Shakespeare Geek

My Directorial Debut! Continued.

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:16:52 PDT

{The story so far... }

So I initially ask whether any kids have been to theatre camp, figuring I'll need to give lessons in how to read a script. Nope, I'm assured that there was some sort of whole school assembly in first grade and that they all have read scripts before. Cool.

I bring up the tiny detail that in Shakespeare's day, no girls were allowed and the boys played the girls parts. So I ask for a vote whether we should have the boys play boy parts and girl play girl parts ("Yayyy!!!"), or if we should mix it up and maybe a girl plays a boy's part and a boy plays a girl's part ("Nooo!!!!!!") So we stick with conventional gender casting (so I thought).

I go to the whiteboard, where I will offer play by play. I start by drawing Theseus, a smiley face with a crown, and Hippolyta, a smiley face with long hair and a crown. "That's his queen," says one girl.

"No," say I, "Not yet. When the play opens, Theseus and Hippolyta are going to be married. So she's not his queen yet!"

Anyway I continue, drawing Lysander and Hermia (with a big lovey heart between them, and arrows in both directions), then Demetrius with a lovey heart pointing at Hermia (and no arrow back). Then I draw Helena with a lovey heart pointing to Demetrius, and no lovey heart back.

"This is complicated!" I hear one student say.

"It's just getting started!" I say back. I explain to them what's to happen, about how Demetrius has Hermia's father (who does not appear in this edited version) on his side, and how Lysander and Hermia are going to elope into the woods, with Demetrius and Helena following.

I explain to the children that this play is Shakespeare's silliest play, and that they should not be afraid to get silly with it. "If you get picked to read for one of the characters in love, then you need to be over the moon and stars, I will die without you, I have to go kill myself if I can't be with you..." with it. I am trying to put them at ease and encourage them to have fun with it. We shall see.

I distribute scripts to my first actors and..... ACTION!

First problem is I have drastically overestimated the reading ability of these children. I mean, I get that there's plenty of words they will have never seen before, and I am liberal in boosting them over those hurdles. But remember where I said "for any given speech I have no way of knowing whether it will take the student 10 seconds or a minute?" It becomes apparent that I've got a worst case scenario on my hands, and that this is going to take forever.

Act I Scene 1 is a long scene if you've never stopped to notice. We hear about the royal wedding, we meet the young Athenians, we hear about their history, we get the whole "marry Demetrius or die" thing, the royals leave, Lysander and Hermia plot to escape, Helena returns and learns the plot... two thirds of the way through this scene I'm thinking, "This is not going to work." But we struggle through.

What none of them seem willing to do is move around. They have stood in a line, and read as their part comes up. At "Stand forth, Demetrius" I say, "Demetrius? Stand forth! Step forward!" which he does. You'd then hope that at "Stand forth, Lysander" my Lysander would figure it out and he, too, would step up. Nope.

Funny moment #1 -- At one point during this scene, my Lysander referred to his true love as "Harmonica." The kids' brains at this age do this sort of "I recognize the pattern of several of the letters of that word, therefore I will guess that it is a word I know that also has that pattern." Herm something with an a on the end becomes harmonica! Makes sense.

We exeunt At the end I ask if anybody followed that. They all agree that no, nobody followed that. Someone notes that "It sounds like the way they talk at church," which I thought was interesting because I can't recall any specific Latin in the text at this point. I point to my diagram and how it connects to what was just played out in front of them.

The next scene is the Mechanicals, which I will bring them back into (a) some opportunity for silliness and, more, importantly, (b) much shorter speeches. I go back to the white board and explain the Mechanicals who want to perform for the royal wedding. I also explain Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen who are in an argument, who are wandering around the woods as well causing trouble.

The casting of the Mechanicals is interesting because so many of them have so few lines, I didn't want there to be fighting about who got the good parts. I held Bottom aside, distributed the others randomly, then explained Bottom. "Bottom is the biggest role in the play," I said. "He's got a lot of lines. He thinks he's in charge of the actors, and he never stops talking. Whoever takes this role has to be confident enough to perform a character like that. Who is up for it?" Hands shoot up. I give it to one boy, who unfortunately does not end up being the strongest reader, but everybody's got their strengths and weaknesses and I'm not here to criticize the kids.

I have given the Mechanical parts to boys and girls alike so that it's not lopsided for girls parts. Turns out to work because at least for this scene I've given Flute to a girl, who gets to deliver the "Let me not play a woman, I have a beard coming!" line. This gets my first semblance of a laugh of understanding from the audience.

My Bottom (ahem) is struggling so I try to help him out with more direction. I explain that Quince is supposed to be the director, but Bottom thinks he knows everything. I throw in the line that, "In his head, he's Brad Pitt." <cricket chirp> I even pause at that one, surprised at the lack of reaction. "Who's that?" asks a student. I move on. I tell Bottom that the second Quince stops talking, he's to jump in and talk over him. He does ok.

As we get through that scene and do a time check I realize that we are not going to get anywhere near the end of this play at this rate, and that we'll have to cut like crazy. I want to get to the end because the kids have made all the props that will not be useful until the final scene. So we agree quickly to cut out the adventures of the Athenians in the forest and focus only on Bottom and his merry crew.

To be continued, again... (sorry but the day job calls!)

My Directorial Debut!

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:08:51 PDT

For years I've been volunteering to "do Shakespeare" for my children's elementary school classes. Over the years that's involved playing games, reading books, teaching the sonnets and a few other things, and every time somebody's said, "Get them up out of the seats and performing the text!"

Done and done.

The scene: 3rd grade, which in this case means 8-9 yr olds. About 26 kids I was told, though I did not count. I was given free reign to do whatever I wanted. But here's the catch, it's a one time event. So it's not like I was going to be coming back 5 times, 4 to rehearse and one for a final performance or something. Whatever we'd be doing, we'd be doing all at once.

Luckily due to an aborted project last year I had a number of notes about doing A Midsummer Night's Dream (note to self as I fix a typo, "Kidsummer Night's Dream" would be a great title for a show). The plan would be to randomly distribute the scripts at each scene change, so that every kid gets a chance to play a role, without any fighting about who gets the good roles. Getting to read a part was the most important thing here.

I set about writing an amended script for kids, but luckily Bardfilm swooped in with a text he'd already done for a similar previous project. One quick change to take out the various donkey/ass jokes ( I ran it by the teacher, who vetoed). I swapped them out for "monkey" jokes. Lost the verse, but as we'll see the kids weren't about to notice that.

I also get what turns out to be a brainstorm when I write to the teacher suggesting that, if they had time, her class could be propmasters. I tell her that I will need something to represent "wall", "lantern", "dog", "horn", "flower", "thorn bush", some swords, and some crowns. I was going to get into fairy wings but decided this would require too much quick changing and leave it out. Meanwhile I've been to the craft store and found a lion mask and a monkey mask, that I'm keeping as a surprise. The teacher agrees that doing props is an excellent idea and they will get right to it.

So I arrive first thing in the morning, with my bag of props. I'm wearing my t-shirt with the big picture of Shakespeare on it. I debate wearing "Shakespeare is Universal" but decide that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is going to become something of a trademark for my teaching endeavors. I'm the guy that goes from classroom to classroom with a bunch of Shakespeare stuff.

