After a Christmas holiday, and a diversion into other topics, Dan and Kyra are back with the bard.

Kyra wishes they weren't.

Also - our next play is The Two Gentleman of Verona, God help us. We are begging for a guest star.

For someone in the vague vicinity of Oxford, we can offer a spare room to crash in if necessary and our delightful company.

And we've also managed to use Skype fairly effectively.

SO PLEASE SOMEBODY SAVE US.

The usual crew & Special Guests discuss another of Shakespeare's tragedies about people who are basically arseholes.

In this peacast, we spend quite a lot of time discussing the text adventure, The Baron.

Needless to say, spoilers - massive honking spoilers - for The Baron.

Trigger warnings for sexual abuse.

You can download The Baron from the IF database here (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=weac28l51hiqfzxz).

And if you need an interpreter, you can grab Gargoyle here (http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/).

Also after we'd recorded the bulk of the cast, we ended up playing the game again and you can download the play play through (/files/The%20Baron%20-%20Special%20Feature%20-%20Playthrough.mp3) here as a special bonus feature!

The usual crew and a SPECIAL INTERNATIONAL GUEST STAR discuss Shakespeare's gayest romcom.

We talk about Richard II, dis the The Hollow Crown a bit and generally have to acknowledge that this Shakespeare bloke was quite a good writer.

In this week's episode, we watch a play about a king most famous for being a cartoon lion played by an actor most famous for playing a grumpy boarding house manager.

We are confused. Again.

We take our profoundly pointless project to the National Theatre and demonstrate our maturity.

Back from holiday, we pick up the Bard-a-thon with undimmed enthusiasm for our utterly pointless project.

Gandalf the Wizard is an elderly nobleman. Robert Lindsay is a soldier. The King of France isn't actually Saruman the White but he sounds a lot like him. Most confusingly of all, a Shakespeare comedy is *actually funny*.