Happy Birthday, Bill!
A tale of two Hamlets. Metallica. SBB sequel. The Culture Wars just never get tedious. Good Tickle Brain.
Today is the anniversary both of Shakespeare’s birth and his death. Remarkable, to think he wrote all those plays and poems in a single day. Truly a prolific genius.
An Interview with Molly Hood and Hilary Dennis
Molly Hood played Hamlet for Quill Theatre in Richmond VA in the summer of 2015. That fall, the local PBS affiliate asked the company to re-mount the production in their studio for a later television broadcast. I saw that production five times and was in the studio audience for the PBS film.
Hilary Dennis has played Hamlet twice in two different punk Shakespeare shows with short scripts and rehearsal times. The first production was in November of 2019 for Elsewhere Shakespeare (the company that she and I founded together). Then in August of 2022 Hilary independently produced another Hamlet in NYC using a similar format.
As Molly and Hilary are my two favorite Hamlets, I asked them to sit down for a chat with me about their experiences playing the Dane.
Mac: Molly, in your show Hamlet was not only played by a woman, but as a woman. How much input did you have into that decision and the concept of the show?
Molly: I don't recall the conversations around whether I was going to be male or female, I did advocate that we put me in a skirt in the first scene to signify to the audience she's a woman; she's a woman; she's a woman. We changed he to her; Princess Hamlet was in there; son got changed to child, but the one that we didn't change purposefully was at the end, when — spoiler alert: Hamlet dies — Horatio says "goodnight, sweet prince." That one stayed prince. I loved that we didn't change that one. It would have messed up the meter anyway and it's this iconic line, so that one stayed.
Mac: Most of your show it wasn't important that Hamlet was a woman, but there were moments where it was so much better. In the final sword fight, Laertes flipped his sword around showing off, and then you did a goofy, stupid, clap under your legs maneuver to take the piss out of the macho dick measuring contest that Laertes was trying to have.
Molly: That moment wasn't choreographed. Jeremy is a very strong person and one day he just did it and I tried to do it but couldn't because I'm not as strong, and it evolved into "can we make a bit out of it?" because he's showing off his muscles and there's no need to do that.
Mac: Hilary, can you talk about your journey with Hamlet?
Hilary: I was in conservatory in New York from 2017 to 2019, and for one of our classes we were assigned Hamlet's "Advice to the Players" and it was my first real deep dive into the text and I fell in love with it. After that, a few of my teachers said, "You should learn this role and pursue Shakespeare." I started learning the soliloquies and asked my friends to do scenes in all of our classes and people started seeing me as “the Shakespeare person” or “the Hamlet person.”
In conservatory I was drawn to playing male characters. I felt like it was a playground for expanding my skill set, and exploring the text of Hamlet allowed me to stretch myself as an actor. I didn't need to put on a male...anything because there are so many parts of Hamlet that are feminine, so my natural range as a person and an actor matched Hamlet's range: intellectual, not as strong. That's one of the reasons he doesn't like Claudius, because Claudius is similar to him in the way he intellectualizes things. He holds his warrior father on a pedestal because he wants to be more like him but isn't.
Mac: Molly, you were always so plugged into what the energy was in the crowd. There was one night when a cicada landed in the aisle of the audience and screeched so loud during a soliloquy and you stopped and gestured at the cicada, as if to say, "we're just gonna wait for this to end and then I'll continue." Can y’all both talk about audience interaction and being in the moment?
Molly: It's impossible to separate the text from the audience; Shakespeare plays don't work without an audience. I've gotten into many lively discussions with colleagues who don't talk to the audience. That's insane. Of course Shakespeare characters talk to the audience. With Hamlet, that relationship with the audience is really important. A lot of people think Hamlet is inactive, that Hamlet doesn't do anything, but I was doing stuff all the time, figuring out the problem with the audience, "I have to talk to you because I can't trust anyone here [on stage]." I felt an intimate relationship with the audience.
The audience is different every night, and you're a different person as an actor coming into the room and so you have to respond to that; if you're not talking to them it falls apart. The cicada night, oh my god, the cicada happened when I was creeping up on Claudius praying. It's like the most quiet moment in the play, and the cicada starts hissing. As an actor I didn’t know what to do; I knew I couldn't compete with it because it was so loud. God love Foster [Solomon, who played Claudius], who just sat there with his eyes closed pretending to pray, had no idea what was going on. That was definitely a real life outdoor theatre drama moment that I hope to never repeat again for sure, at least not in the quiet parts. I think you have to get your legs under you, you have to get the language in your body and then just be present and respond to it.
