what needs doing, so we have a sort of work-list to go by, rather than individually attempting to tackle it all at once. It makes it easier for people to contribute to limited tasks, rather than be discouraged because we can't quite do it all. in the same vein I'd suggest we do a quick spin through all the plays on the list and bring them up to about GA, rather than try to bring each of them to FA, because at least I tend to get discouraged by the sheer amount of work involved (cf. The Tempest, still not ready for FAC).
And, finally, I think we should try to spend some time on the plays Bertaut has put so much effort into—as detailed in the archives here—as they're fairly well on their way to GA already, and it'd be a real pity to let them languish after he did such a great job on them. I'll grant those aren't the plays that interest me most, but I still think they deserve a decent treatment on Wikipedia.
Anyways, while I'm not in a position to spend a lot of time on this, I'm happy to see some effort towards progressing our articles and will try to set aside some time to help out when I can; and feel free to ask if there is any one particular task you'd like me to tackle (mechanical grunt work like making all refs consistent and using cite templates, say). --Xover (talk) 09:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Addendum Regarding the suggested mergers and such, I think that rather than trying to figure out each such case of overlap individually, we might do well to try to start at the top and plan out a structure for the core Shakespeare articles. That way we can look at such problems with the benefit of a clear picture of what a given article is, and thus make it much easier to determine what fits and what needs its own article. For instance, I'm having real trouble getting a firm grasp on what, exactly, a Shakespeare's plays article would actually be. In other cases we can easily allow ourselves to have it both ways for a while; specifically, since my personal interest is in biography, I intend to have GA articles on all Shakespeare's children and immediate family; but that also happens to be a good starting point for making an overview article on Shakespeare's family into which this material could confidently be merged. In this sense, it doesn't matter whether you approach the problem top-down or bottom-up, just pick one and don't try to do both at once, or let an effort from one direction get in the way of one from the opposite direction. Wikipedia, unlike traditional encyclopedias, can cover a topic in both more breadth and more depth; so at heart the problem is one of sensible structure, accessibility, and intuitiveness and not whether a certain aspect can be covered or whether it “deserves” its own article. --Xover (talk) 10:13, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree on your Shakespeare family approach. (The following comment isn't necessarily directed at Xover. It is kind of an open statement to the project.) I really think we need to be careful how we talk about articles in the project. The editor who wrote much of the Shakespeare plays article was one of the founding members of this project and a really big help in its early days. He was competent and cool-headed. I don't think that should influence our decision-making, but it would be a good idea to avoid being overly harsh in criticism of the articles we discuss. Nastiness has really hurt this project in the past. I would just really encourage everyone to be extra careful regarding civility. Wrad (talk) 20:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi all, I've been away, sorry for not contributing. As regards Shakespeare's Plays, I agree with Tom, having a gateway article with just a list of the plays seems to me the best way to go. I've read the article and there is nothing there that isn't available elsewhere. As regards working through the plays themselves, I'm always open to feedback on any of the articles I've worked on, and I agree with Xover's suggestion about a structured timetable. At the moment, I'm concentrating on sorting out some of the William Blake articles (or indeed, creating William Blake articles!). I was about halfway through a complete rework of the Titus Andronicus article, when I switched to Blake, but I still hope to have Titus finished early next year. The only thing I would say about my ability to help out, is I'm not overly familiar with the lesser known plays later in the canon - I'm fine on all the major tragedies and plays like Midsummer Night and Merchant, and on the earlier minor plays (like Verona and Henry VI), but I know next to nothing about plays like Merry Wives, King John, Kinsmen etc Having said that though, I'll be happy to contribute where I can. Bertaut (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:26, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Sources for an article on Edmond Malone

Hi all,

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm primarily interested in biography and history, and as a result I'm also interested in the biographers and editors of Shakespeare (how very meta of me). Particularly I'm fascinated by Edmond Malone, and recently started to work on that article. However I'm finding a bit of a paucity of sources. There's Prior's old biography—which is mostly suited for colorful quotations, it's not particularly scholarly rigorous—and Peter Martin's relatively recent biography. I know Samuel Schoenbaum in his Lives also does a bit of chronicling of the various biographers and editors. But, as I complained at Talk:Samuel_Johnson#A_request:_any_mention_of_Edmond_Malone.3F, despite Martin's emphasis on Malone's relationships with Samuel Johnson and James Boswell (and several other of the contemporary literary and political figures), his biography exhibits a remarkable paucity of material on those persons. There is also Margareta de Grazia's Shakespeare Verbatim, which Martin often cites (mostly because he's about to counter it), but the thing was horribly expensive everywhere I found it and it's not obvious to me that it contains much that's useful for an article on Malone.

In any case, I got stuck on the article—mostly, oddly enough, in trying to find something interesting to say about his career as a lawyer in Ireland, without boring the reader to tears—and would very much appreciate more hands and eyes to help bring the thing forward. If the subject isn't of sufficient interest to you to invest article-writing and study into, then even structural or stylistic discussion on its talk page would be helpful for me. When I'm working in a vacuum I tend to grind to a halt whenever I hit a hard problem (I'm not good at leaving hard stuff for later, or making something good enough and come back to perfect it later), as well as being particularly prone to staring myself blind on a text as I'm writing it, and having fresh eyes and an outside perspective is immensely helpful in getting on with it.

Incidentally, I view this as a long-term project. My output is a bit in fits and starts—a burst of edits over a couple of days, and then maybe weeks or even months without any discernible progress—so there'd be no need for anyone to free up and invest a lot of time for this right away. I'm more looking to get more people to watchlist the article, and to chime in on its talk page whenever you have some thought about something. Anyone inclined to contribute more actively or greater degree would, of course, also be more than welcome; but I realize this is a rather obscure and, for most, boring topic so I've no exaggerated expectations; anything you can contribute with would be very much appreciated! --Xover (talk) 12:22, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Even a worm will turn

The brief article Even a worm will turn is tagged as an orphan, and also challenged as a definition which should not be in Wikipedia. I added two links to the article and changed the template ratings, but I would appreciate some attention to this brief article and its two tags. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:18, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Formulating a plan to move forward

Hi all,

Based, admittedly, quite a lot on my own preference—but I believe at least somewhat supported by the comments above—I'd like to try to formulate a plan of action for going forward. In particular I'd like to try to find some way for us all to focus our energies on producing new and improving existing content, so that we make some kind of measurable progress. I would especially like to see us all manage to coordinate our efforts to a larger degree, so we can collaborate on the various tasks. I do very much believe that the sum is greater than the parts here, and I know I work much better on an article when I have someone to collaborate with.

Towards that goal, then, I'd like to propose that we make ourselves a list of articles (well, goals, but roughly corresponding to articles), in priority order, that we agree to attack collaboratively. I'd also like to propose that we plan out some of them in time, so that, for example, we agree that in January and February we all focus on getting King Lear up to Good Article standard and, provided we can find a reviewer, also passed as GA. I know that for my own part this would make it easier to schedule the time, acquire the relevant sources, etc.

My proposed list, based on the comments above, would then be as below. I'm throwing it out as a strawman, so do feel free to rearrange the priorities.

• King Lear
• Macbeth
• Romeo and Juliet
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Twelfth Night
• The Merchant of Venice
• Othello
• The Taming of the Shrew
• Julius Caesar
• Henry VI, Part 1
• Henry VI, Part 2
• Henry VI, Part 3
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona

If we can generally agree on an order (it can be rearranged as we go, if needed; no need for stone tablets here) we can also prepare by listing good sources to use (e.g. for all of them the latest Arden and Oxford editions should probably be on the list, and quite possibly I'd include a Cambridge Student Guide just to be able to source the banal stuff that the critical editions don't bother to mention) to give everyone a chance to be on the same page (if you'll pardon the somewhat stretched pun).

I might also suggest that we try to be better about communicating what more personal projects we're involved in or contemplating, so that those that might take a fancy to it have a chance to contribute. For instance I know Tom (and Nishidani) has been doing a lot of work on Shakespeare authorship question; Tom has mentioned that he's planning to do some work on Susanna Hall, which I'm interested in and so will try to see if I can help out with; I've recently started working on Edmond Malone (which I'll post separately about, btw) and would very much appreciate some help there; and Wrad recently made an effort to bring Banquo through to Featured Article (in which I spectacularly failed to be of any help whatsoever). I believe Wrad (IIRC) had also expressed an interest in trying to bring one of the Sonnet articles to GA, which would also be a nice little collaborative project.

I think, if we can sketch out a rough plan, it might also be worthwhile to send out a newletter, using one of the newsletter bots, to everyone listed as members of the project on the front page. If we have something conrrete for them to contribute to, it's much more likely that they'll help out.

Thoughts?

PS. These are hardly novel ideas; Wrad originally had much the same approach when I first became involved with the project. Credit where credit is due, and I'm certainly not going to try to claim I'm due any of it here; I just think they're good ideas, and may be what's needed to build up the momentum we need. --Xover (talk) 11:53, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

PPS. Regarding the newsletter, I once made an abortive attempt to create such a newsletter. For inspiration, or as a mere curio, you may want to take a look: User:Xover/Sandbox/4. --Xover (talk) 11:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Just checking in here to say that I'll be happy to help, mainly on the copy-editing front after others have done the spadework (my last serious Shakespeare studies were many years ago and I haven't kept up with modern scholarship - though I've learned a lot from discussions here). As far as the plays listed above are concerned, the ones I know best are Macbeth, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I'd also be happy to tangle with As You Like It, The Winter's Tale and Love's Labours Lost. Romeo and Juliet is already a FA, so I'm not sure what it's doing in the list. I'd agree that King Lear ought to be high priority, but personally I find it too upsetting and tend to avoid it. I'm moderately familiar with the others listed, except The Two Gents. --GuillaumeTell 22:07, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

???

how was the balcony scene portrayed in the 1996 romeo and juliet movie??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.3.71.177 (talk) 18:11, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Recruitment and drive?

While we've achieved some very significant milestones, we seem to be perennially unable to generate that critical mass that is essential for having good forward progress: project contributors seem to burn out or grow distracted at a far higher rate than we manage to recruit new ones. Lately I've never seen more than maybe 3-5 editors really active within the project at any given time; and that's just too few to keep a good momentum going and makes us far too dependent on large labour-intensive contributions from a single person; and it often means a single controversial issue can stop us in our tracks entirely (too few participants to ever be able to determine consensus).

How do we recruit new contributors to the project?

Would it make sense to try to encourage new people to join by posting off-wiki? I'm thinking of stuff like the various Shakespeare blogs—the amateur ones, but even the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has a blog now—and perhaps even on the Shaksper list? If anyone has an affiliation with an academic institution, perhaps some means could be found to do little advertising to faculty and staff; maybe even encourage relevant faculty to include Wikipedia editing in their curriculum? If anyone writes articles for scholarly journals, perhaps some mention of Wikipedia and WikiProject Shakespeare's need for warm bodies could be snuck in? There are a number of topics for such articles that would be a natural fit for a mention of the project; much like Shapiro snuck in a mention of us in his latest book. And the academic elite have been discussing the topic of “access” lately, so the time might be ripe to do a little advertising along the lines of what several health and medicine-related organisations have done: a lot of people use Wikipedia as their first source for information, so having coverage of the relevant topic there be as good as possible is to their advantage (hence a lot of organisations related to medicine have various efforts designed to improve medicine-related information on Wikipedia).

