Macbeth: Who Wrote It?

This weekend I was away on vacation and I read something about Macbeth being attributed to Thomas Middleton instead of Shakespeare. I know about many of the plays in questionable authorship, but I didn't know that Macbeth was one of them.

When I got home and caught up on my newsfeeds I found another article suggesting that Shakespeare stole Macbeth from a Scottish monk named Andrew de Wyntoun.  The standard article follows, some historians show examples where the original looks similar to what Shakespeare wrote, and then a Shakespeare scholar presents the standard defense:  "Yes, we know that Shakespeare borrowed things, he admitted it freely. The point is that when he rewrote it, his version was much better than the original."

Amazing Anagram

http://nowwhatannie.blogspot.com/2007/06/amazing-anagram.html

Neat! 

The PBS Playwright Game

http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/game/start.html

Here's a fun one. Start with the premise that you're Shakespeare and you're trying to build a career for yourself as a playwright.  Each screen offers a simple set of choices (normally no more than 2) for you to pick from.  Sometimes it's "Do you write about ancient romans, or oriental warlords?" but sometimes it's more complex, such as when the Censor tells you to cut a scene from Richard II and you get to decide whether to do it or not.  I'm not really sure if it's keeping score or not, or how long it lasts, since I'm at work and don't really have time to play it through.  But it is fun.