This really fascinating thing happened to me during the first read. This is a play I know well. I've seen it; I've read it a thousand times. Hamlet is not a strange play to me. We were doing the table read and I turned the page and the line was "Oh I die, Horatio" and I started crying because I couldn't believe she died. I couldn’t believe Hamlet died even though I knew Hamlet dies. I was just riding the wave of the language. I couldn't believe we got to the end and I didn't make it.
One thing I loved that Jan [Powell, the director] did is that she started me in the audience. I started with them, and I loved that. Because then they were my people.
Hilary: It's really validating to hear your experience because there are definite parallels. I couldn't do what I do without the audience right there. I found the impulse the second night of our two-show NYC run, during the first soliloquy to walk over to a friend who has never seen me act and I took his hand.
What keeps my performance dynamic is that I hone in on specific people and deliver the line based on what I know about them, or what they're giving me. So it’s very personal for me. In New York, there were a lot of people in the audience I have deep relationships with so to be saying some of my favorite language ever to these people, that was it. I didn't start in the audience, but I did "to be or not to be" in the audience.
My dad was in the audience the first night, so when I said, "my father, methinks I see my father," how could I not deliver that line to him? He was right there, of course he was going to give me what I need. Without a director, I felt like I had the liberty to follow different impulses every night.
The first night the audience laughed more than I anticipated and I thought I'd fucked the tone for us, and I started to feel like everyone was thrown off. But then because we raised the humor, we could highlight the tragedy. It's like you said, Molly, you got to the end and you cried. That was my experience. I couldn't get to the end of the play each time without crying. We blocked act five our last day of rehearsal, and I said "OK, then Horatio says '..and flights of angels...'" and I just started sobbing and Horatio came over to me and said, "Take your time. it's OK" It's just so magical.
Mac: Can y'all talk about your relationships with your Ophelias?
Molly: Was your Ophelia female?
Hilary: Yes. Both of them were female. The tough thing in our 90 min cut is that there isn't a lot of space to show the relationship until you're breaking up. My Ophelia for the show in NYC is one of my best friends. We had a lot of conversations beforehand and we came up with a bit of movement right before she runs to see her father but we didn't find much opportunity before that to have an intimate moment.
For the nunnery scene, Emma said, “I guess I need to bring remembrances” and I said, “Why don't you bring all the cards and letters I've sent you?” So in that scene she was actually giving me back things that I've made for her. That was really effective.
When I say 'You should not have believed me. I loved you not.' She would say after every time we did that, “It really hurts when you say you don't love me,” because everyday we're like “OK! Love you! Bye!" so there was a lot of that meta stuff layered into it, which was really fun to play with. It's interesting to base it off all the trust that we have as friends.
Molly: I had a similar experience. I have a really incredible group of friends in Richmond who are Shakespeare nerds like me and I remember driving back from the audition and thinking, “If I end up in Hamlet, please let one of my friends be in the show,” and they ALL got cast and that was such a gift to me as an actor, because the relationships were already there so it was easy to connect to them a lot faster.
The actor playing Ophelia is one of my best friends, and for me the scene with Gertrude and the scene with Ophelia were the two hardest to do. That's not something I anticipated. With my Ophelia, we had a similar thing where I wrote some of the lines of the love poem on this cute stationery with little butterflies and gave her multiple copies of it — because it got destroyed during the show — so that she had a piece of my handwriting, which was also really helpful when I took it to read it because it was actually mine.
We did share one moment at the top of the show, just a look between the two of us, which I hope helped the audience along on the journey, because you're right, even in the full cut, there's not a ton of meat there between them that the audience sees, so that was definitely a challenge.
My Ophelia asked me one night, “Can we do the closet? Can I speak the lines that I speak to Polonius and you do the stuff?” So we did that together which helped fuel her.
In the nunnery scene the overwhelming goal for Hamlet — for me — was that I had to protect her. If she stuck around, it was gonna be bad so I had to get her out. I realized we were being watched and I was trying to tell her, "You have to get out of here," and when I realized it wasn't working, that's when I went "boom." It came from this place of care — which I don't know would work for every Hamlet, but it certainly worked for me.