Thoughts? --Xover (talk) 11:56, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the flurry of activity in response to your points speak very well of the situation! I've only been here a short time, but what you say about contributors burning out or being distracted is very true. In my own case, I was going to do a rewrite of the Titus Andronicus article, but I stumbled upon a couple of William Blake articles and was appalled at how poor they were, so I've been working on that for the last few months (not to mention writing FAQs on the IMDb, and the small matter of earning a living as an academic). Your reference to "large labour-intensive contributions from a single person" is spot on though, each of the six articles I've worked on for Shakespeare has taken me several weeks to write, and that's working on them pretty much every day for at least an hour or two. And of course, that's not really the idea behind Wikipedia.

So, how do we recruit? I don't know anything about the Shakespeare blogs and whatnot, so I can't really comment on that, but the idea of getting students and fellow staff members to do something I would whole heartedly be behind. But there is a problem. Being a young academic myself (I'm 30, been teaching for six years), I've found English academics tend fall into three categories when it comes to Wikipedia:

What is Wikipedia - the older ones

Wikipedia is like Cliff's Notes, EVIL - the middle ones

Wikipedia can actually be a very useful research tool and can really help you out (presuming the relevant article has good editors) - the younger ones

Unfortunately, by far the largest group is Number 2. When I told some of my colleagues that I was working on Wikipedia, they thought I was making a joke; they literally couldn't get their heads around why I'd want to do it. I find that most English academics consider Wikipedia beneath them, and have no interest in editing it. The same goes for Academic journals. I don't know a single academic who would ever publish anything in a journal which included a plug for Wikipedia.

Students would be a different matter however. To address the issue of having students edit pages as part of their course, I doubt that would work. Check out the talk page at the form and content to see a (very) brief discussion about this very issue. As harsh as the guy is there, I think he's right; if every student had to edit on Wikipedia, 99% of the stuff would be deleted almost immediately, which would defeat the whole purpose. However, having said that, there are always those students around who would be willing to help out, who would enjoy the opportunity, and, most importantly, would actually write decent stuff. Personally, what I would do would be to pick out a few students you know (preferably those in third year or doing their MA, but anyone exceptional in first or second year would work too) and personally talk to them about the work and invite them to contribute. Some won't want to do it, some will.

That's about all I can think of offhand.

So, as Xover said, Thoughts? Bertaut (talk) 23:41, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Getting collaborations together on Wikipedia is like herding cats. Really the best thing you can do is invite people and set clear goals. People do generally come, it just takes time. This project has suffered a lot of heated arguments in the past that have driven away a lot of good editors, but the same principles hold true. I think we shouldn't focus on FA quite yet. I think we have plenty to do if we get the HVIs, Taming of the Shrew, and Two Gentleman up to GA. I think this would be a great addition to our project and would be a very reachable goal. With luck, we might start getting some more interest with this. FA pushes seem to bring out the worst in people recently, and I'd rather not experience that again. Wrad (talk) 03:33, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the R&J collab. really worked because it is one of Shakespeare's Big plays - everyone knows what it's about, was forced to study it, or has seen a film. --Malkinann (talk) 23:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

@Bertaut: May I join this thread, as someone increasingly interested in what it means to bring students into serious open initiatives online (I take the WikiShx project to be one such). What follows is a pitch for guided student contributions. The context: I'm a Shakespeare scholar and teacher who has been studying the history of crowd-sourced scholarly projects, looking back at what makes earlier ones successful. A few Renaissance scholars have begun to think about how to do such work with undergraduates: see for example Martin Mueller's very thoughtful account of his optional assignments in data curation with undergraduates in his Renaissance Drama course http://literaryinformatics.northwestern.edu/node/63. Reviewing such experiments: their key success factors include 1) careful divisions of labor (for example, the WikiShx's own categories and to do lists); 2) the provision for skilling-up or conferring expertise on student participants (the course itself and specific assignments); 3) an intermediate phase of review (in this case, by the prof). The "students" in question here are college students, not secondary students.

There's a separate set of issues to be addressed in any assignment that asks a student to contribute to public resources such as Wikipedia: the pedagogical value to the student; what it means to spend a serious amount of time on something that will likely be cut, revised, build up around by others, etc.; going public with your scholarship; what the ultimate value of such work is. That's a different conversation.

For the purposes of this discussion, let me address the question of quality that Bertaut raised and my initial thinking about process opportunities and challenges. As I said, I'm new to this space so count on the rest of you to correct me as warranted.

Quality: two pages were recently revised by students in my Intro course: Lady Macduff and Macduff. So far the former has been reviewed by someone and a good portion of what she contributed stuck; some material has been reverted. The latter doesn't seem to have been reviewed yet. The contributors are undergraduates taking their first college Shakespeare course. Take a look at both and tell us what you think of quality.

Process: Throughout the course I've talked repeatedly about the quality of online resources for Shakespeare studies and identified particularly problematic or strong ones; since undergraduates will use these, will us nil us, I see it as my obligation to teach critical use, awareness, and understanding of projects such as Wikipedia. So one option for the final course project seemed logically to be to contribute to the mission of improving the quality of such resources. I created an optional assignment that invited students to choose a page on the WikiShx To Do list categorized as a stub and of low to medium importance, review it for accuracy and quality, propose ways to improve it (which I reviewed), and implement the ones we agreed would be valuable. I asked them to read and conform to the Wikipedia briefing materials on how to edit (including neutrality, verifiability, etc.). In my course, we had spent some time talking about how to understand Shakespearean character (not the same as in a novel, not unified, not a human being but a fictional construct), so these two entries were natural choices for the students. They drafted new entries. I reviewed them and sent them back to do further work (most of which they did) before entering the revisions.

Learning curve: The protocols for working in Wikipedia are more complex than any of us had understood and I don't think we've nailed them completely. For example, I think they may not have always logged explanations of their edits; though the entries themselves were revised, no record seems to have been logged in the history pages; and I don't see ways to request review -- and reclassification if warranted. (If I understand "stub" correctly, I think neither entry now counts as a stub?). These reactions may reflect my own slow learning curve.

Looking forward to your thoughts. UltimateCoach (talk) 15:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Tragic Error

I noticed an error. This page lists "The Tempest" as a tragedy. That is far from true. This play is a comedy, known as a romance in these days. I would love to see that corrected. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.16.167.67 (talk) 02:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Research Help page

Hi folks,

The page seems to be locked but I could add a small correction and improvement to the "Research Help" section of the WikiProject Shakespeare page:

"For journals, one could consult Shakespearean Surveys" -- I think Shakespeare Survey (CUP) is meant here?

It would also be helpful to add these important journals: Shakespeare Quarterly, Borrowers & Lenders (online, open access), and Shakespeare Studies. UltimateCoach (talk) 03:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare Authorship Question from the doubter's point of view.

I find the Shakespeare Authorship Question page to be biased. It presents all Anti-Shakespearean arguments as hopelessly flawed, not allowing for the reader to judge. The page also exploits the weakness of alternative candidates to undermine the sincere questions that exist about Shakespeare's authorship.

The key to the problem of Shakespeare's authorship is simply Shakespeare as scholar. Shakespeare is believed to have added at minimum 1,500 new words to the English language. All these words were culled from other languages, both ancient and modern. Shakespeare did all this without leaving a single trace of this skill? Nothing? No play, no poem, no letter, no journal in his own hand? And no mention of any writing is his long and detailed will? This is why there is a question.

And once one begins to look at the known facts of Shakespeare of Stratford's life, the questions multiply.

The terrible danger playwrights were in during Shakespeare lifetime; facing frequent questioning and arrests. Though Shaxper (the actual spelling of his name.) of Stratford, unlike virtually all other playwrights of his day, was never questioned and never arrested. Even after one of his plays, Richard II, was used by the Earl of Essex to help foment his rebellion; there was indeed an investigation, and some actors where questioned, but no one thought to question Shakespeare? Why? Did everyone know that Shaxper of Stratford was not Shake-Spear the writer?

Added to this is the absolute fabrication of the tourist site of Stratford-upon-Avon, where every site is appears to have been falsely established long after Shakespeare's death. Not only are all the sites in no way connected to the plays and poems, they only speculatively have any connection to the real Shaxper, the historical actor and theatre manager. I have been reading about the histories of these sites and it is absolutely appalling. Tourists started arriving in Stratford long before the sites where created. And they were simply created. If a building had long since been destroyed, a new one was built and said to have been the original. As with virtually everything associated with the “historical” Shakespeare, the tourist sites in Stratford are pure speculation. “It is fairly certain” that the house on Henley Street is where Shakespeare was born and brought up, complete with, as the birthplace website proudly states, “recreated replicas.” The grammar school in Stratford has lost all records from the period, but “is almost definitely” where Shakespeare received his education. This institution even claims to have his original desk, which is “third from the front on the left-hand side.” On and on the fantasy is created with an avalanche of qualifiers like, “most biographers agree.”

Added to this, the frequent biographies that come out on Shakespeare almost every year. Each one taking the handful of facts known about his life and panning them out into hundreds of pages of speculation stated as fact.

Added to this, that very few colleges and universities present anything to their students beyond the traditional story of Shakespeare. "An, at best, grammar-school educated boy who wandered into London, got involved with a theatre, and suddenly started producing masterpiece after masterpiece. Only to retire to Stratford for his final years, and have nothing whatever to do with writing again."

Keircutler (talk) 20:17, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Uh oh. You've spoken the forbidden words. Now that you've mentioned the authorship question without dismissing it, you will be hounded, ridiculed and attacked from many sides and by many peoples. Just ask User:Smatprt what happens when one dares to try to engage objectively with the authorship question. Any attempt to even partially validate it will have you topic banned post haste my friend. Flee. Flee while you still can.Bertaut (talk) 02:08, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not go by people's hunches on what is true; it goes by WP:Reliable sources. One such reliable source is the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare in which Michael Dobson says with regard to the main point you raise These two notions—that the Shakespeare canon represented the highest achievement of human culture, while William Shakespeare was a completely uneducated rustic—combined to persuade Delia Bacon and her successors that the Folio's title page and preliminaries could only be part of a fabulously elaborate charade orchestrated by some more elevated personage, and they accordingly misread the distinctive literary traces of Shakespeare's solid Elizabethan grammar-school education visible throughout the volume as evidence that the ‘real’ author had attended Oxford or Cambridge. Friedrich Nietzsche may have produced major works in the years immediately preceding his final breakdown and consignment to an institution and these works are still well regarded by scholars in the relevant field. Bacon's works of the two to three years before her final breakdown and consignment to an institution are not regarded by most Shakespeare scholars in this way.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:51, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

2011 King Lear FA project

Goal: Successful FA nomination for King Lear.