I have no idea how long this will take, or how much time I have been allotted. On the one hand I know that I will fill up whatever time I'm given. On the other I have no idea whether any given speech is going to take one of these kids 10 seconds to read, or 2 minutes. So on that front I'm just going to be winging it.

After introductions and things I ask who knows who Shakespeare was. Surprisingly nobody answers. I hold up a DVD of Gnomeo and Juliet and ask who has seen it. Most hands go up. Then I hear a gasp of recognition as somebody whispers, "The statue guy!" I confirm that Shakespeare wrote that one. I then hold up Lion King and talk about the elements of Shakespeare in that one, too. I don't do the whole "Lion King is a version of Hamlet" thing, as loyal readers know, but I'm not above using it as an example when I want to stress the "Shakespeare is around you more than you think" angle.

I break out my pop-up Globe Theatre. Always good for some ooohs and aaaahs. I break out my bust of Shakespeare, that I tell them travels with me wherever I go. I hear one of my daughter's friends note, "You brought that to Brownies last year!" Good memory.

I break out my First Folio. This is turning into a great prop. It is big, it is heavy, it is cool. I hold it above my head like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, speaking of it in reverent terms about how it is 400 years old, and how if Shakespeare's friends had not gotten together to compile his plays, we might not have them today. Then I drop it on the teacher's desk, which I learned last time makes a great echo, and a memorable point indeed.

Then I go to one of my "Midsummer Night's Dream for Kids" books, and start to get a little preachy on them. "There are those grownups," I tell them, "Who think they need to rewrite Shakespeare for kids. They think that actual Shakespeare is too hard for kids. They say that kids can't understand real Shakespeare. I say nonsense! Do you think this stuff is going to be too hard for you?"

"No!!!"

"Do you think you should have to wait until you're teenagers before you get to read this?"

"NO!!!!"

"WHO WANTS TO ACT OUT SOME SHAKESPEARE?!"

Every hand shoots up.

"Well then, let's begin!" I say, and pull 20+ scripts for A Midsummer Night's Dream out of my bag of tricks.

...to be continued, because I am so very evil. ;)

Kickstarting That Shakespeare Kid

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:17:39 PDT

A lifetime ago, before this blog existed and I was searching around for a place to hang out and talk about Shakespeare, I saw only one place - News on the Rialto, a Shakespeare magazine run by Michael LoMonico, who has got so many Shakespeare and education credits to his name that I don't know how to list them all.

Well, Mike's written a young adult novel called That Shakespeare Kid, and he's got a Kickstarter going to get it published. You know me and you know my desire to get my kids introduced to Shakespeare as young as possible, so I'm all over a project like this. In fact, I got an early review copy and let my 11yr old have at it.

The plot surrounds Peter, a 12yr old boy who gets hit on the head with a Complete Works (Riverside, because I know the geeks will be curious), and wakes up only able to talk in snippets from Shakespeare. With the help of his friend Emma he manages to make his way through the regular middle school adventures until a viral video gets him onto the Today Show and he starts to wonder if he'll be a freak forever. This being a young adult Shakespeare novel you just know that the two will find their way into Romeo and Juliet. Which if you think about it makes perfect sense because that's the play that our young adult reader is most likely to be studying.

I've not yet read the book through, because I did not want to inadvertently influence my daughter's opinion (by saying things like "What chapter are you on? Oh, I loved the part when he said....") My daughter quite liked it. I asked whether the Shakespeare bits were all the usual stuff that she's heard around the house a hundred times (Wherefore art thou, to be or not to be, double double, etc....) she said, "Oh, no, absolutely not. Most of it I'd never heard before." Which is good!

In truth I'm an easy audience, and almost any project that has Shakespeare and kids in it is going to get an upvote from me. When you've got somebody with the credentials of Mike LoMonico and all the years he's spent honing his craft with the resources of the Folger at his disposal, how can you go wrong?

How Much Do I Love Shakespeare? Apparently $120 Worth.

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:06:37 PDT

Last night we attended a fundraiser for the town's baseball league, and part of the activities involved a silent auction. For those that have never seen one of these, various gift baskets are donated (in this case each team was responsible for finding a donor), and then they're put on display with a list of what's in them, their actual value, and then a sheet of paper where you write down your name and what you bid on it. At the end of the night all the sheets are collected and the winning bids are posted.

As we're wandering around there's a bunch of beach themed baskets with towels and lotion and folding chairs, and a bunch of beer and/or wine baskets. We bid on a couple of those, and on a "family game night" basket that had a bunch of movie tickets and things. Then I see this smaller basket with fewer bids, and as I walk by "Thou rampant fustilarian!" catches my eye. I backtrack and look closer, and sure enough that's a Shakespeare Insult Mug sitting in the basket. Next to it is another mug reading, "A screaming comes across the sky," which if I recall is the opening to Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

I read the sign. "The Bookworm Basket." Consists of a Paperwhite Kindle, case, booklight (isn't the paperwhite version backlit?), Kindle gift certificate, blanket, and the two mugs. I tug on Kerry's arm and say, "Look! Shakespeare. I kind of feel obligated to bid on that." She says to go for it.

Night continues. I go back to check on our bids and see that, as expected, most of them have been beaten. That's how these things work, you basically have to be the last person to write down your number. So if you really want something you have to camp out on it. So I poked around, bumped up a few bids, noticed that the book basket wasn't really going up. But then later I do get outbid. So I think, "Ok, I put in my token bid for the Shakespeare thing just to say I did, but do I really want this?" I up the bid again.

Eventually the night starts to come to a close. We're way outbid on the wine packages but the family game night is still within reach. I try bumping up the bid by $30 (instead of the minimum $10) to try to and scare away people but then somebody else bumps it by another $30. I hear them say that the auction will be over in 10 seconds so write down your final bids. I head over to that basket to throw another $10 on it and snipe it at the last second, and dangit if the organizers didn't sweep in right in front of me and scoop up all the papers. Rats!

But guess what? As if you couldn't guess from the title :). I won what I keep calling the Shakespeare basket!

My mom's birthday is next month, she's getting the Kindle (everyone in my family has one, and we just got my dad one for his birthday earlier this year). We kept the gift certificate for the kids, and my wife likes the blanket.

Look for the mug to become a prize in some future giveaway :)

UPDATE : I just remembered that sometimes my Dad reads the blog. If so, Hi Dad! Don't tell Ma what she's getting. :)

Shakespeare Geek Teaches The Sonnets

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 20:04:46 PDT

[Yes this is several weeks late but I'm leaving in how I originally started it.]

Would you believe I just spent almost 2 hours in a classroom of 10 and 11yr olds talking about the sonnets?

Every year since my kids were in kindergarten I've volunteered to do Shakespeare things. Some teachers take me up on it, some do not. Last year was particularly disappointing when I created an edited script, bought props, and was told at the last minute that the principal had vetoed the whole idea.

So this year, with my 10yr old's class, I took a different approach. Knowing that poetry is a significant part of their curriculum I suggested a talk about the sonnets. They would already have some knowledge of iambic pentameter, so I was free and clear to basically talk about my love of the subject in general and try to show a little enthusiasm for how awesome Shakespeare can be, and not let these children head off to middle school and down that "Shakespeare is hard and boring" path.

