ABSTRACT
An unusual performance of Shakespeare took place in North American homes on 26 April 2005. As part of the ‘2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions’, a week-long contest of skill and knowledge televised on NBC’s Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek asked three contestants – David Triani, a high school administrator from Moorestown, New Jersey, Chris Miller, a retail specialist from Louisville, Kentucky, and Ryan Holznagel, a writer originally from Forest Grove, Oregon – to name ‘each Shakespeare play that will be performed from start to finish by the Reduced Shakespeare Company’. Miller’s request near the end of the round, ‘Shakespeare $400, please’, cued an audio-visual clue in which three actors wearing vaguely period costumes and carrying toy swords and a wine goblet performed, in about eleven seconds, a play in which all the protagonists died. The full-text script and pre-filmed performance is stored on-line in the ‘J! Archive’: ‘Boo-oo!’ ‘Bl-bl-bl-bl! Mad! Ow!’ ‘Poison!’ ‘Mother! Treachery!’ ‘Agh-hh-hh-hh!!’ ‘Ugh!’ 1