Deadline: ? (needs to be one, but I have no idea)

Tasks:

Participating editors: Tom Reedy (talk), Xover (talk)

Anything else needs to be added? Tom Reedy (talk) 18:39, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd say just about everything needs a going over, section by section. We could get a draft of the plot section going on the talk page like we usually do. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the date and texts section ended up being split with all the textual issues this play has. Wrad (talk) 18:44, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Wrad. In addition I think a few good ideas are to list the chief sources to make it easy for editors to participate; for as many as possible of us to simply perform a review of the article and post the results (todo items, concerns, weak areas, missing areas, etc.) on the talk page; try to come up with a reasonably concrete todo list to post on talk so that interested editors can grab a task without worrying about what other editors are working on, and without having to tackle the entire article to find something to do. If we try to tackle it as a collaboration project I think we should also try to send out a newsletter or note to everyone on the members list for the project in the hopes of drawing more editors in.
As for time frame I suggest we give ourselves a nice generous deadline (I for one still have sources I need to acquire, and shipping takes… time). How about GA-quality (not necessarily for going through GAC) by 1. April (i.e. 3 months to get started and up to a reasonable level, at least on par with the current The Tempest) and then another two months (until 1. June) for the remeaining polish to FAC? Or is that so long that people drift off / bring us into collision with examinations time for those in the education system? We could be agressive and say FAC by 1. March, but I frankly don't think that's realistic. --Xover (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

A standardized disposition for play articles

Hi,

I've long been meaning to attempt a guideline for the disposition of play articles within our project scope. I've finally made a draft of such a guideline here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare/Guideline for play articles

The guidelines is based on the original from (IIRC) Wrad that's on the main project page, and updated based on what we've actually done on our three collaboration projects on play articles. I'm sure it's not perfect, and that there are bits that are controversial, but I would like to request that we all agree specifically that 1) a guideline to standardize our play articles is in principle a good idea, and 2) that the above draft is a reasonable staring point. If we can all at least agree to that then I have hopes we can produce something approaching finished. Do of course feel free to praise it as perfect and finished and impossible to improve (my ego knows no bounds), but my aim here is mainly just to provide a starting point.

With only three play articles at GA or FA-quality we have somewhat limited precedence to draw from, but I think this is a reasonable first approximation based on what we have; and the guideline would in any case need to be a living document updated as we gain more insights into the needs of these articles (or evolving project-wide guidelines, MOS, and policies for that matter).

Anyways, I hope it's useful; and please do chime in either way (any feedback is better than no feedback, really!)! --Xover (talk) 16:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I've chimed in on the talk page. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Page view stats for William Shakespeare

Can anyone explain this (Jan 1 and 2) [3]? Wrad (talk) 06:41, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

File:Ira Aldridge as Aaron in Titus Andronicus.jpg to appear as POTD soon

The following notice was just posted at Talk:Ira Aldridge:

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Ira Aldridge as Aaron in Titus Andronicus.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on February 1, 2011. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2011-02-01. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks! howcheng {chat} 18:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Picture of the day

An engraving made from a daguerreotype of Ira Aldridge (1807–1867) in the role of Aaron from William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Aldridge was an African American actor who made his career largely in Europe due to persistent racism in the United States. He began acting with the African Grove theatre in New York City, and moved to London in the early 1820s, where he soon began receiving critical acclaim for his performances, most notably for Othello. He then was cast in several roles of specifically white characters, such as the title role in Richard III, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. He was so renowned that he is the only African American to be included among the 33 actors honored at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.Daguerreotype: William Paine; Image: London Printing and Publishing Co; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

The picture caption contained an error (now fixed), and the article has a big ugly maintenance template (it lacks inline citations) on it. As this is one very good way to expose the project to potential new contributors, it would be great if someone had the opportunity to double-check the caption and have a look at cleaning up the article ASAP. —Xover (talk) 20:09, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Wow. I can't believe we don't have an article on Aaron. People clicking on the Aaron link hoping to really figure out who he is will likely be dissapointed... Wrad (talk) 20:46, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The 2011 Backlog Elimination Drive

Hi everyone,

I know we're all busy with various acts of WikiDrama, but as a much-needed distraction I would like to propose that we, as a project, participate in the Contribution Team's 2011 Great Backlog Drive.

A list of articles needing cleanup associated with this project is available. See also the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.

The drive's aim is to reduce or even eliminate some of the many queues of maintenance tasks that are backlogged. You'll find a full list on the drive's page, but it's stuff like articles tagged as needing references, or that have weasel words, or that don't have in-line citations, or have trivia sections that needs to be cleaned up, and so forth. If every active member of this project signed up and committed to fixing just one such maintenance task each day, we could collectively take care of a worthwhile chunk of the backlog. And as an added bonus, we have plenty of such tasks that are already within our scope.

This would have the additional benefit of giving our own articles little bit of much needed tender love and care; and might also be a good way to promote WikiProject Shakespeare (which, lets face it, really needs more able hands to help out).

So here's the challenge: I will pledge to fix at least one cleanup task each day. Who's with me? —Xover (talk) 16:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I just now saw this. I'll do it, too, though it's like bailing out a leaky boat! Tom Reedy (talk) 17:20, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Character articles with no real-world content

Hi all, I found a page on wikiproject fictional characters listing characters deemed to have no real world content - ie. those which don't currently show why they meet the GNGs, ie. those who are likely to get deleted in a fiction purge. I've reproduced the list here - it'd be great to knock some of these off. --Malkinann (talk) 21:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

1. Apemantus
2. Christopher Sly
3. Dogberry
4. Florizel (The Winter's Tale)
5. Francis Flute
6. Lysander (Shakespeare)
7. Miranda (The Tempest)
8. Orsino (Twelfth Night)
9. Perdita (The Winter's Tale)
10. Puck (Shakespeare)
11. Regan (King Lear)
12. Sebastian (Twelfth Night)
13. Snug (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
14. Toby Belch
15. Tom Snout

In what way do, for example, Puck, Miranda and Orsino not meet general notability guidelines? --GuillaumeTell 21:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

In the way they don't cite sources, especially sources that aren't the plays. I don't believe for a second that they're not significant characters, but in order to get their names knocked off the list I found and to save them from a possible purge, some scholarship should be added to their articles. --Malkinann (talk) 22:04, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't have any great interest in articles on fictional characters, just wanted to know what was going on. A side-note here: Characters in Romeo and Juliet is on my watchlist and seems to have been deteriorating slowly, or not-so-slowly. And the number of people who think that Friar Laurence ought to be Friar Lawrence is wearying. --GuillaumeTell 00:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I think mass deletion of these is inappropriate, even if they don't have sources. Time and again, Shakespeare characters survive Afd with flying colors when push comes to shove. See, for example, the Afd discussion for Rosaline. Wrad (talk) 02:38, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It'd still help to stave off any mass deletion noms before they occur, rather than when push comes to shove. --Malkinann (talk) 03:19, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2011_April_9#File:Laura_Rees_as_Lavinia.jpg

All opinions welcome. ^walk victor falk ^talk 13:24, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Dramatis personæ for "Characters"

In an old discussion on this page "Characters" was agreed as the consistent L3 header for this topic. A contributor has started what seems to be a systematic change, to "Dramatis personæ" (wikilinked, in opposition to MOS:HEAD), noting that "we should re-examine that Project Policy". More on the talk page for As You Like It. Views? --Old Moonraker (talk) 07:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for adding this topic here. Two thoughts: (1) What leads you to conclude that this "seems to be a systematic change"? Please elaborate. Thanks! (2) On an tangential note, MOS does not preclude links in headers. Please don't misrepresent that matter, with your interpretation of the MOS policy. The policy states: "Headings should not normally contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked." That is, links are not forbidden per se. Rather, they should be used sparingly, when warranted, as an "exception to the general rule". So, your interpretation is that they are precluded altogether, no matter what. My interpretation is that they are to used sparingly, when needed, as the exception to the rule (for valid and good reason). So, there are certainly degrees to which reasonable minds can differ on this matter. Please don't misrepresent that your interpretation is the correct and only interpretation of the MOS policy. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC))

I don't understand what you mean by "precluded altogether, no matter what". That's not what I wrote above, and I've tweaked my original comment on AYLI talk page to make this plain.

"Systematic": perhaps I'm jumping the gun as I can only remember seeing two changes from "Characters" to "Dramatis personæ" so far; I've just tried a quick sweep down my watchlist to find the other, as I can't remember it, but I didn't identify it. Henry V and Henry VIII articles have the term, and if the matter is now settled at Talk: As You Like It (as it seems to be) I'll get round to those sometime. --Old Moonraker (talk) 21:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Both changed.--Old Moonraker (talk) 13:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Correct character inbox

I have been adding info for Shylock and wish to add character inboxes for other characters. Have I used the correct character inbox? Dwanyewest (talk) 02:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Dwanye, and welcome to WP:BARD. The infobox is, I'm afraid, not correct by definition, as the consensus in the project was to not use infoboxes on articles about Shakespearean characters. However, that said, there is a template specifically for this at {{Infobox Shakespearean character}}. It seems to be an old fork / copy of {{Infobox character}} and should probably be revised before being used. --Xover (talk) 06:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Nutcase advertising in Thomas North article

A nutcase who believes that Thomas North wrote the plays of Shakespeare is using the Thomas North article to publicize his e-book and YouTube video. (He's also loading various Shakespeare discussion groups with traffic from his sock puppets.) I'm not enough of a Wikimentarian to feel qualified to take direct action here, but someone had better get onto it. John W. Kennedy (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

It had been removed from Thomas North before I checked, but I am now watching, thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 03:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Help populating a new category

I've just created Category:Translators of William Shakespeare, but having a little trouble populating it since I'm not sure what criteria should determine inclusion. How big a part of the person's life work does translating Shakespeare have to have been, or how influential does the translation have to have been? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:37, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like an important project. I know there is some stuff on this in articles on Shakespeare in other wikis (wikipedia in other languages). Wrad (talk) 05:00, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Shakespeare categories to be renamed?

Hi. I noticed that someone is proposing to change lots of the Shakespeare cats here: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 October 20. I think you may have objections. Note that many of these changes are hidden - you need to click on the "show" buttons. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Poll regarding proposed merge of Oxfordian theory

Two articles relating to the Shakespeare authorship question are:

• Oxfordian Theory – Parallels with Shakespeare's Plays (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Please consider the poll here which asks whether the first above article should be merged with the second (the poll mentions Oxfordian Theory which is a redirect to the second article above). Johnuniq (talk) 10:47, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Add images to sonnets?