Working with Bardfilm I created a simple fill in the blank game. I printed up cards with 6 different sonnets where I took a word out of each line, then scrambled them. I made it a point to cut out some words that made an easy rhyme, some that made for obvious syllable count (when you only have 6 syllables in your line you probably need a 4 syllable word to fill in your blank), and so on.

I brought all my props. Brought my pop up Globe theatre. Brought my Shakespeare action figure. Brought my Yorick skull. Brought my First Folio. The latter made a heck of a prop. I held it up in the air, talked about the most beautiful and important book in the world, and then dropped it on the desk with an echoing THUD to show them all how big it was.

I gave them the usual "Shakespeare is all around you" pitch. "If you've ever seen a guy in the bushes looking up at a girl in the balcony and saying things like It is the east and Juliet is the sun! That's Shakespeare. If you've ever seen three witches huddled around a bubbling cauldron chanting stuff like Double Double Toil and Trouble? Shakespeare again. If you've ever seen a goth dude dressed all in black wandering around talking to a skull and saying..." here I held my hand aloft and started, "Alas, poor Yorick! I *knew* him, Ho.....hold on a sec." Went digging in my prop bag, pulled out actual skull, then repeated the quote. I hope they enjoyed that. My daughter told me that was my big hit. Later I set Yorick up on the projector and gave him a party hat.

I tried to keep it interesting by stressing the "We don't know" factor with all things Shakespeare, in a subtle attempt to instill in these kids the idea that the teacher is not always unquestionably right. "We do not know that Shakespeare was born on April 23. We do not know whether Shakespeare wanted his sonnets published, or when he wrote them, or to whom. We don't know for certain what he looked like. We don't even know where he was for large parts of his life. We have our theories, and some theories are better than others, but it's important to understand that when it comes right down to it, there's a whole lot of stuff we just don't know."

I also tried to get into reading and understanding the sonnets by opening with what I dubbed the "How Not To Go Crazy" rules, starting with #1 "Do not attempt to translate every single word into its modern equivalent as you come upon them." Even at this the teacher jumped in and said, "If they don't do that then how can they understand it at all?" I explained using the old forest and trees analogy, and how if you only obsess over a single word at a time you'll lose all the meter and structure of the piece. You need to read it first and try to understand it, using the words you do already recognize, and try to build from there. Sure, use the glossary when you have to, but you don't have to as much as you think you do.

What I did do, that I've never done before? I acted. I performed. I recited the sonnets like I meant it. I talked to Yorick's skull like he was my old friend. I swore ever lasting love to an imaginary girl in an imaginary balcony like I thought it should be done. Probably all sucked, but my audience didn't know that. The important thing is that instead of just rattling this stuff off from memory, I tried to put a little something into it, you know?

I did get to break out my game, and they were all intrigued at something to do that was interactive. At this point I'd been talking for over an hour (more on that in a sec) and it was clear that I was losing them. I felt like the substitute teacher who'd been given a list of fake names when taking attendance. Every 30 seconds somebody was getting up to sharpen a pencil or go to the bathroom or for a drink of water. I didn't care, it wasn't my classroom. At one point a student showed me a sketch and asked, "How do you like my Shakespeare?" It wasn't very good but I wasn't about to say that. I suggested that he add a ruff around the neck. Later my daughter confided in me, "Daddy, he was making fun of Shakespeare." I said if that's the best he's got I don't have much to worry about.

I got to yell at the class once, which was fun. Well, not technically yelling, but yeah, yelling. They'd done their game, made their sonnets, and the teacher asked who would like to recite their final version. One girl, obviously shy but used to raising her hand for things, volunteered. At this point the class isn't paying attention very much at all, and she begins in a whisper that can barely be heard past her own desk. SO I SUGGESTED THAT SHE USE HER DIAPHRAGM AND LEARN TO PROJECT SO THAT HER VOICE HITS THE BACK WALL AND CAN BE HEARD OVER THE SOMETIMES NOISY CROWDS THAT MIGHT OTHERWISE DROWN HER OUT. That shut them up for awhile.

What was most unexpected to me was that the teacher talked my ear off. I expected to be there 20-30 minutes. I was there for 90. She asked me everything that you could imagine, from the minute I walked in the door. She wanted to know about my business and my entrepreneurial efforts. She wanted to know when I learned Shakespeare, and whether my parents were Shakespearean, and how I liked Shakespeare in high school, and what was the name of the girl I had to recite the balcony scene with in Ms. Cunningham's ninth grade English class, and whether she was pretty. I'm not kidding, these are the questions I got asked. Leah DiNapoli, and yes. :) She was surprised I knew that, I said I've told that story many times. Although when I think about it I'm pretty sure that my partner was actually Karen Kehoe or Kristin Mills (who would have been sitting near me in alphabetical order), and Leah was the only girl in the class who did her part well and had come up to me later and said, "You and I should have gone together." Anyway, the teacher asked me whether I'd recited any sonnets to my wife at our wedding. We talked about Sonnet 116 and I plugged my book :). She also asked me to explain Julius Caesar. Really? Went a little far afield on that one.

My big climax was a playlist of videos featuring celebrities reciting the sonnets. I had David Tennant doing sonnet 12, I had Alan Rickman doing sonnet 130. I even asked the kids, "Does anybody know who's in charge of Slytherin House?" and of course that got their attention. BUT I COULDN'T GET A WIFI CONNECTION AND WAS UNABLE TO SHOW ANY OF THEM. That bummed me out. (Later I thought that I should have gone more screen shot heavy, first showing a famous actor in a role that the kids would know and then a Shakespearean role. Patrick Stewart as Commander Picard or Professor X....Patrick Stewart as Macbeth. Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey .... Ian McKellen as King Lear. And so on.)

This is getting long so I'll wrap it up with a funny story that suggests things might have sunk in a bit more than I thought. I posted some notes about my experience on Facebook. I'm friends with various neighborhood parents, and it just so happens that a parent (Kim) of a student in my daughter's class saw my notes and asked her son, "So, Mr. Morin came into your class to talk about Shakespeare, huh?" In typical 10 yr old paranoia she got the usual "What? How'd you know that?" and then the usual "Good. Fine," result.

What's neat, though, is that this young man has an older sister who is in high school and who *is* studying Shakespeare. "What sonnets did you do?" she demanded of him. He told her about sonnet 18, and 29, and 116. She acknowledged that she too knew those, in what I have to assume went down in an ultracompetitive "Oh no my little brother does NOT know something that I don't know!" sibling moment. I wonder what she would have done if he'd been able to rattle off some sonnet 12 or 104 or 130?

This visit proved something I've said time and again. If you ask me to start talking about Shakespeare you're going to need to eventually walk away because I will not stop. Never once did I answer the teacher's side query with, "Can we talk about that later?" Every time, no matter the question, I launched into my answer with equal passion. I love realizing that I cannot help myself. I am well aware that many times when talking about Shakespeare I will pause and sway a little and gesture a bit with my hands because I can't find the words to adequately explain how strongly I feel about how much I enjoy that moment. This time I got to do that for an hour and a half.

