PI ONLINE:
10-1-04

The full texts of Shakespeare's quartos are now available to the general public in their entirety. It only took four centuries, and a technology unimagined in the writer's own time, to make it happen.

"A new British Library web site is offering 93 digitized copies of some of the earliest editions of 21 of Shakespeare's plays, from A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet to Othello and Troilus and Cressida," reported the New York Times in their Arts Briefing on Sept. 13. The report relied heavily on a Reuters item from the previous day. These early editions are terribly rare and terribly exciting for Shakespeare fans – but, as the Times notes, they were originally mere souvenirs.

"Not seen in public for centuries, the pamphlet editions, called quartos and published during Shakespeare's lifetime (1564-1616), were intended for sale after performances had finished." A bit like concert T-shirts, I guess. The Reuters piece includes a quote from Moira Goff, the British Collection librarian who has curated the online collection: "The last time the quartos were available to an audience that went beyond scholars, curators and collectors was barely a generation after Shakespeare's death."

Now you can see 'em, too—the website is http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html.

In other Shakespearean drama, the fella whose name has for a decade been synonymous with contemporary interpretations of the Bard is moving on. "After nearly 10 years at the helm of the distinctive Thames-side theatre, Mark Rylance has announced his decision to resign from Shakespeare's Globe," reported James Inverne for Playbill Online on Sept. 14. "An unexpected choice when he was appointed as artistic director in 1996, Rylance has become very much the venue's public face." Rylance, who is also "frequently called the best British actor of his generation" according to the Telegraph, will likely be returning to his career on stage.

In an open letter, quoted in various outlets, Rylance bids a fond farewell to the theatre, which famously replicates Shakespeare's original. "Never has an actor had such an opportunity as you entrusted to me when I was asked to help bring your dream of a working Globe Theatre through its birth into its childhood…I will endeavor always to be at the Globe's service."

That Song is Totally in My Head

A bone conduction device

This was definitely one breakthrough that was only a matter of time: music playing devices so tiny they basically fit inside your head. The technology is called "bone conduction," although something tells me if it's ever gonna take off they might want to rethink that name.

Wired magazine had it on Sept.16 that "a cell phone handset that lets users listen by pressing it against their jaws is for sale in Japan, and two other bone-conduction products—an MP3 player and a cell phone—are in development." Bone conduction means that the sound vibrations travel through the bones of your head into the cochlea of the inner ear. Which is awesome, until you turn up the Blink-182 too loud and your head explodes.

The next day, Wired was onto another music story, with some very different reverberations: online radio stations copying the format of good old fashioned off-line radio stations, and poaching their audiences in the process. The culprit is rather unexpected…

"Soon, the world's largest software company, a staunch defender of its own copyrights, may have to answer it in court," says Wired. "Earlier this month, Microsoft began charging users to listen to online clones of 978 U.S. and Canadian radio stations with ‘fewer ads, no DJ chatter and less repetition.' And no, Bill Gates didn't ask the stations for permission to copy their playlists."

The Wired article lays the issue out as a pretty brazen case of identity theft on Microsoft's part. "If you go to the Radio Plus website and click on Salt Lake City, for example, a list of 11 choices will pop up, including ‘Like 92.1 FM/KUUU U92 Blazin Hip-Hop Beat' and ‘Like 100.3 FM KSFI FM 100 Continuous Soft Hits."

This is just one more volley in the ongoing war between the music people and the computer people, now that recorded music is just so many bits and bytes. Over the summer (again in Wired) the Recording Industry Association of America was complaining that "radio broadcasts that bring CD-quality sound to the airwaves could lead to unfettered song copying if protections are not put in place. Without copy protections, music fans could cherry-pick songs off the air and redistribute them over the Internet." Microsoft's creating clone radio stations seems like a petty offense in comparison. The record business is a leaky ship these days, and Microsoft—like Apple, now making a mint on iTunes—is just there with a bucket to catch the overflow.

 "Look at Me/Look Out Below"

The American Indian Museum's director, W. Richard West, Jr., in white with headdress, enters the new museum, followed by his family.

"It's a particularly American irony that two groups that have struggled since our nation was formed to find their place in its cultural fabric now have national institutions that are uniquely their own."

That's from an editorial in USA Today praising two new museums: the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (in Washington, D.C.) and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (in Cincinnati, Ohio).

"Both museums offer much more than history, by creating sacred spaces capable of changing us in ways we can discern and in ways we can't," says USA Today. "They change our perspective by putting us in someone else's place." The Washington Post swooned for the Indian Museum's architecture, saying that "the building rises above the elm trees of the Mall like a monumental apparition. Its curving walls shout, ‘Look at me!'"

Unfortunately, it sounds like the other new museum may not be so elegantly put together. According to an item in the Cincinnati Enquirer on Sept. 14, "Engineers and city building inspectors want to know what caused a stone panel to fall off the facade of the newly built National Underground Railroad Freedom Center overnight Sunday."

Luckily, no one was injured by the falling chunk of history.

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