I had an interesting experience watching the PBS version when it was broadcast. When Ophelia comes in and does the, "Here's a daisy, and rue for you," I was heartbroken. I had never seen that part of the play, so I was absolutely destroyed by what happened to her.
Hilary, you said that thing about it being magical; there's just this inherent truth in Hamlet that I think you can latch onto as a performer regardless of your gender or your age. There’s this incredible humanity piece in the character that I think people latch onto which is why Hamlets are so different. Because it’s such a revealing of yourself, right? It’s such a part of you. Which is why I guess I had that experience with Ophelia, “Why is she upset? Who did that? I did that? Oh no!”
That was the summer that Prop 8 got struck down. And so in the middle of our rehearsal process, the kind of construct of gender and same-sex relationships changed, culturally and politically. I loved that because then it really wasn’t about my gender which, for me as the performer, it never really felt like that. Regardless of my masculinity or femininity, it’s just me, and it’s just her. Wearing the skirt at the beginning and changing the pronouns was to take care of the audience. I didn’t need it. I didn’t need it for the relationships in the play. But it was to help the audience figure it out. It didn’t really matter that I was female and she was female. That never really occurred to me as a problem, other than in the nunnery scene, where it was “You can’t have had this relationship with me, you have to get out.”
Mac: Do y’all have questions for each other?
Molly: I have one question and it’s one that I’m always curious to ask a Hamlet when I meet them is what kind of shoes you wore? Because I found that you’re on your feet constantly and then you have to end with a fight. How did you take care of your body?
Hilary: That’s such a good question. I did not take care of my body because I wore these terrible boots. I have my Hamlet uniform; I wore the same thing when we did it in 2019. It feels on the one hand very me, and then on the other hand very neutral and very Hamlet. That’s such a great question! What did you wear?
Molly: I had a pair of boots that laced up to like the knee but I had to put inserts in them. The audience area was on slate so there’s no give. And then the stage is wooden and has a little bit of give, but I developed shin splints halfway through and had to ice my legs after every show. “Bye y’all. Gotta go home and ice my shins!” But once I put the inserts in the shoes it helped a little bit. I’m always fascinated. The Cumberbatch Hamlet came out right after I did it, and I thought “What kind of shoes does this person have on?” He had these big sneakers on. I thought, “Of course he does. Because it’s hard.”
Hilary: I feel like I could take liberties because we only had two performances, but that’s definitely true. I had this teacher who said, “Your character starts with what shoes you wear.” That’s where your instrument starts. Your connection to the ground. Next time I do it I gotta put some real thought and research into the shoes.
My question for you is, did you have a dream of playing Hamlet before that and do you wanna play the role again?
Molly: Never in a thousand million years did I think I would play Hamlet. Well, I did play Hamlet in a reading with a male Ophelia and a female Ghost — which informed the process later — and I thought “OK; that was fun. I did it.” But I didn’t feel super connected. It was just a fun exploration. I didn’t really think I would get the chance. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that I could do it. Which is kind of sad that I didn’t think I would have the opportunity to do it. Was that true for you? I mean you said that you started looking at it when you were in school and really wanted to do it. Like, was that kind of a dream role for you?
Hilary: Yeah it was. It felt a little egotistical because I was like, “Forget all the other roles, I’m just going to jump to Hamlet! It’ll be great” But there was so much to learn and I had so much time. I’m really grateful to the teacher who said, “Why don’t you start learning it now?” Because I learned the importance of building long-term relationships with the characters. Because the text always changes for you. I’m really hoping to get the opportunity to do a longer show — not the FULL full, no one really does that but Kenneth Branagh — but I want to experience that trajectory.
Molly: Which is different. We cut the whole Fortinbras plot. That was completely gone in ours. So there’s a soliloquy that I never even did.
Hilary: Yep. Same.
Molly: I forgot you asked, but I would love to do it again. I would love to do it again. And who knows what that would be like now that I’m older? I’m a different person now than I was in 2015. It’d be fascinating. It’s cool that you went back and did it. That you’ve been able to do it again in performance. We did it in July and then did it again in October for PBS but that’s not that long enough really to evolve in a strong way I think.
