@Tsundoku no, I probably wouldn't be reading those novels

@Alex Thanks for the suggestion. @GarethRees suggested a further edit, and by the time I followed that suggestion, the answer's overall structure was even further shot, and I decided, the hell with it, I'm just going to let it stand. Not every answer (of mine) has to boast perfect architectonics.

What are the best pastiches y'all have read? I gave up on trying to read Austen's Sanditon as completed in 1975 by "Another Lady" (Marie Dobbs). The prose didn't sparkle as Austen's did, and the plot got pretty boring pretty quickly. I couldn't figure out why I was reading it ...

I recently read a collection called Marple, a dozen stories by well-known writers featuring Christie's detective. I did finish it but didn't find any story particularly good, and the portrayal of Marple didn't seem convincing either.

There must be something about detective stories that inspire such continuations/pastiches. I believe there are some new Poirot novels, and I know there are lots of Sherlock stories.

But I'm beginning to think maybe I just don't like pastiche in general as I'm having trouble coming up with any that measure up to the original. Another data point is that I have friends who keep forwarding me jokes ("Return of the Jedi in Shakespearean English," "How Virginia Woolf would have written Jack and Jill," etc) that usually fail to amuse me. Maybe I just lack the imagination needed to re-envision one world in terms of another?

Do we have an April–May topic challenge? There's an eight-way three-vote tie in the answers. The oldest proposal based on creation date is 🧀, which I'm happy to read because even the title makes me smile. But maybe someone will sneak in and upvote/downvote so that the tie is broken before the mods make their announcement?

@verbose I just upvoted the Carlo Goldoni answer to put it at the top, but I don't have time to make the meta post announcing the new topic challenge.

okay I will try to make the meta post but I'ven't ever done it before and will prolly fuck up in all kinds of ways y'all'll need to clean up later.

Do you want to do it? You can edit-copy-paste from one of the previous meta posts and just change the names/months.

Ah great.

Thanks!

Let's see if having one of his topic challenge proposals chosen will tempt @Tsundoku back to posting again ;-)

thank me after, not before 🙃

Well, 🧀 was also his. Or some guy named Christophe Strobberry.

Strawberry and cheese?

indeed

I don't remember if you can make an answer CW, but feel free to flag that for a mod if not.

I think you can, and it's only questions whose CWification always requires a mod.

Creating the Community Event in the sidebar does require a mod, but that's a very fast job after the meta post exists to link to.

Okay I think I'm done. A mod will need to sanity-check/proofread (I see you already made a couple of edits, Randolph); create the community event in the sidebar; and delete Strobby's original answer from the topic challenges list.

'moff to bed. Tomorrow I shall embark on the special voyage of trying to figure out how to pin the ongoing topic challenges to the starred posts in this room. G'nite ladies

@Bookworm Funny, this went HNQ right as I was brushing my teeth to maintain my smile.

@verbose Last I heard is that he got buried under a shelf of maths books that fell over. Hasn't been able to read fiction ever since.

@b_jonas On second thought, Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest prose authors of his age. But in order to produce a classic in prose fiction, he would have had to pull of something at the level of Don Quijote.

@Tsundoku He is? ^{[citation needed]}. The prose in his plays is fine, but I wasn't aware people considered it on par with, say, Donne's sermons or Bacon's essays or Sidney's Arcadia or even Browne's Religio Medici.

There is a classic study called Shakespeare's Prose by ... Milton Crane? Brian Vickers? I forget. Anyhoo, I think they compare his prose to that of other dramatists, not to emergent non-dramatic forms like romances or personal essays or criticism. However, it's been a long time since I read them, so maybe current scholarship does in fact hold Shakespeare's prose in high esteem, but I'd love to know your source for the claim. Thanks!

@verbose I can't remember where I read that and the indexes of the books I checked just now provide no help.

@PeterShor Thank you! Foreign Bodies is in fact available at one of the five local libraries at which I have a card. Presumably it might be available at one or more of the others as well, but having found it in the first place I looked, I have not felt the need to look further. I shall check it out (in multiple senses).

@Tsundoku ah. Thanks for looking! If you come across the reference at some future time, please do lmk

@verbose Shakespeare's Prose by Milton Crane, first published in 1951.

@Tsundoku Nah, I'm pretty sure it was Vickers, 1968. 🙃

Thanks for tracking it down!

And The Artistry of Shakespeare's Prose by Brian Vickers.

jinx

Yep.

Both listed here.

Oh nice! I didn't know you had an unpedia

It's a glorified list of bookmarks in HTML format. I move between so many browsers and computers that browser-based bookmarks just don't work anymore.

m yeah occupational hazard for you I guess

speaking of which, Jamil Jan Kochai has an excellent short story entitled "Occupational Hazards." Go read it

everybody

I would read it in The New Yorker if I had access to it.

In 1902 an anonymous correspondent of The Publishers' Circular claimed that Psalm 46 in the King James Version of the Bible has Shakespeare's name coded into it. Shakespeare and Psalm 46

Proof that King James wrote Shakespeare, no doubt. Additional proof are all the homosexual situations and puns in the sonnets.

Also proof that King James wrote the King James Bible, then, which is news to me ;)

Actually, in the (1611) King James Version of Psalm 46, “shake” is the 59th word, while “speare” is the 47th word counting from the end. So the theory is even more nonsensical than it looks at first sight.

Anyway, happy All Fools' Day to all who celebrate!

W. Shakespeare: SONET to Sonnet Translation.