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Todd Jensen writes...
You once gave a list here of Shakespeare plays that you especially liked because you had ideas for using them in your stories: Henry IV Part One, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, The Tempest, Hamlet, and Love's Labor's Lost. Just for the fun of it, I went over that list recently to see how many of these you'd made use of in "Gargoyles", or had indicated making use of in this forum.
HENRY IV PART ONE: You mentioned that Dingo's real name would be Harry Monmouth, an aka of Prince Hal, and I definitely see a parallel between the two.
KING LEAR: Aside from the mention that I once made of the similarities between Edmund and Thailog (which may not count since you indicated in your response that it was subconscious on your part), I noticed that Xanatos quoted this play in "Vows" in his "Reason not the need" line to Petros Xanatos (interesting, since in the play, Lear quoted that line to one of his daughters - either Goneril or Regan; I can't remember which - so that Xanatos had reversed the parent/child roles here).
ROMEO AND JULIET: The quotes in the library scene in "The Journey", Queen Mab, and Terry and Sphinx as a parallel to Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: Oberon, Titania, and Puck. (No prizes there).
MACBETH: Macbeth and the Weird Sisters. (Again, no prizes there).
THE TEMPEST: You mentioned having plans to bring Prospero into "Gargoyles" at some point.
HAMLET: Ophelia's name, Elisa doing the "more things in heaven and earth" quote in "Heritage", and Xanatos's "Alas, poor Yorick" parody in "Future Tense".
That leaves just "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Love's Labor's Lost" on the list. Had you ever planned to use anything from those plays in "Gargoyles", similarly?
Greg responds...
As with everything, given enough time and episodes, it would probably be inevitable.
But no, not really. My idea for "Much Ado" is a feature screenplay, which I hope to make myself write someday. My idea for "LLL" is a stageplay, which I also hope to make myself write some day.
And incidentally, my idea for Lear is another stage play, based on a one-act play that I wrote in college (actually when I was living in Oxford). The one-act had three parts for actors: EDMUND, the MEN and the WOMEN. Me, my roommate Cameron Douglas and my then-girlfriend Peggy Gold, performed one reading of the play at Stanford in 1985. I played Edmund. Cameron played the Men. Peggy played the Women. I've always hoped that I could expand this into a full length play. I've had the structure and basic story in my head forever. It's just another one of the long list of projects that I am too enfeebled to pursue.
(I'm much less of a role model than most of you think.)