Hilary: One other quick thing, Molly. Do you have a role that you’re crushing on now or that you want to play?
Molly: One that I’ve always wanted to play, and I’m gonna age out of it before too long is Beatrice in Much Ado. Most of the roles I want to play are male roles, but Beatrice is a female role that I would love to play.
I did a radio interview as part of the Hamlet press and they asked me if there was another role in Hamlet that I wanna play, and I said I would love to play Horatio. And there was like this odd pause and I don’t know if the pause was because it was another male role or if it was like “Horatio?! Why Horatio?” But I would love to play Horatio because of the relationship between Horatio and Hamlet. It’s like the other side of that coin. What about you, Hilary?
Hilary: I’m interested in Cassius in Caesar. I don’t know if I would ever cast me if I were on the other side of the table, but he’s an interesting, conniving character. I’m also thinking about Henry VI, and Joan is such a short, small character, but I’m really interested in her.
Molly: I’m fascinated by Margaret’s trajectory in the Henry VI plays. I’m a teacher, and we’ll look at Richard III and students will ask, “Who’s Margaret?” and I say, “Oh my god, she’s amazing and you don’t even know!” Because nobody teaches or does the Henry VI plays, you know?
Thanks to Molly and HIlary for doing this interview.
Molly Hood is an actor, text coach, director, and professor at Radford University.
Hilary Dennis is an actor, producer, and teaching artist who divides her time between Northampton, MA and New York, NY.
My friends at Shakespeare Behind Bars are making a sequel to their eponymous 2005 documentary. Curt from SBB is one of my close friends and heroes and does amazing work with incarcerated folks. If you wanna make a donation to their second documentary, check out their fundraiser.
Metallica and Shakespeare
Metallica is the greatest band in the history of music, and William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the history of words. Both are universal artists who give expression to the entirety of human experience, so it makes sense that there would be thematic and poetic overlap between them, even though Metallica never wrote a song directly inspired by Shakespeare the way they wrote songs inspired by other works of literature.
Here is a by no means exhaustive list of which Metallica songs match up with which Shakespeare plays – thematically, lyrically, musically, and in their place within the artist’s catalog.
Antony and Cleopatra — “Nothing Else Matters” from The Black Album
Antony’s remark in I.i to “let Rome in Tiber melt” perfectly encapsulates the lyrics to “Nothing Else Matters,” a song about not caring about what anyone else says or does so long as you can be with the person you love. “Never cared for what they do...so close, no matter how far, couldn't be much more from the heart...and nothing else matters.”
On an artistic level, Antony and Cleopatra and “Nothing Else Matters” are both on the lowest tier of their artists’ respective oeuvres.
Metallica’s self-titled album, mostly referred to as The Black Album was a turning point for the band, and while some of the songs on it — “Wherever I May Roam,” “The God That Failed,” “Of Wolf and Man” — are good enough that they could’ve easily been on their first four flawless records, some of Metallica’s musical experiments, like the love song “Nothing Else Matters” are clear missteps that deserve all the derision that their old-school fans heaped on them.
Similarly, Antony and Cleopatra is like Romeo and Juliet except every character is less likeable and the lovers are too old to behave like impulsive teenagers.
But Metallica, like Shakespeare, even at their worst is still better than most other artists, and I’d rather listen to “Nothing Else Matters” than the best song by Post Malone or Katy Perry and I’d rather see a production of Antony and Cleopatra than whatever the new gauche musical adaptation of a Disney movie is on Broadway right now.
Coriolanus — “Battery” from Master of Puppets
Coriolanus is the greatest warrior Shakespeare wrote. His incessant, driving need to fight is unmatched in the canon. In I.iv, Coriolanus chases the retreating Volscian army into their city all by himself and fights the entire army on their own turf.
Coriolanus’s hyper-masculine, violent energy is matched by “Battery,” the opening track of Metallica’s best album, Master of Puppets.
“Battery” is the apex predator of thrash metal. In the same way that Shakespeare often uses the structure of his poetry, the verse forms, beat stresses, and line breaks to give you a sense of the energy before you even stop to think about the words themselves, the punishing riffs and drums of “Battery” give you the sense of battlefield chaos and war before you even consider lyrics like “weak are ripped and torn away, hypnotizing power, crushing all that cower...pounding out aggression, turns into obsession.”
