What Shakespeare and Screenwriters Have in Common

Question #2 in the Tea Party Question List: How does Shakespeare’s drawing on his “fairy tales” (i.e. Hamlet) compare to the modern synthesis of fairytales into popular entertainment? This is a difficult question to answer, mostly because of how little information we have about local lore in the time of Shakespeare and about his writing process. There are also significant differences in the way fairy tales were passed among audience members in Shakespeare’s time: for example, many of his audience members had …

How Alice Became a Fairy Tale. Sort of.

  In these posts we will be doing our best to provide a preliminary answer to some of the questions asked at last week’s Mad Hatter Tea Party. Please note that these answers are not intended to be exhaustive: rather, they are an illustration of how someone might start to research using the database, and we hope that they will encourage and enable readers to continue the process on their own. Question # 1 – How does war or international emergencies in …