I'm proposing that images of the sonnets from the 1609 printing be added to each sonnet page, the way I did here (although I would not use this particular scan). I would prefer they be at the top, but after experimenting I can't seem to do that without messing up the rest of the page. Any opinions or suggestions? Tom Reedy (talk) 16:57, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:Sonnet

Please take a look at this discussion regarding re-formatting {{sonnet}} at WP:BOTREQ. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 18:12, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

New Shakespeare on screen

Hi all, so I just wanted to make everyone aware that I'm currently working on a complete overhaul of the List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations article, which has a number of major problems. For a start off, it's badly incomplete (for example, the first Shakespeare screen adaptation isn't there (King John from 1899) and the first feature length Shakespeare adaptation isn't there (Richard III from 1911). As well as that it's stylistically all over the place, sometimes even within individual entries. So what I'm doing is basically working on as complete a list as I can humanly create, and making it all conform to a specific template. User:MarnetteD has given me some very useful advice regards the layout of the article, and indeed, it was from a conversation with him that I first got the idea to do this. Now, if you check my sandbox, you'll see my progress to date, and you'll note that even after only 13 plays, the list has become massive. So, when it's finished, I propose splitting it up into two; one for film and video and one for TV. Possibly, I might also create seperate pages for Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello and maybe one or two others, depending on how big those sections end up being (I know individual lists already exist for several plays (Romeo and Juliet (films) for example), and I would simply suggest altering those pages to fit in with the new design on the main adaptations page). So basically, I'd just copy and paste the R&J section from the main page onto the list page, and leave the actual Romeo and Juliet on screen article alone. Same with Hamlet. So there you go, anyone please feel free to offer advice and/or criticism. If anyone does see any problems or wants to change anything, could I ask you to just let me know, rather than editing the sandbox yourself, as I've a master document on my computer, and it'll just enable me to keep tracks of things easier that way. In any case, I'm very open to any kind of help. It will be obviously several months before I'm finished (could very well be some time in 2013), but I'll post everything in one article for a few days before I start splitting things up. Bertaut (talk) 23:26, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Verse/Prose Composition

Hey, WikiProject. I've been examining my copy of the Royal Shakespeare Company's edition of His complete works and noticed that in a 'summary section' of each play, a percentage is given of the verse and prose composition of a play, followed by tallies of each character's number of scenes, speeches and lines as a percentage of the play. While the detailed tallies probably aren't notable for Wikipedia, would it be worth adding verse percentages to each play, and for notable cases (King John being 100% verse, for example) adding a short note to clarify why this may be the case (referenced, of course)? I don't mind trudging through it myself; it won't be a great deal of work. If you guys think it's a good idea, I'm not sure how to slip it into an article so I'd appreciate advice. Thanks! 109.149.73.110 (talk) 18:15, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that'd be really neat. IMO, the verse/prose percentage should go in the lead (I was going to say the infobox but then I realized these don't have infoboxes) and the character breakdown in the character section. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:15, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

It took me a while, but I managed to construct a mockup for the characters of Hamlet (where statistics were available; for minor characters they aren't). The table is below, but if it fucks up the page for some reason, I have this. 109.149.73.110 (talk) 23:36, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Characters	Percentage of lines	Number of speeches	Scenes on stage
Hamlet Son of the former king, and nephew of the present King	37%	341	12
Claudius King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle	14%	100	11
Gertrude Queen of Denmark, and mother to Hamlet	4%	70	10
Polonius Lord Chamberlain	9%	86	8
Ophelia Daughter to Polonius	4%	58	5
Horatio Friend to Hamlet	7%	105	9
Laertes Son to Polonius	5%	60	6
Voltemand, Cornelius Courtiers
Rosencrantz Courtier, friend to Hamlet	2%	46	6
Guildenstern Courtier, friend to Hamlet	1%	29	5
Osric Courtier	1%	19	1
Marcellus An Officer	2%	34	4
Bernardo An Officer
Francisco A Soldier
Reynaldo Servant to Polonius
Ghost of Hamlet's Father	2%	15	2
Fortinbras Prince of Norway
Gravediggers A sexton and a clown	2%	34	1
Player King, Player Queen, Lucianus, etc. Players	2%	8	2

Folger Shakespeare Library needs help help uploading their collection images

Hi everyone. The Folger Shakespeare Library wants to upload their collection of images, many (or most) which are documents. See the images here. If you are able to do so, please get in touch with User:Kaldari. Thanks! SarahStierch (talk) 17:05, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

New templates

I have created {{Julius Caesar}}, {{Antony and Cleopatra}} and {{Twelfth Night}}. Feel free to revise.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:13, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Also created {{Henriad}} and {{Shakespeare tetralogy}}. The latter will be difficult for me to determine characters for.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:47, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Last ones that could use some review {{The Comedy of Errors}}, {{Love's Labour's Lost}} and {{As You Like It}}.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:18, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Bertaut (talk · contribs), when you say you have taken the time to eliminate redlinks/nonlinks from templates, are you suggesting that {{The Comedy of Errors}} and {{Love's Labour's Lost}} should have no character list? Should {{As You Like It}} be pared down? I think some major characters are without articles in this one. What about {{Julius Caesar}}?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:37, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Specific productions

Has there been discussion in the past about creating articles on individual influential productions? Say, Peter Brook's Midsummer? I think it could be a good idea. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:19, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

See the newly created {{A Midsummer Night's Dream}}.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I mean, I thought I remembered that that article existed - I'm talking about doing more. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:28, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

If you like Shakespearean research, I could really use help filling in {{Shakespeare tetralogy}}.

I'll see what I can do, but I would note that Shakespeare has two tetralogies. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:43, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help so far. The other one is named the Henriad. I don't know a name for this one.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 22:41, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

One example of a pretty good article on an individual production is Moscow_Art_Theatre_production_of_Hamlet. Wrad (talk) 22:57, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

hm, it looks like we had more articles than I thought. Not all were in the category though. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:31, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The Henry VI/Richard III trilogy doesn't have a name - it tends to be known simply as Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy. Which is confusing because it's actually second chronolically. As regards characters, I wrote the three Henry VI articles and I did the character list for Richard III, and if you check them out you'll find they're extremely detailed and, where necessary, all link to the historical people. Where ambiguity exists as to who a major character is in real life, I've noted it. The only major problem regarding characters is the character of Montague in 3 Henry VI who is a complete mess and seems to be introduced into the play twice - both times as different characters. Oh, and one other thing, regarding An Age of Kings, I'm currently putting an article together on that so all those red links in the info boxes will be gone soon enough. As regards the other conversation going on here, I think it's an excellent idea, but there have been so many. Having written six articles on Shakespeare so far (Henry VI 1-3, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Taming of the Shrew and Titus) I could give you at least 20 landmark productions which, I suppose, deserve their own article. It would be a difficult one to decide where to draw the line as to what does and what doesn't deserve mention. Bertaut (talk) 02:12, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Bertaut, As a Shakespeare scholar, it astounds me that the plays that have won Best Revival, Best Play (or Musical in the case of The Comedy of Errors), aren't considered notable enough productions to have their own articles. With all the films that have no articles where do these award-winning plays rank. P.S. as an expert, I encourage you to add, remove, and rearrange content on these templates.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

My experience is that, with Shakespeare, many things are notable that otherwise wouldn't be. This has been proven time and again at AfD. People simply can't argue with solid, scholarly sources, and Shakespeare topics have a lot of them to draw from. Wrad (talk) 14:00, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Will do Tony, it'll take me a little while as I've a lot on at the moment, but I'll certainly be able to expand the info currently included. Watch this space. Well, watch that space! Bertaut (talk) 01:11, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I watch everything I create on some level. Some are on my watchlist and I check the related changes of the rest 2x per week. I will notice any change you make within 4 or 5 days. I am not sure how much longer I will be watching this page, since my contributions to Shakespeare are about done.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:49, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Right. Well, I've found myself a couple of free hours and had a go at expanding the characters lists in both templates. I've limited characters to those who have pages on wikipedia so as to avoid red links or 'non-links'. Arranging them in any kind of order is a nightmare. There are a hundred ways to do it; I did what a colleague of mine suggested and arranged them (very roughly) in their order of significance in the plays. I've also taken the liberty of renaming the "Shakespeare's tetralogy" template to "Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy". This is what it is generally known as; if you simply say Shakespeare's tetralogy, people are going to say "which one?" I'll probably to continue to fiddle with the templates over a period of time, but I think doing the character list is the most significant thing. Please feel free to modify or redo anything I've done. Bertaut (talk) 01:43, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I assume your Elizabethans know what the norm is. It looks O.K. to me. I posted some questions in the thread above about the other templates.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:38, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

British stage database help

I'm still trying to create the Willy Loman article. If you know anything that might be analogous to www.IBDb.com for West End theatre please chime in at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Theatre#West_End_theatre_database.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Sources of WS's plays

I'm making a table of sources so that all of the information will be in the same location. Anyone want to help out? User:Roscelese/Sources of William Shakespeare's plays –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:47, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Once more unto the breach, chaps...

It looks as though we may have some sort of (uncommunicative) school project descending on Bard-related articles, see User talk:Theaterproject2013 and User talk:Tha Taming of the Shrew. So far these are the only two I'm aware of, but please can I ask project members to keep an eye out for mis-spelled or Act-specific articles on plays (so far we've had The Midsummer Night's Dream, The Middsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew: Act I and a few others) which bear a striking resemblence to high-school essays. If you see any, please tag them for deletion under G10 or turn them into appropriate redirects, and let me know about it - I'm trying to track down the teacher before his/her students are all blocked... I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks, so cheers guys - Yunshui 雲‍水 07:56, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

How bizarre! I'll certainly keep an eye out. Just out of pure curiosity, how do you plan to track down the teacher? Bertaut (talk) 21:34, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm hoping one of his students will roll over and 'fess up his username, or leave a trail I can follow. Otherwise I'll have locate and pester every high school English teacher in the world, and I've got a couple of other things I was hoping to do this evening... Yunshui 雲‍水 22:11, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Macbeth

Hello, Wikiproject Shakespeare!

Is this a dormant Wikiproject? I don't see much activity on this page, recently.

Anyway, some of you may remember me from my time as a more active Wikipedian. I'm just dropping by to let you know that I've been doing some wikidragoning at the Legacy section of the Macbeth page: basically the same exercise as I did at Hamlet and at Romeo and Juliet before we embarked upon their featured article drives.

Anyone up for an FA drive on Macbeth? AndyJones (talk) 21:18, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• I'll take no response for a week as a sign that I shouldn't bother following this thread. Obviously people should feel free to discuss with me at my User:Talk. Best, AndyJones (talk) 22:12, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

hi, Im trying to find someon who can write a wiki article on Millennium Shakespeare - this is a first attempt but could do with some help on this to get it published. Many thanks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Millennium_Shakespeare — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.24.188.150 (talk) 23:33, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Vital Articles/Expanded: An invitation

Greetings, Shakespeare editors. On behalf of the Vital Articles project, I would like to extend a personal invitation to you to participate in the ongoing discussions regarding films, filmmakers and actors at the Vital Articles/Expanded main talk page. There are currently 16 pending discussions regarding specific films to be added, removed or swapped from the existing VA/E sublist of films, as well as 21 active discussions regarding actors and actresses, and seven discussions regarding film directors and producers. There are other pending discussions that touch on music, theatre, opera and literature, and future discussions will no doubt touch on other artists and art forms as we work to refine the various VA/E sublists. As regular editors in WikiProject Shakespeare, we would welcome your knowledgeable participation in these discussions as we pare our list to those most "vital" of topics. Regards, Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:52, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Robben Island Shakespeare

I think there's enough notability through sources to create a small article on the Robben Island Shakespeare, a volume of the Complete Works that Nelson Mandela and other notable people read in prison. Anyone want to collaborate to try and get it ready so it can be DYKed on Mandela's birthday? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:58, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Pointer

Members of this project may be interested in this discussion. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:00, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, that's to discuss the possible deletion of File:Cardenio.jpg which is a publicity poster for a production of The History of Cardenio. Johnuniq (talk) 04:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Titus Andronicus

There is a discussion currently taking place here which might interest members of the Project - specifically the removal of four non-free images from the Titus Andronicus article. All opinions welcome. Bertaut (talk) 20:41, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Do we need to Tempest templates?