The lyric “Cannot kill the family,” is especially pertinent since it is Coriolanus’s mother who is the one person who is able to control him, and it is for her sake that he ends his assault on Rome at the end of the play.
Hamlet — ”Here Comes Revenge” from Hardwired... to Self-Destruct
It feels strange connecting Shakespeare’s greatest play with a song from one of their later albums, but Metallica’s 2016 album Hardwired... to Self-Destruct is a much better record than it has any right to be. While it has some weak songs, in many ways it represents a welcome return to their earlier songwriting style, in much the same way that Hamlet represented a return to a theatrical style, the revenge tragedy, that had gone out of fashion by 1600.
The connection between the two is obvious from the title, as Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, but the connections go deeper.
In aesthetic terms, “Here Comes Revenge” is among Metallica’s longest songs (although, unlike Hamlet it is not the longest in the artist’s catalog) with lengthy down tempo contemplative moments punctuated by raucous, punchy action.
Lyrically, both Hamlet and “Here Comes Revenge” make references to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. It’s easy to imagine Hamlet saying a lyric like “I’m hell unbound, burn your kingdom to the ground.” The lyric “cloaked in despair” sounds like an echo of Hamlet’s lines in I.ii about his “inky cloak...together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief.”
When I created a music video for “Here Comes Revenge” using Branagh’s film of Hamlet, I synched up the lyric “You ask forgiveness, I give you sweet revenge,” with the scene where Claudius is praying.
Henry IV, Part 1 — “Motobreath” from Kill ‘Em All OR “Disposable Heroes” from Master of Puppets
Henry IV, Part 1 gets two songs because of its dual nature. The “tavern” parts of the play that take place in Eastcheap with Falstaff resonate with a song like “Motorbreath,” about a fast life of rock n roll partying. While the “court” parts of the play that deal with the northern rebellion and the battle at Shrewsbury are better encapsulated by a song like “Disposable Heroes,” which is a cynical look at the way generals callously lead soldiers to their deaths — reminiscent of Falstaff’s “honor” speech or his assessment of his own soldiers as “food for powder.”
Henry V — “One” from ...And Justice for All
Whether you think the perfect song to encapsulate Henry V is a dark anti-war like “One” from Metallica’s politically-charged album ...And Justice for All or if you think it’s something more like the gleeful violence of a song like “Damage Inc,” really depends on whose argument you find more compelling when King Henry talks to the soldier Michael Williams the night before the battle of Agincourt. Henry, in disguise, walks among his soldiers and gets into a disagreement with one named Michael Williams about whether the King’s cause is justified in sending soldiers to be dismembered and/or killed.
When I think about that scene, I am always haunted by Michael Williams’s remark about the mangled bodies and severed limbs coming together to lament dying in battle, “...when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon...”
That idea of the body horribly injured in war trying to cry out in pain is the exact theme of “One,” with lyrics like “Landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing. Taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul, left me with life in hell...”
Henry VI, Part 3 — “For Whom The Bell Tolls” from Ride the Lightning
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” is directly inspired by the novel of the same name by Hemingway, so it feels strange to relate it to another work of literature. However, both Henry VI, Part 3 and For Whom the Bell Tolls deal with civil war. The scale of Henry VI, Part 3 is more grand, dealing with the effects of civil war at the macro level, while For Whom the Bell Tolls deals more intimately with the psyche of one man.
However, both are masterpiece examination of the effects of war, underrated in their poetry and musicality. Both represent the heights of the artist’s early work, showcasing a range and depth that would be expanded later. Ride the Lightning is only Metallica’s second album, they had yet to reach the apex of ...And Justice for All or Master of Puppets. For Shakespeare, the third part of Henry VI, introduces his first great character, the villainous Duke of Gloucester who will become King Richard III.
Julius Caesar — “Don’t Tread On Me” from Metallica (The Black Album)
Julius Caesar and “Don’t Tread On Me” are both explicitly political discussions of the necessity of using violence to protect individual freedom.
