Month: January 2007

Anybody want to read 200 pages of PDF that claim to “crack the code” of Shakespeare’s sonnets?  Maybe summarize for the rest of the class?  I don’t have time for this.  Here’s a sample: In other sonnets, the doubled (and multiplied) code words may reveal new, autobiographical details, other identities, and evidence of Shakespeare’s sense of humor and the depth of his language play. In addition, Sonnet 52 is found by the same doubled word and letter code to be a Summer Solstice sonnet. If we count back to Sonnet 1, we arrive at May first (our calendar). If we count ahead to Sonnet 126, we arrive at September third. If we assume that Sonnets 40 and 133 are contemporaries, both revealing when Will first admits that the youth and the dark lady are having an affair, we can give them both the date of June ninth. Then, Sonnet 127, the first dark lady sonnet, becomes June third (along with Sonnet 34), thus starting one possible twenty-eight day (14 times 2) lunar cycle within the 126 day (28 times 4.5) summer solar cycle of the youth’s sequence. If any year is referred to, it might be 1592, but Shakespeare probably wrote and revised the Sonnets over the twenty-year period (1589—1609) that spans the main years of his wonderful career as a dramatist. A more complex view of this great sonnet sequence than any of us has to date is called for.   The author is Peter Jensen, Instructor of English at Linn-Benton Community College.  The link is directly to the PDF, I do not have a link to a hosting HTML page.  

Like all good geeks I’m familiar with Neil Gaiman, mostly through Good Omens but I do have Anansi Boys on the shelf waiting for my time.  What I did not realize is that he’s got enough of a Shakespeare background to a whole section of his Wikipedia page.  I’ve only ever heard about “Sandman”, never read it, but knowing that Shakespeare himself shows up in 3 episodes, one dealing with the inspiration for The Tempest, I may have to go seek those out!  

Via LiveJournal I caught this reference to a song by Dream Theater called Pull Me Under that is apparently about Hamlet.  Consider me intrigued!   Hmmm…I’d like to know where the original poster got the reference, because the only lines I can find that are not totally generic are these:

I’ll take seven lives for one
And then my only father’s son
As sure as I did ever love him
I am not afraid   Anybody else got good songs based in Shakespeare that we might not already know about?  

Just found this.  Not sure if it’s going to be entirely posted online, or if it’s an ebook in the making or what.  But I spotted the Shakespeare references and grabbed it 🙂  Maybe the author will spot the link and chime in.  I notice that happens sometimes ;).   The Crime of the Crimea — A Swann and Parker Novel In 1882, on the stage of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon the much loved actor, Henry Donaldson, is brutally murdered. But is there more than murder afoot? Enter Detective Inspector Herbert Merriman Swann, an ex-cavalry officer and New York cop, and his trusty number two, Detective Sergeant John Parker, a young policeman with a bent for science, who, like Swann is also a fine marksman. Just a handful of years earlier, in 1879, Swann and Parker had been responsible for creating the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at Scotland Yard; so what were they doing in the relatively quiet backwater of Stratford-upon-Avon? Quiet that is until the murder of Donaldson opens up a stinking, squirming, can of worms.  

For the curious, the easily missed new movie “Arthur and the Invisibles” is apparently loaded with Shakespeare references.  I was surprised to discover that.  The opening code that the kid has to solve on his way to the treasure is supposedly a Shakespeare quote: “Some words hide other words”, or something like that.  The problem is that I can’t find anything close to this quote in any of my Shakespeare sources.  Anybody recognize it?  I find it hard to believe that they’d make up a quote and call it Shakespeare, that’d be pretty amateur.  (Although it is signed ‘Will S’ and one character says, “Who’s that, Socrates?”) Later, a battle weapon is launched in the form of two small animals named Romeo and Juliet.  Something about their love for each other and their need to be together being a powerful force.  I thought it was interesting, but unfortunately at this point my kids were getting too squirrely (it’s a fairly scary battle scene for a 4yr old), so we ended up leaving. Has anybody seen this movie?  Is there more Shakespeare?  Do they come back later and say the “Some words hide…” thing isn’t really Shakespeare after all, and that’s why it says Will S and not Shakespeare? 🙂