Ok, that's enough of that. Glad I got to do it, but 10yr olds are clearly not yet into the lovey dovey romantic stuff that drives most of what the sonnets are all about. We did talk a lot about Romeo and Juliet and the balcony scene, and I think I did get them interested with talk of, "Every time a girl likes a boy and her friends tell her that she shouldn't like him? There's something in Romeo and Juliet for you." That, they get. But man I'll tell ya I was selling sonnet 18 and 29 and 130 for all I was worth talking about the poet putting himself right in between Death and his beloved saying "No! I will not let you have her, I will make her immortal!" like Orpheus travelling into the underworld, and enjoying the hell out of myself if I can just tell ya...but the kids could take it or leave it.

Next week I'm doing an actual Dream performance with my 8yr old's class. Should be an entirely different experience. Stay tuned!

Confusion Fills Up The Blog Of Our Absent Geek

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:01:38 PDT

Hi Everybody,

Apologies for my absence. I think the last anybody heard from me was that I was going to teach sonnets to 10 year olds, and I still owe you that story. This is not that story.

About 4 years ago I developed this problem where I get these shooting pains, numbness and tingling all down my arm. Turns out to be a bulged disk, or a pinched nerve, or one causing the other, I was never really sure what's going on in there. But at the time I went through the whole MRI process and everything, spend a few months in physical therapy, and it went away.

Until about 3 weeks ago, when it came back with a vengeance. All the same symptoms are there, which lead me to believe that it's the same problem getting worse. A couple of fingers on my right hand are completely numb. Had an MRI earlier this week, have not yet gotten any results. So until then I'm either in pain or on Percoset depending on the time of day you catch me. :)

The end result is that while I've still got control of both arms and all my fingers and can still do my job, it's made it difficult to sit and focus on typing lengthy things, like blog posts. I can only sit at the keyboard for a few minutes before I have to get up and move around and stretch, which makes it very hard to write up a summary of my Shakespeare activities.

With that in mind it's gotten a lot better, so I will try to start posting some new material. Regardless of what MRI says it's likely to be weeks before I'm back to normal.

-SG

My Interview with "Hamlet Supercut" Creator Geoff Klock

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:28:08 PDT

Last week a good part of the Shakespeare fan universe was knocked on its collective Bottoms (see what I did there :)?) by the discovery of what's best called a Hamlet Supercut - a 15 minute retelling of Hamlet made up entirely of 200+ movie and television references. If you've not yet seen it, you're in for a treat. Warning, there's a bit of NSFW dialogue so you might want to grab the headphones (more on that later):

Amazing, right? Everybody I showed said the same thing. I got a number of "I thought I knew a few references to add but he already had them!" and even one professor who said, "I teach this stuff for a living and I only knew about 60-70% of those!"

When the creator Geoff Klock introduced himself on Twitter I jumped at the chance to interview him by email. I sent him half a dozen questions, all set to the tune of Hamlet quotes (hey I gotta show off my geek skills somewhere!), and he sent me back his answers. Enjoy.

1) "What's Shakespeare to you, or you to Shakespeare?" Tell us about yourself and the context for this project. We've all got "high school teacher" but what grade? Is this for honors/AP? Where in the world are you? How did the idea for this project come up and how long has it taken you?

I am actually not a high school teacher, though I have a lot in common with one. I teach at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which is open admissions. I teach the two term freshman writing course, and also film and Brit Lit 1, where I teach Hamlet. To get my students interested in Hamlet I started collecting clips quoting it. It got out of hand. At a show called Kevin Geeks Out in NYC I saw a guy do a mash up Christmas Carol. I thought "That's what I will do with the clips!" It took years, but that feels misleading, since it only took a few minutes a day, and then a handful of days to put it all together. I was doing other stuff!

2) "Tell us about the method to your madness." There's obviously a ridiculous amount of overlapping between all the references where you have to decide which reference to use for which line, or whether to do a whole bunch of them strung together. Any method to how you decided which clip goes with which line?

I tried to go with the most entertaining / recognizable clip I could. Given a choice in one show between a line I already had (such as "To be or not to be") and a more obscure one (such as "I'll call
the king, father, Royal dane!") I tried to go with the lesser known one. In some Platonic Ideal Universe I could build the whole play out of quotes, I imagined. Also I had to cut all references to Hamlet in music and each show only got one bite -- a lot of folks want to know where the Star Trek "Conscience of King" episode is but for that generation of Trek I wanted Christopher Plummer as a Klingon. Cause, obviously.

3) "F-words, f-words, f-words." I've already heard a few people comment that they'd love to show this to their students, but several of the quotes drop that big f-bomb that is know to set parents aroar. Any particular reason why you chose to leave those in (since they're not Shakespeare's text)? Did it even come up when you were making this?

If you are teaching high school you are doing the Lord's work. I could not hack it at that job. And if you have that job you don't want to lose it and I get that. But too often teachers present intelligence
to students as something antiseptic. We imply that to be smart they need to dress like J Crew ads, put away childish pleasures like Batman, and talk and write like goddamn news broadcasters. Then we are shocked that they do not want to learn. I have a doctorate from Oxford, I wear converse with suits, and the two things I love best in this fucking world are Hamlet and The X-Men, and my students know that. And honestly, while "fuck" may not be in the text, Hamlet says to Ophelia that he wants to lie in her lap. He clarifies that he means his head upon her lap, and then asks her if she thought he meant "country matters." Are we to leave students, who are always a single click of their phones away from every manner of Hard Core Porn, with the impression that Shakespeare is above a pun on the word "cunt?" The Hamlet Mash Up demonstrates that intelligence can coexist with trash culture, and that both are kickass. Cf. any movie by Quentin Tarantino for a further lesson on this subject.

4) "I have entreated geeks along with me to watch the 15 minutes of this video." You've already told me that you've got more than a dozen clips to add and that your goal is "all of them." I told a friend that if this was two hours long I'd invite people over and serve popcorn. How long do you think you can make it, and still have it be a useful teaching tool?

More than 15 minutes and it can't be on YouTube. If you are not on YouTube you are not getting to all the people you can. Plus there is a tradition of the "15 minute Shakespeare" I want to stay in. It's too long as it is. If I could start over I would just do To Be Or Not To Be.

5) "Well spoken, with good accent." Several of the clips appear to be foreign language versions of Hamlet productions. Isn't that cheating? If you open up that door couldn't you do an entire video of nothing but versions of Hamlet from around the world? That's really a different thing, isn't it?

Are there a lot of foreign movies quoting Hamlet? I don't know that many. If there are too many the foreign language ones will be the first thing cut in a next edition.

6) "I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me." Does this only work for Hamlet, or could you set your sites on other Shakespeare works? What would your second choice be? Do you think it's possible to find enough cultural references to, say, Midsummer Night's Dream that you could make a similar video?

I am not doing any more of these. This was hard enough and I am clearly missing 15 things at least. I will keep this one as up to date if I can, maybe releasing an update a year or something. I tried to do it with MacBeth but MacBeth is not as sound-bite-y as Hamlet as so the clips had to be longer, and it was a mess. You could do one of Romeo and Juliet maybe but the whole thing would be pop culture characters saying "A rose by any other name" and "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art
thou Romeo."

Thanks very much Geoff! I apologize for assuming you were a high school teacher, I don't know where I got that. Maybe somebody else will pick up the gauntlet and make another one of these, just as you suggest!

Could It Be, Hmmm, I Don't Know ... SEYTON!?!?!

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:25:59 PDT

(Does a "Church Lady" impression date me pretty badly?)