Both represent the artists at their most stripped down for wider appeal. “Don’t Tread On Me” appears on Metallica’s controversial self-titled album which drew derision from longtime fans for its compact, more radio-friendly songs. Julius Caesar, aside from falling into the shortest 25% of Shakespeare plays, is also noteworthy for its lack of sexual themes or jokes, which makes it a favorite with schools who want to include Shakespeare in their curricula without having to answer uncomfortable questions about Mercutio’s jokes in Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet’s sexual harassment of Ophelia.
A place where these two differ, however, is in their quality. While Julius Caesar is a brilliant and nuanced examination of democracy, rhetoric, leadership, and violence, “Don’t Tread On Me” is an embarrassingly jingoistic anthem seemingly written as a mea culpa for the entirety of ...And Justice for All and perhaps the worst Metallica song ever written.
King Lear — “King Nothing” from Load
This was probably the easiest comparison in this entire article. The parallels between these two are so clear that I second guess what I said in the introduction about Metallica never having written a song directly inspired by a Shakespeare play.
The word “nothing” is a motif in both “King Nothing” and especially King Lear, as in the famous “nothing will come of nothing.” The riffs in “King Nothing” are so punishing that you’ll feel like you’ve been betrayed by your ungrateful children and are wandering a heath in a hurricane.
Nearly every lyric in “King Nothing” could be relevant to King Lear, but I’ll point out just a couple:
“Point your finger but there’s no one around,” refers to Lear’s isolation, from his banishing of his closest loved ones to the way his entourage abandons him.
“You’re left with just a name,” refers to Lear’s insistence in Act I that he “shall retain the name and all th'addition to a king.”
“Where’s your crown, King Nothing?” refers especially to when Lear is raving on the heath, insisting on the fact that he is still a king while wearing a “crown” made of flowers and weeds.
Macbeth — “Master of Puppets” from Master of Puppets
OK this one might be a bit of a stretch, but I couldn’t write an article about Metallica songs and Shakekespeare plays and leave off either Macbeth or “Master of Puppets.”
“Master of Puppets” is an unambiguous metaphor for drug addiction, but the metaphor of drugs as puppeteer applies in a decidedly un-metaphorical way to Macbeth being manipulated by the Weird Sisters. Macbeth’s reliance on their equivocal prophecies and advice is an addiction; once he has a taste of it, he keeps coming back for more no matter how much worse it makes his situation.
Also, the last production of Macbeth that I saw used “Master of Puppets” as the soundtrack to the climactic fight between Macbeth and MacDuff and it was fucking sick.
Shakespeare Drag Laws and the Culture Wars
As states all over the country pass vaguely-worded laws trying to ban drag shows, theatre companies nervously contemplate how many Shakespeare plays contain “male or female impersonators” and “sexual humor.” The language of right-wing politicians discussing the evils of drag shows will be familiar to academics who’ve read Puritan denunciations of the theatre in the 17th century, which of course featured young men in dresses playing the women’s parts. One Puritan railed against the English “man-woman monsters.” That phrase could be pulled from a Tennessee state senator’s stump speech.
In this particular fight – as in the kerfuffle over the 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar featuring an overly Donald Trump-esque Caesar – the right makes the anti-Shakespeare arguments: these degenerate artists are promoting political violence and corrupting our youth. The left responds by appealing to the unassailable sanctity of Shakespeare.
In a different fight, the left makes the case against Shakespeare. In the last decade, we’ve been inundated with the argument – most often made by Shakespeareans themselves seemingly to perpetuate the stereotype that liberals are self-flagellating masochists – that engaging with Shakespeare is an explicit endorsement of imperialism, racism, and sexism. Shakespeare, we are told, is an irredeemable reactionary and should be removed not only from playbills but from school textbooks. The right responds by appealing to the unassailable sanctity of Shakespeare.
The appeal to Shakespeare by both sides of a political conflict is nothing new. During the second world war, the English created propaganda likening Churchill to the heroic and virtuous Henry V. The Germans, also fans of Shakespeare, created propaganda likening Churchill to the dissolute and drunken Falstaff.
Everyone agrees, it seems, that the Devil can cite scripture for his purposes.
Good Tickle Brain by Mya Gosling
My dear friend Mya who publishes the Shakespearean stick-figure webcomic Good Tickle Brain has given me permission to use some of my favorites from her archive. In honor of the wonderful production of As You Like It that I saw at the American Shakespeare Center last week, here is a hilarious comic about Touchstone.