Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Shakespeare in I Dream of Jeannie

"The Girl Who Never Had a Birthday, Episode 2." By Sidney Sheldon. Perf. Melissa Joan Hart, Caroline Rhea, and Beth Broderick. Dir. Claudio Guzman. I Dream of Jeannie. Season 2, episode 11. NBC. 21 November 1966. DVD. Mill Creek Entertainment, 2015.

Here's a bit more of Shakespeare the man (rather than Shakespeare the words) in an American sit-com.

In this case, it's a sit-com I watched growing up—in reruns, at least: I Dream of Jeannie. Shakespeare finally makes his brief appearance in the second of a two-part (!) storyline in which Jeannie realizes that she doesn't know when her birthday is. After far too many bizarre machinations, they finally determine on a date to celebrate—only to realize that they can't invite anyone to the party.

Not a problem! With a nod of the head, Jeannie summons up a crowd of guests from the past—including good old Shakespeare. I have two clips for you. The first takes us to the bare essentials of Shakespeare's appearance:


The second clip gives you the context of the first. I include it for the dedicated devotee who wants to see who else came to the party. I'm partial to Sigmund Freud myself, but that may be because I grew up in the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure era. Enjoy!


Links: The Episode at IMDB.


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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

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