Bardfilm wanted some academic discussion on Twitter today, and knowing that it's very hard to learn anything permanent on Twitter (try Googling for it later!) I'm summarizing in a blog post but you can check to see if the #SeytonSatan hashtag is still active.

Question : In Macbeth, would "Seyton" be pronounced like "Satan"? And, if so, would that have suggested some sort of desired audience reaction? When Macbeth calls, "Seyton!" would the audience have been all, "He's calling SATAN?! Dude's evil!" (My paraphrase. Bardfilm's original question had more "you betcha").

There's much that's been said on the topic but little of academic note.

On the subject of sounding it out I linked in @BenCrystal, an expert in original pronunciation (OP), who responded, "I'd say them the same in OP, something like ['sei-tun] with a really soft /t/." This then led to a discussion about when exactly the Scots burr came into the language (after the arrival of King James) and whether Macbeth would have been played that way.

But what of the whole Satan thing? Do we think that Shakespeare intended to put Satan in the mind of his audience?

My personal position on this is perhaps too grounded - what happens next? The audience hears Macbeth call, "Satan!" and then this regular old soldier shows up and starts taking orders. So either you just get this brief scare where the audience is left thinking, "Oh, phew, for a minute there I thought Macbeth was actually calling you know who!" and then we go about our business. Or we get something more like "Who's this guy? Is that Satan in the form of one of Macbeth's soldiers? Oooo, I bet he's going to do something just off the charts evil."

I just don't know enough about the time period to know if this was a think that Shakespeare would even attempt. Did you get to mention Satan on stage like that? Would Shakespeare have suggested that Macbeth was so evil as to invoke the big man himself? And, worse, order him around like a lackey?

Lots of discussion material here. Show of hands, who's done the Scottish play and has an opinion from experience?

Drop Everything

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:45:49 PDT

...for the next 15 minutes and go watch this insane "supercut" that tells Hamlet using 200 tv and movie references.

I don't even know what to say about it. The amount of effort is insane. You've got the Monkees, the Addams Family, Head of the Class, Clueless, Simpsons, Cookie Monster and on and on and on. Monty Python references I just saw on Bardfilm yesterday? They're in there.

And he even lists the credits, in order, at the end!

You know that feeling you get when you're just minding your own business and then you randomly hear a snippet of conversation come from over the cube wall where somebody's dropped a Hamlet reference? Your ears perk up, you listen more closely to see what happens next, and your brain does this thing where it pulls the entire context for that quote out of storage and brings it front and center for you in case you need it (or is that just me?). I get this neat little shock up my spine when I catch random Shakespeare. It makes me happy. It is a reminder that Shakespeare is everywhere.

Now imagine sustaining that feeling for 15 minutes.

It says in the description that the creator is open to adding new references. I hope he makes this an hour long. I would watch with equal fascination.

Sonnets Simplified?

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:19:07 PDT

So next week I'll at long last be heading in to a classroom to talk about Shakespeare. In this particular instance we're talking about the sonnets, and I'm busy gathering material that I can use.

I've been informed by the teacher that, in preparation for the lesson, they "studied" Sonnet 29. That is, she read and paraphrased it to them. They also read Sonnet 18. This was done mostly as a lesson in iambic pentameter.

Here's my question to you, loyal readers. What are the best sonnets I can use for examples in class? We'll be doing several games involving filling in blanks and shuffling words so we'll need a handful of sonnets to work with that the kids don't already know.

Guidelines

1) The iambic pentameter should be about as straightforward as it can be. If we're trying to get across five feet of baDUM baDUM baDUM baDUM baDUM and giving them puzzles where they need to put that meter back into place it won't be fair to throw in too many twists.

2) Family friendly. I love #130 as an example, just not sure what to do with "breasts are dun" yet. Most likely going to come through as "flesh is dun" just so I can use it, but I'd rather have examples I don't have to mess with.

3) Not too archaic. If the kids need to be going to the glossary (me) for every single line, they're never going to understand it.

I'd like to use Sonnet 12, as an example. I think the imagery is something they could grasp, the meter is straightforward, and I don't think I have to worry too much about the family friendliness of a word like "breed".

Who's got some help for me? Carl Atkins, you out there? You always seem to have a few sonnets to rattle off when we bring up the topic. What's that one about thinking about his beloved and he can't sleep? That's a good one.

Last Day to Join the Shakespeare is Universal Campaign!

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:22:27 PDT

Our revels will soon be ending, and our little lives will be rounded with a stunning new t-shirt because we hit our goal! I just wanted to leave a note here for those people that really were waiting until the end, possibly to see if we made it (so there's no risk), possibly to see if we *didnt* make it so they could help put us over the edge. Either way, you've still got (as of this writing) about 9 hours to go add your name to the list and get a shirt if you wanted one.

For those that have already joined the campaign, remember that your payment will be charged so don't suddenly forget what you signed up for :). But shirts should be arriving by the end of the month. I look forward to hearing reports of sightings in the wild!

Shakespeare for everyone!

P.S. - No more nagging! I know that's the most exciting part for some people. Thanks for putting up with me.

What Was The Ben Jonson / William Shakespeare Friendship?

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:11:42 PDT

I guess I always thought that most of Shakespeare's "friends" recognized his genius and organized themselves around him like some sort of disciples re-learning their craft. I don't know where I got that, it's just the image that works for me - they've got this good thing going, they think they're at the top of their game, then along comes this new kid who pretty much reinvents how it should be done, and then they're suddenly in a position to try and keep up with him.

Specifically, though, I'm curious about Ben Jonson since he's typically recognized as the most famous and successful of Shakespeare's friends. What exactly was that relationship? Twice today I spotted references like this one:

Jonson was pals with Shakespeare (and defended him often), but considered himself a genius and Shakespeare a hack (he often heckled Shakespeare's plays).

...and I realized that I probably have a lot to learn about this aspect of Shakespeare's life. I get that Jonson thought he was a genius, I've seen that before. But is it true that he looked down on Shakespeare's work? If there was really any heckling I can only assume that it was good-natured among friends, and I can totally believe that.

Who wants to take the floor and tell us about Mr. Jonson?

What Comics Can Take From Shakespeare

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 13 May 2013 06:37:07 PDT

I tagged this article by John Ostrander without knowing who he is. I gathered from a quick skim that he is an author of comic books, who cites Shakespeare as one of his influences. I like that. I'm reminded of last week's Ben Kingsley story where he said that he "Brings a little Shakespeare into everything he does." Which in turn reminds me of the great Martin Luther King's quote about, and I will paraphrase this because I've got to get back to the topic at hand, "If you are called to sweep streets, then sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry." Amen, Dr. King.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, John Ostrander on what the comics can take from Shakespeare. The fact that he uses Measure for Measure as his primary example shows that there's going to be some depth to his argument, he's not just pulling high school memories of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet and doing little but name dropping our dear bard. Mr. Ostrander's apparently thought a lot about this.

A brief excerpt:

Explore all sides of the question. What did Shakespeare think on any given question? It’s hard to tell because he would give convincing arguments to both (or more) sides of a question.

He then uses the example of Claudio preparing for his possible death, first speaking with the Duke and accepting it, but then turning around and telling his sister Isabella how much he fears it.

Which attitude speaks Shakespeare’s true mind?

