it may become rather big.

Elsewhere Ever wanting to increase my media empire like some benign Rupert Murdoch, I've been trying to decide how create a useful twitter feed for The Hamlet Weblog that wasn't simply Hamlet related news that would just as well be served through posting on the actual blog.

After much thought (well I am on holiday) my brainwave was to use the machinery behind @liverpoolblogs to create a similar list of blogs and news websites related to Shakespeare, in the full knowledge that since this is a global exercise it may become rather big.

So now there's a @shakespearelogs which some of you may find useful and now actually seems to be working after a few early teething problems.  I'm also keeping a list of the collected feeds on an extra column at The Hamlet Weblog which now also has a slightly clunky "featuring Shakespeare Blogs" subheading.

Just so that this post has some actual content, the word "machine" for all of its post-industrial connotation was original popularised by Shakespeare. It's in the letter that Hamlet sends Ophelia which is subsequently read to Claudius and Gertrude as proof that the man is mad:

"'Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
I have not art to reckon my groans: but that
I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
'Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst
this machine is to him, HAMLET.'"

"Machine" in this context means the bodily functions, the mechanism by which a human being moves about. Though obviously there might be a sexual connotation. There usually is.