Does anyone else think these templates should be merged? Dwanyewest (talk) 23:05, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

{{Characters in The Tempest}}

Everything in the characters template is already in the main template, so it should just be deleted. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:13, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I dunno how to nominate a template for deletion. Dwanyewest (talk) 01:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Roscelese has already nominated it here. While we're on the subject, do we need either of these:

{{tl:Characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream}} {{tl:Characters in Romeo and Juliet}}

Neither contains anything not in the main template. Bertaut (talk) 01:07, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think those are necessary either. Should they be added to the Tempest nomination and dealt with as a batch, or does someone want to nominate them separately? (Not that I think the outcome is likely to be different, but perhaps it's irregular to add to a batch nomination after people have voted? I don't know.) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:15, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Nominate each one seperately in-case someone objects. Dwanyewest (talk) 13:10, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Much ado about nothing and toothache

Request help with the society and culture section of toothache please. Toothache (and "tooth-ache") are mentioned in Act V, scene 1 and In Act III scene 2.[4] Please could someone simply explain to me what is going on these scenes and what is meant by the usage of the term in each. I think in Act III toothache is used to refer to "love sickness", and in Act V, about philosophers still being human and feeling pain. Many thanks if you can help, Lesion (talk) 13:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's much to be got out of it. The Act III reference doesn't mean that toothache is being used to mean lovesickness - rather, Benedick is claiming he has the toothache and is not in love. The latter reference is straightforward; you're basically reading it right, but it's not really a cultural statement about toothache. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:09, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

He's saying he's got toothache because he doesn't want the other blokes to think he's miserable because he's in love. They advise him to "draw it" (pull it out). He says "hang it" (an expression meaning something like "get lost" or "damn it"). They then make a joke about hanging and drawing (a reference to the punishment of "hanging, drawing and quartering"). The line "What, sigh for the toothache?", means "you are miserable [just] because of toothache?". The next line "Where is but a humour, or a worm." refers to the theory of four humours, where humour means "liquid". "Worm" refers to a supposed microscopic parasite that was thought to cause toothache by burrowing into the tooth. The 'humour' probably refers to the build up of pus in a dental abscess. So, it means something like "...which is just fluid or a parasite" (i.e. "it's an abscess or caries" in modern terms ). There's probably pun in there as unbalanced humours were supposed to cause mood swings. Paul B (talk) 19:29, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

The act 5 lines just means, in loose translation, "I don't believe any philosopher happily put up with toothache, even though they write as though they can wave aside disasters and pain as if they were gods". In other words he's saying "Don't give me a load of philosophical platitudes about how I should feel. You can't make pain go away by throwing words at it." Paul B (talk) 19:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

OK great, thanks guys. Roscelese, I really need to find things to flesh out the culture section before GAN... Shakespeare's writing about a symptom is notable imo... Indeed after a quick Google search I believe it is the only time he talks about toothache, which I find fascinating since it is mentioned several times. Perhaps Shakespeare or someone very close to him had toothache during the writing of this play?

Starting to build some content for this based on the feedback from all three replies. Also found a site which translates the words into modern English:

Let me know what you think. Lesion (talk) 19:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Seems OK. I could try to find out more about the abscess and toothworm concepts if you are interested. BTW, it's not the only reference to toothache in Shakespeare. There's a line in Othello in which Iago pretends he heard Cassio talking about Desdemona in his sleep ("I lay with Cassio lately; And, being troubled with a raging tooth, I could not sleep.") And in Cymbeline, when Postumous says he's happy to die because life is painful, he gets the reply "Indeed, sir, he that sleeps feels not the toothache". The suggestion that toothache is linked to lovers derives from a line in The False One by Massinger and Fletcher, a play about Caesar and Cleopatra. Julius is pining for Cleo and his mate Sceva says "You'd best be troubled with the toothache too: for lovers ever are", but that's generally taken to mean that lovers pretend to have toothache, as in Much Ado. In other words, he's saying "Just say you've got toothache, that what people in love always say". It seems to have been a cliché of the time. Paul B (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Re: "toothworm", yes that would be welcome. Have a look at toothache#History, society and culture and Dental caries#History where there is a little bit of content on this already. That is not to say that the facet is explored completely.

I will add those other 2 plays to the intro of this segment about Shakespeare, perhaps then going on to the details from Much Ado about nothing.

Re: The False One, this also sounds notable to mention. Thanks! Lesion (talk) 22:42, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

As You Like It

Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Film#Shakespeare.27s_.22As_You_Like_It.22_Rosalind.2FGanymede.2FOrlando_storyline.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:50, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Potential merge

Should The Merchant of Venice (unfinished film) and One Man Band (unfinished film) be merged?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:18, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Ding Dong Bell

Should I add Ding Dong Bell to {{The Tempest}} and {{The Merchant of Venice}}.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:12, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, in it's current form the Shakespeare bit is a mess: "the following phrase [ding doing bell] could actually be the writer's original instructions for sound effects, although this is not certain." Er, no, it couldn't be because without it the line doesn't scan or rhyme. Paul B (talk) 11:40, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Your logic makes perfect sense to me. I will leave it to you and the other experts here to correct that content. I will add it to both templates.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:45, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Coriolanus (2013 play)

TonyTheTiger brought this issue to my attention, so I thought I'd run past you guys; Coriolanus (2013 play). Tony suggested the article be merged or deleted. I think a merge is probably the way to go. Should only take five minutes. At the very least, even if we don't merge, the name of the article needs to be changed to something like Coriolanus (2013 production) or Coriolanus (Donmar Warehouse) or something along those lines. At the moment, the title makes it seem as if it's a newly written adaptation of the play when, in fact, it's simply a production, albeit a superb production. Bertaut (talk) 16:35, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes my point was that I felt it was probably not a revamped production but rather a standard production of the play. I am hoping as I uncover things and post them here that you experts will clean these up. I will continue to post here and hope for responses that lead to improvements. I will leave this separate article in the new template until a merge has been properly done.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:06, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Okay. I'll do the merge at some stage over the next few days, and make the changes to the template when I do so. Bertaut (talk) 17:35, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The Quality of Mercy

The Quality of Mercy is a mangled dab page. The page actually takes a stab at presenting encyclopedic content and then also presents a disambiguation page. I would think a Shakespeare expert could create a credible stub in a separate article for the encyclopedic content and then the dab could link to that as well as all other disambiguated topics.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

That's bizarre. A half dab/half article page! Should be easy enough to create a basic stub. Bertaut (talk) 16:37, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I am going to try to do this one.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:42, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I have created The Quality of Mercy (Shakespeare quote) and have reworked The Quality of Mercy. Please come by and help round out this article so that the world has a proper resource.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:42, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Much Ado About Nothing template

I've asked User:TonyTheTiger about this, but I'd like to also raise it with this project. Do this edit to Malapropism and this (et seq.) to {{Much Ado About Nothing}} seem appropriate? To me, the former seems like a stretch. The latter might be better if it used the redirect Dogberryism. Cnilep (talk) 04:09, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The edit to Malapropism (which added the navbox Template:Much Ado About Nothing) is not needed; it should be reversed. The edits to the navbox (diff) could be regarded as a matter of taste; I'll need to think about that, although I definitely think that ephemera should not be listed—a navbox is not an exhaustive list of anything with a connection to a topic. Johnuniq (talk) 04:35, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I had alerted Bertaut to my recent changes at User_talk:Bertaut#Shakespeare_review because he worked with me in the past when I made changes. Note that I told him not to let me get too aggressive in adding things. I encourage you all to revert any of the changes that I have made in recent days (see next section).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:29, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I think malapropism is a legitimate topic for the navbox, although WP:BIDIRECTIONAL would suggest if it's included in the navbox, the navbox should be added to the target page. As regards, No Limit Kids: Much Ado About Middle School, yeah, I don't think loosing it would cause anyone any sleepless nights. Bertaut (talk) 17:33, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I have said let's just get it right. I know I might be too aggressive with adding things. Feel free to remove if that is what consensus is.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:05, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

BIDIRECTIONAL says, "Every article that transcludes a given navbox should normally also be included as a link in the navbox". The opposite – that every page linked in the navbox should transclude the box – does not necessarily follow. Note that I removed the box from Malapropism, citing this discussion. It seems that I moved too quickly, since this discussion has not reached a consensus yet. Cnilep (talk) 23:56, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

• My feeling is that I am fine with the template being removed from or added back to Malapropism. Either way is fine, but I think the template is fine with it included. The link has been changed to Dogberryism, which I don't have a problem with.
• I would like some comments from Johnuniq and Cnilep on all the goings on with these templates in the next thread.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:44, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Remaining plays without navboxes

The remaining plays without navbox templates are as follows:

All's Well That Ends Well - under construction by Bertaut

Pericles, Prince of Tyre - under construction by Bertaut

The Two Noble Kinsmen - under construction by Bertaut

The Winter's Tale

Cymbeline

Timon of Athens

Troilus and Cressida

King John (play)

Henry VIII (play)

Edward III (play)

Basically, if you can find four links that should be in a template for any one of these, I recommend that you make a template for it.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The Winter's Tale would have enough if Exit, pursued by a bear weren't a redirect. The fact that it is a redirect surprises me greatly; there's definitely enough material for an article. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:33, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

These suggestions have no expiration. I suspect all of these plays have a related article or two that could be created to get us toward a respectable template. Create articles when you get a chance. A template would survive AFD with three links. I always look for four though so that is what I was suggesting. However, certainly any Shakespeare play would survive an AFD with three.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:05, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget Edward III (perhaps!). I'm currently putting together a template for Troilus and Cressida. As for the other ones, Henry VIII will be handy enough, because at the very least, you've got the cast list and the BBC production. Not sure about the rest, although I'd be surprised if we can mange to create one for Two Noble Kinsmen. I think what we should do is centralize our efforts here so two people don't end up trying to post templates on the same play. Bertaut (talk) 16:41, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Edward III added to the list above. I have tagged Troilus and Cressida above as yours Bertaut. Maybe User:Roscelese can take responsibility for The Winter's Tale above by tagging it or striking it once it is suitable for use.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:10, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

• I've completed {{Troilus and Cressida}}. Feel free to fiddle with it. I'm going to transclude it to the appropriate articles now. I'll take the three history plays next, King John, Edward III and Henry VIII. Bertaut (talk) 03:00, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

• • Well the reason I asked you to handle that one was to figure out what was adapted from Shakespeare and what was adapted from Chaucer. If the opera is adapted from Chaucer why is it on this template. I think what is needed is a Chaucer version template that mentions the Shakespeare or that this template should be converted. I think this template presents a Bardcentric view that is not appropriate. If you agree, is that too far outside your interest to do? I am not sure how much else would be on the Chaucer template, but maybe Il Filostrato and The Testament of Cresseid.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, you're quite right. There is some minor critical disagreement about the use of the play as a source for the opera, or lack thereof, but for all intents and purposes, the opera is based on the poem, not the play. My mistake. I've removed the opera from the template. As for doing a Chaucer version, I'm afraid I wouldn't be much use to you. Bertaut (talk) 07:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