Both. Both are true, to the moment, to the character, to the author, and for the reader or audience. It comes down to which is truer for us and that was Shakespeare’s intent or what I learned from it. Shakespeare had a many faceted mind and he used it in his work.

That's just one of several points he makes (although, to be temper my original praise, his point about Hamlet seems a little thin.)

Oh, and before I wrote this I had to google Mr. Ostrander so that I didn't get schooled by the comic geeks in the audience for not knowing him. Turns out he's not only done time with Marvel and DC, he's contributed to the Star Wars universe as well. Looks like his Shakespeare lessons have been serving him well!

Iago Does Not Exist

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Sun, 12 May 2013 04:49:12 PDT

I love a good "Hey look at Shakespeare *this* way" theory, and the TV Tropes brought me some new ones to play with. Hat tip to Michigan Shakespeare Festival for posting about this on their Facebook page!

How about the idea that Iago doesn't exist? That he is just the personification of the individual evil side of each character?

He's the incarnation of that voice within every person's mind, which is why it's so easy for him to trick everyone into believing what he says. He's not saying it — they're thinking it. Emilia is just a klepto with self-esteem issues; Othello is suffering from paranoia (or, if you hold that his seizures are real, he's also having epileptic hallucinations); Roderigo is generally unstable; Cassio has a serious drinking problem... the list goes on.

Now, obviously we're out of the realm of what Shakespeare may have actually intended - there's no way he had the narrative to even think of something like this. But in terms of modern interpretation, could you pull this off? I wonder whether some sort of weird version could be made where there is no Iago character, but instead each of the characters listed above takes turns reciting Iago's appropriate lines as if schizophrenic.

How many scenes does Iago have by himself?

There's a few more good theories on that page (like Horatio being a hired assassin sent by Fortinbras) that maybe we'll get to another time.

This Geek Hath Had Good Counsel -- A HUNDRED SHIRTS!

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:27:10 PDT

If you didn't see the email, or the Facebook posts, or the Twitter tweets... our Shakespeare is Universal campaign has reached its goal, with 3 days to spare! If you're one of those 100 you will get your shirt, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining our cause. As I wrote in a previous email this wasn't just an opportunity to go fishing for funds, this was a bit of a crisis of faith on my part, and I'd really convinced myself that if after all these years I couldn't find an audience of 100 people who were willing to make a real world commitment to what we were trying to do here? Let's just say I was seriously thinking about how I'd be spending my time going forward.

BUT! That's all in the past, because you do like Shakespeare, you really really like Shakespeare, and I am a very happy geek heading off into the weekend. I will stop checking my dashboard every 3 minutes like I've been doing for the last 3 weeks, and I will sleep soundly.

Thanks again.

Please note that the campaign does not officially end until sometime Monday afternoon (the page actually has a counter), so if you planned on buying a shirt you still have time to do so. Of course you won't get to ride the rollercoaster that we all just did of not knowing whether they'd ever exist! You'll just know you're getting yours. And that's ok, too. Shakespeare for everybody!

Happy Shakespeare Mother's Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:43:12 PDT

In honor of our moms, this week we imagine what Mother's Day cards might have been like from Shakespeare's characters. Shakespeare is a bit like Disney in not giving us very many mothers to work with, but we do our best.

Happy Mother's Day!

"Dearest Mother, I can not begin to tell you how thankful I am that you did not pluck your nipple from my toothless gums and dash my brains out."

"Mom, I know you don't always like to express just how much you care about me, but I know you do because you died of grief at the end of our play. Offstage of course. Love, Romeo."

"To The Woman Who Raised Me As If I Were Her Own Daughter, I'm totally crushing on your son Bertram, could help me hook that up?"

"What would I do for you, Mother? I would spare Rome, even if you did embarrass me in front of Aufidius and his friends."

"For A Wonderful Mother-In-Law on Mother's Day. Sorry about the Tybalt thing Mrs. Capulet, I totally understand why you tried to have me executed."

"You Are The Queen, Your Husband's Brother's Wife, and Would It Were Not So You Are My Mother. Happy Mother's Day. "

Clandestine Geekery

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:09:23 PDT

Waiting in line at the bank today, one woman spots somebody else she knows and they have a mini-reunion. I don't catch the names but it's not long before I hear #1 say to #2, "Are you still doing any theatre or music?"

My ears perk up. Theatre? I suppose they coud mean musical theatre.

#2 replies, among other things, "Right now I'm working with the Burlington Players..."

I pull out my phone and google the 2013-2014 for the Burlington Players to see if there's any Shakespeare on the bill, giving me a wide open excuse to invite myself into the conversation (and look like a complete stalker).

Alas there is not. 39 Steps. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Although I do spot (later) that their teen program did something called "Reviving Ophelia."

<shrug> That's the kind of geekery I do for you folks. I smell even the hint of something Shakespeare to talk about and I'm all over it. ;)

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I've tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you've found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

All Good Things ...

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:09:46 PDT

I heard a great piece of advice once in an entrepreneurial podcast. The host said, "If you think you have a good idea, it doesn't matter if you can find a hundred people that tell you its a good idea. Go out and find a hundred people who will give you money for your idea, and then you have something."

The last couple of weeks have been something of an experiment. I've played around over the years with different ways to fund my little Shakespeare addiction here, running ads over in the side bar, doing some affiliate linking, stuff like that. Always nickel and dimey stuff. I've always had merchandise but it's always been one-off stuff and I'm lucky to see 2 or 3 sales in a month.

So when I spotted Teespring, billed as "Kickstarter for T-shirts", I thought "This might be worth a shot. By getting the volume up we can keep the price down, and everybody wins." So I took my most popular image (To be or not to be, translated into different languages) and brought the quality up to standard by consulting translators, adding languages, and cleaning up the design. Thus was born the Shakespeare is Universal campaign.

The big question was, after eight years of posting over two thousand times on the subject of Shakespeare, do I have a "good enough" idea here that I've gathered those magical 100 loyal followers who would indeed pay real money for the value they receive?

As I write this, the answer is no.

The game's not over, not for five more days. We might still make it. If I look at the last two weeks as purely a lesson in business and marketing it's been enlightening. I've reached out well past my comfort level in self-promotion, to be certain. I've hounded celebrities for endorsements. I've tried to rally the troups on Twitter and Facebook and email to feel like they are a part of a cause. Every day I watch that number go up, I get a little thrill and wonder immediately, "Ok, what did I *just* do that made that happen?"

But I could equally step back and think, "You know, I launched this whole thing on Shakespeare's Birthday, my biggest traffic day of the year by far. In the best circumstance we could have crushed that 100 goal on the very first day." I think we got about 15. I don't even want to begin to do that math, to consider how much those dedicated fans cost me. It would not be a very balanced equation.

I don't know how I feel about this. I know that I put real effort into this and my other sites and projects. They cause me real world stress. They cost me real world time and real world money. It's been an amazing experience, and I've done and learned a lot of things.

But is this something that I can keep up forever? Especially now, with the knowledge that such a large audience out there just really doesn't care all that much whether I'm putting in the effort or not?

That, I have to think about.

