To The Best of Our Knowledge

from Wisconsin Public Radio

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If you find Shakespeare a bit intimidating, you might want to check out the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Its actors do a version of "Hamlet" forward and backwards – all in two minutes. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Shakespeare as you've never heard him before. Also, the great lyrics of classic American Songs.

Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball have put together an anthology, "Reading Lyrics," of the words to more than a thousand classic American popular songs. They tell Steve Paulson what makes a lyric work and that many of the great songs came from Broadway and Hollywood musicals. And we hear lots of examples!

Don Foster teaches English at Vassar College and is the author of "Author Unknown." He tells Anne Strainchamps how he uses computer-assisted textual analysis to prove or disprove authorship of literary texts. Foster identified the Anonymous writer of "Primary Colors," and insists that Clement Moore did not write "The Night Before Christmas."

Shakespeare critic and scholar Frank Kermode tells Steve Paulson that Shakespeare revolutionized the English language and worked within a culture that got most of its information from listening. Kermode is the author of "Shakespeare's Language." Also, the three members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company visit with Jim Fleming and perform excerpts from their hilarious versions of the Bard's plays.

Books:

• Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, Reading Lyrics (Pantheon)
• Frank Kermode, Shakespeare's Language (FSG)
• Don Foster, Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (Holt)

Music:

Distribution dates:

• week of 08/04/2002 - hour 2
• week of 05/27/2001 - hour 2