• Given my understanding of Shakespeare (which is below average for participants on this page) and my understanding of how to use wikipedia (which is probably above average for participants on this page) the three remaining templates needed all need to have articles created on WP to make them meaningful. As I have stated, I don't know Shakespeare as well as most here and will leave it to you experts to create a threshhold level of links to create the last templates. I encourage you as a project to complete the set. I am going to dig for Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth links and then I you probably won't hear from me for a while after I get the feedback on the templates I have worked on in this most recent set of searches.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I take that back. It is possible to create a template for The Two Noble Kinsmen I think.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:02, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• {{King John}} done. I'll have a look at your most recent edits Tony as soon as I get a chance. Bertaut (talk) 21:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I removed one link.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:37, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
• {{Edward III}} done. Bertaut (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
  • No issue.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:11, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
• I noticed your edits to {{The Winter's Tale}}, {{Cymbeline}}, and {{Timon of Athens}}. In each case you added links that have no content regarding the play that the navbox details. I am going to remove each link with no relevant content.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:16, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
• Also, why did you remove Henry of Masovia from Template:The Winter's Tale?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:24, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• {{Henry VIII}} done. I'm going to have a go at the remaining three, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get enough to include. Bertaut (talk) 01:44, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Hank8 looks good. GL, with the other three. If you can do more than one of them, it will be a pleasant surprise.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:07, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Template:Twelfth Night

Should I add Just One of the Guys and/or Motocrossed to Template:Twelfth Night. Both of them have Category:Films based on Twelfth Night, but do not mention the play in their extensive articles.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:51, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I have added sourced (not scholarly) content to the articles.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:56, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

• Bulleted list item

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Shakespeare to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the Tool Labs tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 23:23, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

• I think this was per my request. I assume it doesn't cause a problem here to have this data readily available now.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:41, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

transparency regarding template-related Shakespeare edits

Back in 2012, I created {{Antony and Cleopatra}}, {{Julius Caesar}}, {{Twelfth Night}}, {{A Midsummer Night's Dream}}, {{As You Like It}}, {{Love's Labour's Lost}}, {{The Comedy of Errors}}, {{Henriad}}, {{Shakespeare tetralogy}} and {{The Merry Wives of Windsor}}

I am now checking back in to see what else I can do. I have been posting on Bertaut's talk page because he worked with me in 2012. Since others are interested, I will post my new change here. So far, I have made the following changes in my recent foray into Shakespeare:

1. created {{Coriolanus}}
2. created {{Measure for Measure}}
3. A Midsummer Night's Dream changes
4. Titus Andronicus changes
5. The Taming of the Shrew changes
6. The Tempest changes
7. Much Ado About Nothing changes

I will add to this in the near future as I make further changes. In the thread above someone had an issue with one edit I made. So I am posting this alert so everyone can see what is going on.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:24, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The Merchant of Venice changes --TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:04, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

King Lear changes--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:59, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

• Note that I have tilled a lot of fertile soil on this one, but it badly needs some landscaping.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:59, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I've done a bit of work on it. I switched Sources and Characters as the majority of Shakespeare navboxes put characters before sources. I moved Gunasundari Katha from the On screen section to the Adaptations section. I removed Son of a bitch and shut up as I don't see the special relevance. Bertaut (talk) 01:35, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

As I read Bitch (insult)#Son of a bitch, King Lear is the first use of the term "son of a bitch", which is a pretty significant phrase in terms of popular culture and WP is a very important resource for popular culture. Admittedly, Shakespeare is not generally a topic that panders to pop culture demands, but in terms of the overall encyclopedia, I think having a link on a Shakespeare template might seem odd, but this seems to be the origin of the phrase. I really think it should be on the template. I am requesting an explanation why the origin of the phrase son of a bitch is not encyclopedic.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, the under construction template is still on it. Is it okay to remove it, or are you planning on doing some more work on it? Bertaut (talk) 01:36, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

I left the under construction template on the template in anticipation of your work. However, I was thinking you might want to split out the Adaptations in some kind of way. Like maybe literature, stage, etc.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

King Lear isn't the origin of the phrase. The article simply gives Lear as an example of its usage, although I'm not sure why. It seems a very random example to just throw into the mix. Shakespeare also uses a variation of it in Troilus and Cressida. The phrase comes from Of Arthur and of Merlin, which is the first recorded example of "biche-sone". Check the third paragraph in the history section, pretty poor structuring, but it does give the modern origin. As for dividing the adaptations up, yeah that shouldn't be too difficult. Bertaut (talk) 06:12, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Is "biche-sone" Middle English or a foreign language. Because, if it is an early form of English, we still are not that close to the current vernacular until Shakespeare. If you have an equally compelling quote from T a C, please present it along with the King Lear one in that article.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:07, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

I just fixed {{King Lear}}. I have two issues left. Should the TV and film versions be separated and should opera be moved down to adaptations?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:11, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Othello changes--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:15, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

• N.B. I was not sure about story in a story content. There were three or four other marginal cases such as The Deceiver and So Fine--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:15, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

created {{Timon of Athens}}--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:04, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

created {{Cymbeline}}--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

created {{The Winter's Tale}}--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:46, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I have spent a lot of time pondering adding Breeching (boys) to this template. The problem is that if there were several notable words and phrases adding this one might be O.K. The article is fairly extensive and this seems like it may be the earliest or one of the earliest uses of this term in literature. Not sure which way to go since it is a fairly uncommon term, nowadays.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Hamlet changes.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:58, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I guess I will plow ahead with R&J in the next few days under fear of the wrath of all the world's great lovers. Johnuniq and Cnilep have had no further comment and Bertaut seems to be on board. Given how Hamlet went, I am expecting that a lot of changes are in store.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:38, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

What a piece of work is Cnilep, letting some 40 hours elapse between the question and response. I have no particular objection to including links to phrases in the play-related templates. In cases where neither the play nor the author are a particular focus of the article, though, I think that the templates need not be transcluded. In short: lay on, TonyTheTiger. Cnilep (talk) 02:04, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

• I'm conflicted on many of the changes. Some significant improvements have occurred, but some navboxes may need pruning, although that can take place slowly. Consider the Hamlet navbox at it was at 27 February 2014 and as it is now: {{Hamlet}}. People with Javascript disabled see the navbox expanded, and it is huge. I can sort-of see the idea of sticking everything in the box and letting the reader decide what is of interest, yet why list Primrose path and Ostalo je ćutanje, and several others? Perhaps more editorial judgment concerning what is actually significant should occur. Johnuniq (talk) 03:13, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I would not be surprised if 10-20% of the things I have added, are removed by some sort of consensus. I am sure some things are marginal, but I am surprised that Primrose path is one of them. Based on the current version of the article, my perception is that the phrase is notably connected to the play as its earliest notable use. Unless there is an earlier use of the phrase shown in a future version of the article, I think it belongs on the template. As far as Ostalo je ćutanje goes, I welcome a consensus on that either way.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:22, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

• I've been knocking around these parts for a while now, making the odd edit here and there, using various IP addresses(I never really felt the need to create an account), and I’ve been watching this template development keenly. As this is the first time I've really gotten involved in a talk page discussion, I decided I had better create an account lest I be ignored as a mere IP plebeian. I'm a Shakespearean scholar myself (my colleagues amongst you will no doubt appreciate my user name) and regarding {{Hamlet}} and {{Romeo and Juliet}}, I'd be curious to get the commentary of some of the more active members of the project; Smatprt, Tom Reedy, MarnetteD, AndyJones, Roscelese, Bertaut etc. Five Antonios (talk) 16:16, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Smatprt has been topic-banned. Andy has not been active for a few years. He does pop back occasionally. What is it you want to say regarding {{Hamlet}} and {{Romeo and Juliet}}? Paul B (talk) 19:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Five Antonios, welcome to the project. I haven't had a chance to really go through the work Tony has done on either of the above templates yet, although at a very quick glance, I would note they're a lot bigger than I was anticipating. Which is a pretty worthless opinion at this stage, but there you go!! I'll have more to say when I get a chance to look at them properly. Bertaut (talk) 20:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey Five Antonios! I am not a Shakespeare scholar. I read a few plays in A.P. English in high school and took a Shakespeare course at Princeton. I probably have about average understanding of Shakespeare for an Ivy League educated person, which is probably below average for people involved in WP:BARD. I am an expert at WP editing. I am trying my best to encourage this project to fill out the set of plays in template form. As I have said above, I would not be surprised if 10-20% of the things that I added were viewed as worth removing. I figure that no one else is going to dig the way I am digging through things to find these. If I don't propose adding them, they will never be added and I think at least 80% of the things should be added. Basically, I have expanded from thing formally credited as "based on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet" to things formally credit plus things "inspired by William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet". I think a lot of the inspired by works are relevant to those looking at these plays. I welcome help reorganizing things and even pruning back. I hope I am not doing anything that needs to be entirely reverted.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:34, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Romeo and Juliet changes. I will do MacBeth next week. I have some stuff to do elsewhere on WP and in RL.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 09:03, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

• Today, I tinkered with 10 templates. I rearranged one, added one link to three, added 2 links 2 a pair, added three links to {{Othello}} and {{Henriad}}, added 5 to {{Twelfth Night}} and 7 to {{Hamlet}}. I mention this, in part, because yesterday there was a call regarding the changes made to Hamlet. So everyone looking at that should note that I discovered 7 more somewhat relevant links.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:49, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Macbeth changes.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:24, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Macbeth character alert

While I was watching some hoops today, I started tinkering with Template:Macbeth. I wanted to call everyones attention to the newly created redlink. I have rearranged the content in a way that calls for a separate article for Malcolm (Macbeth) from Malcolm III of Scotland. You experts can have at it. I am leaving it red since I expect that someone will stub that out in the near future.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:03, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

An IP reverted my attempt to avail a redlink in the template for the new character. When I looked around I noticed a few dozen incorrect references to the historical figure. I swapped in the proper character and have stubbed out an article. I am guessing with so many pages pointing to the wrong page, people may have been hesitant to create the page for the character. Now, the coast is clear. I think almost everything that should point to the character now does and working on the article makes more sense. There is still a lot of seemingly good, but unsourced content at Malcolm_III_of_Scotland#Depictions_in_fiction. If anyone can find sources for that content it would be great.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:15, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I am trying to present his storyline, but is it O.K. to use Spark Notes and Cliff Notes? If not can someone help out or suggest sources.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:32, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't really think you need a source for the outline of his role in the play. I mean, on the play articles, when we do the plot synopsis, we don't cite every sentence, as it's not necessary. I can't see anyone having a problem with the outline section not having a specific reference. But be that as it may, however, I would strongly recommend against using Cliff Notes or Sparks Notes, especially for critical info. The three main scholarly editions of the play at the moment are the Arden Second Series (the third series edition hasn't come out yet), the Oxford and the Cambridge. On Amazon, all three are searchable: Arden, Oxford and Cambridge. Using any of these would be fine. Bertaut (talk) 00:52, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I won't be buying a new version of the play. I will just refer to my undergraduate text by Sylvan Barnet from 30 years ago unless there have been changes to the story since then:-)--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:30, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