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I've tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you've found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

Most Popular Shakespeare Tattoos

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Wed, 08 May 2013 07:16:16 PDT

I've been meaning to do this for a while and finally had the time to do it. In a highly unscientific manner I punched "Shakespeare tattoo" into the Pinterest search engine, and started tracking what came up. Although there were a variety of Shakespeare images, in this case I was looking purely at the quotes.

Unfortunately if more than one person finds the same image and pins it, all those instances will show up, and it would be near impossible for me to do anything about that. So instead I factored it into the equation. The prevalence of a given tattoo doesn't just mean "More people have this one" it also means "More people *like* this one."

I learned that pictures of freshly done tattoos are pretty gross. Many of these showed people all red and swollen which I assume means they took the picture immediately upon completion. I also learned that people will tattoo pretty much anywhere on their body, and saw a fair share of nearly naked people with just a hand covering the bits that weren't Shakespeare. (Though it's not on pinterest and was not part of this study I remember seeing a picture of a woman in the bathtub whose Shakespeare tattoo was so high up her leg that I hope she married her tattoo artist afterward.)

In total I looked at 74 tattoos (or, as noted, re-pins of tattoos). I was surprised at how lopsided the distribution was. Seventeen of those (almost 1/4th the total) were unique - I found only one tattoo like it. I think my favorite may have been this one:

"My love was my decay"

Because I saw a gazillion Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Tempest and Sonnet 116....but who goes to Sonnet 80? You've got to really know and love your material to pull something that almost guarantees no one you ever meet in life will recognize it. I'll admit I even passed that one over at first as a not by Shakespeare until I read the note associated with it.

[ All images come from a Pinterest search on "shakespeare tattoo". I do not own the rights to any images. ]

Eight tattoos were in the category of "a few people have or like this one". Typically I spotted between 2-4 instances of each of these (in no particular order):

"What's past is prologue"
"To sleep perchance to dream"
"If music be the food of love play on"
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here"
"Stars, hide your fires"
"These violent delights have violent ends."
"All these woes shall serve for sweet discourse in our time to come."

There were also a few variations on Sonnet 116, including one person with the entire sonnet but most with a portion of "Love is not love that alters..." Though I like the person who went with "Looks on tempests and is never shaken." Two different things to focus on.

But then we get to the big winners. Two stood out as clearly more popular than the others. The runner-up, appearing 18 times in my list?

"To thine own self be true."

I saw Polonius' advice on more body parts than I can count (such as the pictured foot).

But the winner (appearing 19 times in the list)? Want to take a guess?

"Though she be but little, she is fierce."

Everybody loves this quote. Not only was it the most popular, I saw a number of people who pinned a different tattoo with the comment, "I like this style, only with the quote about she's little and fierce."

What do you think quote choice says about the person? I found it fascinating to consider the different places people have to be in their lives to write of "violent ends" and "all these woes", compared to those that write of music being the food of love (and bonus points to the creative soul who went with "the earth has music for those who listen" instead). And how about all these "little but fierce" tattoos? Is that a motivational message to the bearer? Or a warning to her enemies? Maybe a little of both.

Did I Just Find The Source of the Shakespeare / King James Bible Theory?

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:56:26 PDT

When I'm trolling around for blog post ideas I'll often spot a topic I don't often see discussed and then google "<that topic> Shakespeare" to see what comes up. So on Reddit I saw a post about Rudyard Kipling. Ok. Google "kipling shakespeare" and one of the interesting things I've learned to watch out for is whether Google fills in "shakespeare" before I'm done typing it. That means that other people are also googling for this. Sure enough it completes the query. Even better it completes it with "kipling shakespeare bible." Interesting!

And then I found this. "Proofs of Holy Writ", by Rudyard Kipling, starring William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Let's jump to the end:

"Proofs of Holy Writ" was said to have arisen from a dinner table conversation between Kipling and John Buchan about the process by which the splendidly poetic language of the King James' Authorised Version of the Bible miraculously emerged from a committee of 47 learned men. Might they, Buchan wondered, have consulted the great creative writers of the day, like Will Shakespeare or Ben Jonson ? 'That's an idea', said Kipling, and he went away to turn it into a tale.

As most of us have no doubt heard there's long been a theory (nay, conspiracy?) that Shakespeare helped to write the King James Bible. A theory that goes so far as to suggest that Psalm 46 contains a hidden message -- the 46th word in from the front is "shake" and the 46th word from the end is "spear". (Bardfilm deals with this topic elsewhere, if you are interested.)

So does that mean that we're looking at the originator of the whole Shakespeare/Bible theory?

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I've tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you've found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

Wait, The Puritans Destroyed The Globe?

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:20:50 PDT

No matter how many times I see an article like "6 Myths You Still Believe About Shakespeare" I always click and skim to see whether there's something new under the sun. This one had all the usual -- his birthday's not necessarily on 4/23, he didn't get all his money from writing, the plays weren't "published" in his lifetime, and so on.

But this one was new to me:

The building in Southwark known as Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is a reconstruction that opened in 1997 – almost 400 years after the original was built. The original was ruined by fire after an accident involving the firing of a cannon during a 1613 production of ‘Henry VIII.’ It was rebuilt the following year only to be demolished in the 1640’s under Puritan pressure.

Emphasis mine. I knew about the burning of course, but I never realized that the Puritans had it burned less than a generation after Shakespeare was gone? "A bunch of us are sailing to America. Last one to leave England, don't forget to burn the Globe."

Has somebody out there got more timeline on this? What happened to Middleton and Fletcher and Jonson and all the others that were still alive after Shakespeare was gone? For that matter what exactly was going on at the Globe after Shakespeare, who kept writing for them?

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I've tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you've found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

Shakespeare is Universal UPDATE

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:54:26 PDT

The Universal Question

UPDATE #2: We're drawing to a close, with little less than a week to go. As of this update we're at 57 and heading for 100 and truly need your help. People have begun telling me "Oh maybe everybody's just waiting until the last minute." Well I'm pretty sure the last minute is a Sunday night which is not exactly prime time for everybody to be online so you might discover Monday morning that your opportunity's missed.

If you haven't kept up on the news, more languages have been added and all known questionable translations have been fixed. The shirt is also now available in four colors (grey/black/red/blue) if that helps convince you.

UPDATE #1 : I am going to keep updating this post, keeping it sticky at the top of the page, until the campaign has run its course. This will help assure that newcomers see it, by keeping it on the homepage. We are at 15 out of 100 reservations, and need more people to see this!

Shakespeare truly is for everyone, and nothing demonstrates that sentiment better than his most famous quote of all, translated here into languages from around the world.

In celebration of Shakespeare's birthday, show that you believe his works are just as relevant, powerful and important as they've ever been! Available for a limited time only!

Yes! I Believe Shakespeare is Universal! Sign me up!

Proceeds from this campaign go toward funding the mission of ShakespeareGeek.com, which for the last eight years has been dedicated to proving that Shakespeare makes life better.

Teespring is "Kickstarter for t-shirts". We need a certain number of people, by a certain date, to commit to purchasing a shirt. If we reach that number (or exceed it!), everybody wins. If we don't, nobody is charged. This method allows the price of each shirt to be greatly reduced, while keeping the quality of the product very high. (The graphics are all cleaned up by designers before printing, so they're never pixelated or speckled like you sometimes see on traditional "upload and go" print on demand sites.)

