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Barack Obama: the Moor?  Or, more Hamlet.  John McCain: Henry V, or Richard III?  Joe Biden: Horatio, or Polonius?  And Sarah Palin: Lady Macbeth, or Cleopatra?

Penguin/Plume Books has very graciously offered me this opportunity to blog for a week on their site.  I believe I will be unvetted (we'll see).  To their mistake, I intended to add my own.  My new book, All The World's A Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare, contains a brief essay at the end.  Before my wise editor got a hold of it, it was not brief, and I though to unload the whole story of my childhood, and rational for writing a new work by Shakespeare (I took apart all the known works and put them back together as a new tragedy), right here, for half a dozen people to see.

Instead, I'm planning to talk about my current obsession, Governor and Vice-Presidential Candidate, Sarah Palin.  I'm probably blowing any slim chance I had of making headway with her, but for the very few of you who have not investigated, there are not yet naked pictures of her on the internet: not "naked," not "nude," not "topless." 

The book, which stars Hamlet, Juliet, Romeo, Iago, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the Weird Sisters, King Lear and the Ghost of old Hamlet, is meant to bring the spirit of Shakespeare to our times.  If Shakespeare were to weigh in on contemporary war and culture, this is my vision of what he would say.  And I feel somewhat backed up in my conjecture: every line, every word in the new play is sourced from Shakespeare.  (Footnotes and stage versions and word counts and monologues and scenes for actors and all that can be found at johnreed.tv or alltheworldsagrave.com.)  My intention being an extroverted one-to bring the tragedy to the concerns of our own day-it's perhaps not too terrific a stretch to consider Governor Palin.