• Lo and behold the Shakespeare that was taught at Princeton 30 years ago is obsolete. It seems that Act 5 is now broken into about 11 scenes, whereas the edition used at Princeton in what I think was the fall of my Freshman year only had 8 scenes. It seems that the old scene 8 may now be 4 distinct scenes, but I am not sure. I am plodding along.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:45, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I have done about all I am going to do for this article. Experts are welcome to come clean it up. P.S. I don't really know what his most famous quote is, so feel free to change that.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:58, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Shakespearean template status update

PAGE OVERFLOW

{{navboxes}} {{navboxes}} {{navboxes}}

• Here is my latest update. I have created the templates that account for 21 of his plays (mostly less important ones) and gone through all the plays that I could to beef up all the other templates that I could. Bertaut has reviewed most of these, but {{Othello}}, {{Macbeth}}, {{Romeo and Juliet}} and {{Hamlet}} became a bit hefty. Three plays remain without templates: All's Well That Ends Well, Pericles, Prince of Tyre and The Two Noble Kinsmen. I only have strong hopes that the latter becomes viable in the near future. Now that I am done tinkering, comments are quite welcome, especially from those who have expressed an interest in the goings-on already in recent weeks: Bertaut, Johnuniq, Cnilep and Five Antonios. Tom Reedy, MarnetteD, and Roscelese are also supposedly active Shakespeare buffs who may have an opinion on the recent overhaul by a non-Shakespeare buff.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
• Having stacked these templates here and seeing what they look like, I am now wondering what would people think of putting these stacks on William Shakespeare?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:49, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
• Now that I think about it. How about the format below:

• For my part, All's Well That Ends Well is pretty much finished (six links); Two Noble Kinsmen will have at least five links, and I'm confidant enough I'll be able to get something together for Pericles, so that'll complete the entire set. I like the idea of added the collapsed templates to the main Shakespeare page, but as I've literally never made a single edit to that page, I think the opinion of the editors who do maintain it would carry more weight than mine. What I might do though is add them to the BBC Television Shakespeare page, possibly by collapsing them on a per-season basis rather than the genre groups above. As to which layout I prefer, personally I prefer the upper one, the text is very small in the other format. Obviously, {{Othello}}, {{Macbeth}}, {{Romeo and Juliet}} and {{Hamlet}} are very large, and require some cutting back. But I would see that probably taking place over a period of time. And one minor thing, I moved King John to the top of the histories template, as they tend to be listed chronologically. Bertaut (talk) 01:52, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I see that you have already added these at BBC Television Shakespeare by season. I have added state=expanded to the main template. In debates for templates for other authors, people seemed to prefer to have the general template expanded when the works templates were added. The advantage of {{Shakespeare's plays}} is that if you change the order of the plays based on your expertise, that change carries through to all places it is used.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:35, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

P.S. re {{Othello}}, {{Macbeth}}, {{Romeo and Juliet}} and {{Hamlet}}, I have not deployed those on the newly-expanded set of links on those templates. I will do so in a week or so if you don't indicate that their review is impending.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:44, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Personally I like the idea of being able to see all the plays at once without having to go another layer down. Right now I can see all the plays and their categories in one click. To do the same after adding these three templates it's going to take four clicks and three backclicks. Are you sure that's progress? Maybe if you're selling clicks to advertisers it is. I'm pretty apathetic about templates, though, since I think as long as there's a central location to find all related articles and it's not confusing to use most people don't care what they look like. I think most templates usually start off as good ideas which often fall prey to the organizational and symmetrical OCD of those to whom templates are important. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Tom Reedy of the top ten editors at William Shakespeare in terms of total edits, you are the only person who has editted the page since April 1, 2013, so your opinion is important here. I have deployed {{Shakespeare's plays}} on the four relevant pages (Shakespeare's plays, Shakespearean tragedy, Shakespearean comedy, Shakespearean history). IMO, those are pages where people are definitely trying to find out information about the works. I think this new template complements the current general one. See how they are deployed on those four pages. That is what I am suggesting at William Shakespeare. I am not talking about substituting the new one for the old one.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:35, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I misunderstood and thought you meant to replace or redo the old template. Sure, that looks fine, and I'll support it. I'll tell you what I was told after we took the main Shakespeare article to FA: High school students from now to the end of time will praise your name! Tom Reedy (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I am glad to have your endorsement. However, on that page, adding this template violates the Wikipedia:Template_limits#Post-expand_include_size. I have no idea how far the page is from teh borderline, but at some point, Bertaut has stated that he intends to consider paring down the four largest ones: {{Othello}}, {{Macbeth}}, {{Romeo and Juliet}} and {{Hamlet}}. I don't know if doing that will get the template back under the limits. I am not sure if the limits are set in stone either.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:14, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

BTW, Tom Reedy, are you aware of how many duplicate links exist in the article. It seems to me that one thing that could be done to attempt to get back under the wikilink limits would be to eliminate duplicate links. Also, Is the William_Shakespeare#Works section necessary? There are a lot of links that that are repeated in the templates and in the prose. Removing the works section and all the redundant links, may be enough to clear sufficient linkages to allow for the template that I want to add.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:19, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey Bertaut, I have been reducing the number of characters linked in the templates. Can you take a look at {{Shakespeare tetralogy}} and {{Henriad}} and see if all those redundant links are necessary?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:25, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Instead of using the newly created Shakespeare's plays template on the main Shakespeare page, why not just use the three stacked templates; like this? Five Antonios (talk) 17:37, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand why that does not cause the same problem because it that only creates one less link. However, somehow, it works on the page and the template does not.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:04, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

No, I don't understand it either. I noticed that the new template wasn't appearing properly on this page, but the stacked templates were, so I tried it on the Shakespeare page and for some reason it worked. Five Antonios (talk) 21:25, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Thought I'd solved the mystery for a moment, but it turns out not. All's Well, Pericles and Noble Kinsmen weren't being displayed in the comedy template. I thought that might account for the the reduction in links, but I've edited the template to display them, and everything is still showing up fine. Most peculiar. Five Antonios (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

That's weird. I don't get that at all. Not to worry though. We can still use the new 'Shakespeare's plays' template on some of the shorter articles, and just use the stacked templates on the main Shakespeare page. It looks fine as it is. Bertaut (talk) 01:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

• I said I would wait a week or so before deploying {{Othello}}, {{Macbeth}}, {{Romeo and Juliet}} and {{Hamlet}} on the newly-relevant pages. It has been 5 days. I just want to remind people that these are going to soon show up on a lot of new pages.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:53, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I've deleted the "Works" section after posting on the talk page and receiving no replies. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:16, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't sure what you meant at first. I see that you mean at William Shakespeare, you have eliminated the section that was almost entirely link redundancies with the templates.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:11, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Example of controversial Template:Romeo and Juliet use

On Tuzapicabit's talk page, we have discussed the use of {{Romeo and Juliet}} at "Angelo". He had removed the template, which I had placed there due to the content on the page, which he seems to think is correctly included. Despite content that says "According to co-writer Hiller, the lyrics were based on 'Romeo and Juliet - the great love story. The idea was to create a modern day Romeo and Juliet romance'", he has removed the template. I suggested that we discuss this issue here. Basically, there are two issues. 1.) Should that song be in the template; 2.) Should the template be in the song's article.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:11, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• No and no, of course not. Shakespeare's influences spread widely; we don't put these templates in peripherally related stuff. Johnuniq (talk) 10:08, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Well that is not unlike many of the changes to the template in the last two and a half weeks and the changes to all Shakespeare templates in the last month. Shakespeare is not my area of expertise, so we just need to figure out what we want.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:09, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
    • Where are Tom Reedy, Bertaut, Five Antonios, Cnilep, Paul Barlow, Roscelese (who have been discussants on my revamps over the last 5 weeks) on this issue? --TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:46, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
    • Also, DionysosProteus is the leading editor of this template (other than me) and may have an opinion.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:52, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

There are any number of tenuously related R&J "adaptations" where the relationship to the play begins and ends at "lovers from two different groups may or may not commit suicide." Or even more tenuously. I don't think "Angelo" belongs in the template nor the template on the article, but the template could use a lot of pruning because it's got so many things on it that it's difficult to find the articles on actual adaptations among everything that's just piggybacking on a Famous Love Story. Don't Fear the Reaper? The Faraway Lurs? Twilight: New Moon??? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:48, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I concur with Johnuniq and Roscelese. I've only had a cursory glance through the two biggest templates (R&J and Hamlet) but I see a lot of links that really don't belong. The Last Action Hero (video game) in the Hamlet template for example. Every filmic adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby in R&J. I think these are all examples of Tony being "too aggressive" adding links. To be completely honest, I think both templates are essentially useless at this point. Far too unwieldy. Sorry if that sounds too harsh. Five Antonios (talk) 17:47, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

In the past, Bertaut has reviewed my changes to these templates. I was expecting him to get around to the big four ({{Othello}}, {{Macbeth}}, {{Romeo and Juliet}} and {{Hamlet}}), but it seems that he hasn't. I've been saying 10-20% of what I added might need to be removed, but no one has come by to take a closer look.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:38, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I've just been too busy to give the big four the kind of time they need. Doing the smaller ones was no big deal, but I simply haven't had the time to look at the bigger ones. If anyone else wants to take a run at them, by all means, go for it. Bertaut (talk) 01:02, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Titus Andronicus (character)

FYI, some help is needed at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Titus Andronicus (character), which just failed.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:03, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Two things I don't understand: (1) Why is this article needed? (2) If you want the article, why not just create it instead of submitting it for approval? I've never submitted an article for approval, nor did I know that it was a requirement. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:47, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I think WP:AFC was created to help new users from getting their articles deleted. That process is suppose to be helpful to newbies. I am not a Shakespeare buff. So I won't respond regarding the necessity of the article.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:00, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

William Shakespeare's 450th birthday being overlooked

At Talk:Main_Page#William_Shakespeare we are discussing if there is anything that is going to be done for William Shakespeare's 450th birthday on the main page. Although we don't know his exact birthday and some claim it is the 23rd, on WP we acknowledge his baptism on the 26th. Personally, I have Template:Did you know nominations/Romeo and Juliet (Pastor) that could be rushed through DYK. Also, due to the special circumstances, if someone wants to help me beef up Malcolm (Macbeth) immediately, maybe we could unwithdraw this nomination Template:Did you know nominations/Malcolm (Macbeth).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:15, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

King Lear (character)

Shouldn't we have a King Lear (character) article separate from Leir of Britain? Although I have separated Malcolm (Macbeth) from Malcolm III of Scotland adequately, I am not expert enough to untangle the Leir of Britain article into two separate articles. The character is too complex to describe each particular instance he did something in the play. Someone who is more expert should tackle this if you guys agree.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:36, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

St Crispin's Day Speech

Is there nothing that can be done for this? Forsooth? Bearian (talk) 23:16, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Romeo and Juliet (2013 Broadway play)

Oddly BoxOfficeMojo.com has no box office results for this even though The Huffington Post says it was to be released in 2000 theatres. Can anyone help me find theatre (movie not Broadway) box office results for Romeo and Juliet (2013 Broadway play). Leave comments at Talk:Romeo_and_Juliet_(2013_Broadway_play)#Box_office.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet for Wikiproject Shakespeare at Wikimania 2014

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

The deadline for submissions is 1st July 2014

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:

Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 12:21, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:48, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Shakespeare's sonnets nominations for GA status

Students in my class have improved and submitted a number of articles on Shakespeare's sonnets for GA status. I realize that there is a backlog at GAN, but my hope is that Wikipedians will step up and help make such in-class projects devoted to improvement of the site feasible on a semester basis. If these sonnet articles could be reviewed sooner (i. e. before the end of the semester), that would be wonderful.