If you are at all interested in owning one of these shirts (and possibly seeing other such campaigns) I strongly encourage you to sign up and help us get the word out through all your social media connections. Thanks as always for supporting Shakespeare Geek!

You Don't Have To Read Shakespeare To Love Him

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:12:17 PDT

Someone asked on Reddit, "What's the best way to start with Shakespeare?"

As expected there's a bunch of "Don't try to read him, instead go see a good version of the play" suggestions. But the particular one upset me in its absolute stance on how bad reading is for you. Quoted briefly, but you should go read the whole thing at the link:

Put down your written copies of the plays. Now. You don't have to read Shakespeare to love him. Unless you are in a play, or a serious student/scholar, you are not helping yourself or him by attempting to get satisfaction from the words on paper.

I have a big problem with this. Rather than write it all down again I'll quote my response. I'm moving the discussion here because I know my audience better :).

While I appreciate the passion, I agree vehemently with your absolutism on the subject.

Here's the problem. Shakespeare's dead. You will never, not in the next million years, ever see, nor should you want to see, Shakespeare's plays as he intended them. 400 years have gone by, after all, and you won't even begin to comprehend the state of mind that his audience was in when they saw them. You will be unable to set your knowledge aside and look at them with the same eyes and listen with the same ears.

What you get, when you see Shakespeare's plays today, is the specific interpretation of that director and those actors at that time. Which has nothing at all to do with what Shakespeare intended, other than what they can extract from the text, which is still nothing but interpretation. Again, the man's dead. We need to stop pretending that we can know for certain what the "right" way to do it is.

So why then is a certain interpretation of Shakespeare ever better than another? It's not a question of better it's a question of different and intriguing. You don't want to see one, say "Ok, I've seen it", and then check it off your bucket list. You want to see as many Hamlets as you can and then ponder why David Tennant played it a certain way that Kevin Kline did not. Or why Patrick Stewart as Claudius shrugs before drinking the poison. (Why oh why does he shrug?!)

So, then, what you really want to do is see as many interpretations as you can. What do all those interpretations have in common? THE TEXT.

How will you ever fully appreciate the Shakespeare that you are watching, unless you know the source material? Or at least the source material as close as we are able to reproduce it?

Think of it like this. When you go see a play what you're really saying is "Shakespeare gave this group of people a big block of marble, and what they did is they chipped away everything that, to them, didn't look like Hamlet." Wouldn't you like to see the raw material that Shakespeare started with, and decide for yourself what parts you'd like to chip away?

I could give a dozen examples. What if you saw 4 productions of Hamlet, all of which cut out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the way Olivier did? You'd be none the wiser. Then you go and see a fifth version and here come these two guys and you're all "WTF is the director doing adding these two bozos?!"

See/hear the plays in as wide and frequent a variety as you can find, absolutely. You will learn and understand them by seeing them. I don't deny that. But to truly internalize them and get rid of all the middle men between you and Shakespeare? Absolutely read them.

Discussion?

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I've tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you've found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

#BostonShakespeare

noreply@blogger.com (Duane Morin) — Mon, 06 May 2013 11:42:38 PDT

You know what? It's a one-joke gimmick but it's funny to me.

If Shakespeare Lived In Boston...

O, most wicked awesome speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

Hamlet, apparently more approving of his mother's o'erhasty marriage than he's letting on? Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 2)

But then you'll think--Which I protest against--
I am assisted by wicked awesome powers.

In fairness, Paulina, you did appear to resurrect the long dead Hermione, that's pretty wicked awesome. The Winters' Tale (Act 5, Scene 3)

Look round about the wicked awesome streets of Rome;
And when thou find'st a man that's like thyself.
Good Murder, stab him; he's a murderer.

Titus appears to really enjoy the Roman night life, especially the bad part of town. Titus Andronicus (Act 5, Scene 2)

Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked awesome dam, come forth!

We knew Prospero had a thing for Sycorax. The Tempest (Act 1, Scene 2)

I think the best way were to entertain him
with hope, till the wicked awesome fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.

Can confirm, the fire of lust is indeed wicked awesome. It was, in fact what the Chorus was originally calling out for in the original Henry V opening. "O! For a muse of fire of lust.... " Merry Wives of Windsor (Act 2, Scene 1)

God grant me too
Thou mayst be damned for that wicked awesome deed!

Modern translation: "Damn that was wicked awesome." Richard III (Act 1, Scene 2)

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked awesome this way comes.

The witches are impressed. Macbeth (Act 4, Scene 1)

Before I knew
thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and now am I, if a man
should speak truly, little better than one of the
wicked awesome.

Falstaff wasn't just one of the wicked awesome, he originate the term. Henry IV Part 1 (Act 1, Scene 2)

The king my father did in Tarsus leave me;
Till cruel Cleon, with his wicked awesome wife,
Did seek to murder me: (Pericles 5 1)

That Cleon was a real bastard, but his wife was cool. Pericles (Act 5, Scene 1)

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the web's oldest continually active Shakespeare blog. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I've tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you've found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

Top Ten Reasons to Buy the Shakespeare is Universal T-Shirt (Guest Post)

noreply@blogger.com (kj) — Mon, 06 May 2013 08:04:52 PDT

Bardfilm, without coercion, has developed this list to convince the reluctant to purchase the “Shakespeare is Universal” T-shirt designed by Shakespeare Geek.

10. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as Edgar (disguised as Poor Tom) is in King Lear. This T-shirt will enable you to rise above such unaccommodation.

9. Only one week remains to sign up for this shirt—and I have inside knowledge that the opportunity will not repeat itself if this fails.

8. The night is cold, and you are sick at heart. Purchasing this T-shirt will remedy both difficulties simultaneously!

7. A shirt of such quality is rarely seen—far less is it seen for the low price of a mere fifteen dollars. It’s practically custom-designed for the Shakespeare afficianado in each of us. Given that our Geek has taken suggestions from followers and Facebook fans and updated the design, it actually is custom-designed, now that I think about it.

6. Falstaff, according to the Hostess, “could never abide carnation; ’twas a colour he never liked.” This shirt is not offered in carnation—though you can get it in black, blue, red, or grey.

5. You love to talk about Shakespeare—you know you do. Wear this T-shirt, and conversations will automatically turn in a direction you know and love!

4. Shakespeare Geek has been a constant Shakespeare promoter to all and sundry since 2005. This is but one very small way to congratulate him on his efforts and to encourage him to continue in them.

3. Lear tells us that “Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear.” Hide your small vices by buying this untatter’d t-shirt!

2. Imagine the prestige of being one of only a hundred people in the world to own this t-shirt. Pretend you’ve joined an ultra-secret society of Shakespeare promoters. When you spot another person wearing this shirt, nod gravely. That would be so cool!

1. The whips and scorns of time will have little to no effect on you when you wear a shirt covered with “To be or not to be” in thirty-six languages. That, my friends, is the same number as the number of plays included in the First Folio of Shakespeare's works.

Finally, if you don't buy this shirt, Bardfilm (and ninety-nine other people) won't ever get the opportunity to have one. And "Keep Bardfilm happy" is such a common expression that it's virtually become a cliché. And you know what they say—it wouldn't be a cliché if it weren't true!

Our thanks for this guest post to kj, the author of Bardfilm. Bardfilm is a blog that comments on films, plays, and other matters related to Shakespeare.