Here is a quick link to the nominations: Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations#Language_and_literature

Thanks for any help you can offer, Westhaddon (talk) 20:23, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Expert attention

This is a notice about Category:Shakespeare articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 20:16, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

William Shakespeare, Works

Regarding the works listed in the wiki article on William Shakespeare, a tragedy 'Sir Thomas More' has been listed. The name Sir Thomas More is mentioned just once in 'Henry the Eighth' by Shakespeare, but there is no such work (Sir Thomas More). Further, one of Shakespeare's comedies is listed as 'Love's Labour's Won'; it is actually 'Love's Labour's Lost'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.202.111.146 (talk • contribs)

See Shakespeare Apocrypha. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:04, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Sir Thomas More is a play by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, the manuscript of which is partially thought to be in Shakespeare's handwriting. Love's Labour's Won is a lost play for which there are two records. It is thought by many scholars to have been a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost. Bertaut (talk) 10:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

There certain is such a work as Sir Thomas More (play). Shakespeare probably contributed a scene to it, as a page of the manuscript is in his handwriting (probably). As others have noted, we also have an article on Love's Labour's Won, a play that was certainly printed, but no known copies of it have survived. Paul B (talk) 19:17, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Tragical History of Guy Earl of Warwick

Hello. I have started an article for the play The Tragical History of Guy Earl of Warwick. It is related to Shakespeare because one of the characters is believed by some scholars to be a lampoon of Shakespeare. I was wondering if it should be part of this WikiProject. I have described what I have reviewed for the article and still plan to review in the Talk section. Thanks!Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 03:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

About the article titled "Kiss Me, Kate (album)":

Correction within this article is needed. The "Kiss Me, Kate (album)" Wikipedia article is identified as an album by Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae and released on the Columbia Records label in 1949. However, the ACTUAL Kiss Me, Kate album by Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae, with its own album cover, was released on the Capitol Records label in 1950. The album cover currently pictured in the "Kiss Me, Kate (album)" Wikipedia article is actually the album cover of the Kiss Me, Kate original Broadway cast album released on the Columbia Records label in 1949 (soon after the original Broadway opening). This is the original (the first) album cover for this album. A subsequent album cover (pictured here in the Kiss Me, Kate Wikipedia article of the original and subsequent stage productions) was used beginning in 1958 to promote what was then the upcoming Hallmark Hall of Fame Kiss Me, Kate television special (with Drake and Morison in their original roles) aired on November 20, 1958, in color, on NBC (the Hallmark Hall of Fame program is currently aired on the Hallmark Channel). After four decades, Sony (parent company of Columbia) finally restored the original album cover beginning with the 50th anniversary issue on CD. A new image was created for the September 2012 MP3 download issue. Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae were not among the 1948 original cast and, therefore, are not on the original cast album which features Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang as the leads with the rest of the original cast members appearing in their respective roles on the album. This "Kiss Me, Kate (album)" Wikipedia article needs to be corrected either by changing the album cover to show the actual Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae Kiss Me, Kate album cover, or by changing the text to reflect the original Broadway cast who actually appear on the album that is currently pictured on the "Kiss Me, Kate (album)" Wikipedia article.```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by ALOHARONN (talk • contribs) 22:23, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

This doesn't really have anything to do with the Shakespeare project as such (if you look at an article's talk page you can see what Projects it falls under), but you're more than welcome to go ahead and change the article yourself; changing the text would probably be the more straightforward of the two options. Bertaut (talk) 00:56, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hanged after death?

Hanged after he was dead? See Talk:Fulke Underhill#this must be wrong.

I don't have the knowledge or resources to figure this one out. I'm reporting it here because the only thing that seems to make this individual notable is that Shakespeare bought the house from the father's estate. Thnidu (talk) 06:43, 8 May 2015 (UTC):

I think I've got it straightened out. --Thnidu (talk) 07:07, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Template:King Lear

There have been recent edits to Template:King Lear that seem controversial. We initially had discussions at User_talk:Bertaut#Template:King_Lear. Since it is a very important template for the project and the discussion now involves four individuals, I am bringing it to the attention of the project. I have moved the discussion to a location for a broader discussion. So far Bertaut, Five Antonios and I have discussed editorial changes by Robsinden. We welcome further opinions at Template talk:King Lear, where I have moved the discussion.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:22, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Theatre Project collaboration

— Preceding unsigned comment added by DionysosProteus (talk • contribs) 18:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Hamlet (legend) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Hamlet (legend) to be moved to Amleth. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 22:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Shakespeare's family templates discussion

I've started a discussion regarding the two templates on the topic of Shakespeare's family we have. Your input would be much appreciated. You can find the discussion at Template talk:Family of William Shakespeare#Is this template still needed in light of the family tree?. --Xover (talk) 17:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Visiting Scholars

In this thread over at Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Databases/Requests, Astinson (WMF) floated the idea of a Visiting Scholarship to get access to Shakespeare research materials.

Wikipedia:Visiting Scholars has more information about the program. In a nutshell, we connect experienced Wikipedians with research libraries. Wikipedians gain free remote access to scholarly materials and libraries increase the impact and visibility of their collections while contributing to public knowledge in subject areas that matter to them. @Xover: Responding to your concern in the other thread, these are not intended to be high intensity commitments. Each Scholarship has its own particulars, worked out in conversation between the sponsor and Scholar, and it's typically pretty flexible.

In the other thread you mentioned a resource at Folger Shakespeare Library. That would obviously be a great venue for people interested in this subject. If you (or anyone else reading this) are interested in the Visiting Scholars program, it would be helpful if you could list a few additional libraries with useful collections, to cast a wider net. In particular, most of our connections are at institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada. What are some academic libraries and schools with strong Shakespeare-related programs? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:05, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Hmm. Bertaut, Tom Reedy, AndyJones, Wrad, GuillaumeTell, and Sbp are obvious candidates here (though some of them may have existing access to many resources already). And rounding out the summonses, I believe Thedarklady154 is already resident at the Folger. The Shakespeare project has a lot of listed members, but I'm uncertain how many actively edit in the area.
The Folger's obvious resources are the World Shakespeare Bibliography and Shakespeare Quarterly, as well as the already publicly available digital media library (which, incidentally, a previous post on here suggested they had requested help uploading to commons. @Missvain and Kaldari: whatever happened with that?). Academic institutions with resources specifically useful for the Shakespeare project are Oxford university (the Ashmolean and Bodleian libraries), as well as the Oxford Shakespeare, not to mention a ton of journals and books in the field. Similarly, the Arden Shakespeare and the New Cambridge Shakespeare are ongoing series of critical editions of the plays. And Cambridge University Press publishes several series (primarily the Cambridge Companions to Shakespeare). And the Victoria and Albert museum has several items that are relevant. I'm sure there are more (there are at least a couple of libraries and collections I'm blanking on just now), but these are the obvious ones.
As I mentioned elsewhere, my little available time for, and lack of predictability of schedule, for Wikipedia makes me reluctant to raise a hand regarding a Visiting Scholar type setup. But if the rest of the Shakespeare project members / other interested editors feel they may be able to participate in such a setup I'd be happy to help out as I'm able. --Xover (talk) 19:11, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Nothing on my end. I don't live in Washington, anymore, and I don't have the "free" capacity to facilitate GLAM WIKI relationships right now. Probably better to ask Wikimedia DC, like User:Harej. Missvain (talk) 03:29, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm actually off work on sick leave at the moment, have a pinched nerve in my spine, and am in a lot of pain. Waiting for an MRI. So, I'm pretty much confining my Wikipedia activity to articles that require less of a "scholar's eye" (for desperate want of a better expression), but I have access to most material in Ireland anyway, as well as online sites like JStor and the usual suspects. I work in NUI Maynooth, which doesn't have much in the way of Shakespeare material itself. UCD, TCD and the NLI are the go-to spots here in Ireland. And not just for Shakespeare. I'll be kind, and just say I'm on first name terms with the inter-library loan people in my library! Bertaut (talk) 01:48, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Pinging @MarnetteD: as well, who may be interested in this. Bertaut (talk) 09:20, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Hallo @User: Ryan (Wiki Ed). The most important Shakespeare Researche Institutes (according to standard literature) are listet here: Shakespeare-Forschungsstätten and are situatet at the following libraries:

• UK: Bodleian Library; British Library; Library of Birmingham; Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
• USA: Huntington Library; Folger Shakespeare Library; The Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library at the University of Pennsylvania.
• Germany: Duchess Anna Amalia Library; the Shakespeare Bibliothek at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
• Japan: The University Library at the Meisei University in Tokyo.

I may have some more Ideas what will be helpful but it depends on what you want to know. Sincerely yours -- Andreas Werle (talk) 08:23, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@Xover, Andreas Werle, and Bertaut: Thanks for these suggestions/information. If you think of any other libraries with relevant collections I'd love to know (again, especially those in the US/CA, though I recognize that's a significant limitation given the subject matter). On the other side of things, anyone interested in gaining access to this sort of collection is welcome to fill out an application for the Visiting Scholars program. It will ask a few questions about your experience on Wikipedia, what you're interested in, etc. Once it's submitted we start reaching out to these institutions to try to make a connection. More information at Wikipedia:Visiting Scholars, with a link to the application at Wikipedia:Visiting Scholars/Apply. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page with ideas or questions. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:02, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Archived old addressed threads

Archived some old addressed threads.

Metric used was threads older than one year, zero new activity in thread, referring to old closed discussions like closed deletion discussion from years ago, etc.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 08:16, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Open Access journals with relevance to Shakespeare

Since it's Open Access week and The Wikipedia Library is staging an editathon, I wonder: are there any Open Access journals (or even Hybrid open access journals) that are relevant to Shakespeare? Could we find enough such to justify the creation of List of open access Shakespeare journals? @Tom Reedy and Bertaut: Pinging you specifically as the active editors on the project closest to knowing of any such. I did a superficial scan of Cambridge journals recently and didn't see much that was relevant. I haven't looked at Oxford yet. --Xover (talk) 07:37, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I do know of a few, X, but I'm walking out the door to go to the airport. I'll get back to it next week when I return. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:58, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I almost forgot about this. Here are a couple, X. I'll add more as they come to me.

Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation

Early Modern Literary Studies Tom Reedy (talk) 17:55, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Here's another: This Rough Magic. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:38, 7 November 2015 (UTC)