Month: January 2009

http://sparknotes.com/home/shakespeare/article/william_shakespeare_was_tinkerbells_dad.html Or so begins the article, followed up in the first line by a “No, not really.”  (Bait and switch, much?) It then goes on to give a history of fairies (“faeries”) at the time of Shakespeare, and how he didn’t even invent them, he just gave us some of our modern ideas about how they behave. Hmmm….sounds familiar somehow….. http://blog.shakespearegeek.com/2008/07/scary-fairies.html

http://www.clicknotes.com/hamlet/questions.html Remember AC Bradley?  I remember back in high school hearing that name associated with the definition of tragic hero.  So when his name showed up in my links today in the title “A.C. Bradley Answers Your Hamlet Questions”, I was intrigued. The linked page is….well, interesting.  It’s a bullet list, maybe a dozen questions about Hamlet, all of which are given straight up yes or no answers, with a link to Bradley.  Did Gertrude sleep with Claudius before Hamlet’s father died?  Yes, see page 166.   Did Hamlet delay because of moral conscience or scruple?  No, he delayed because of profound melancholy, pages 97+108. While I’m sure this has value (the linked pages do in fact give detail on how each answer is chosen), I hate it.  A quick skim makes the reader think there are definite answers to these questions just because some expert says so.  But then if you try to read the justifications, you yourself have to be an expert in the subject just to understand what the heck Bradley is talking about.

Hey everybody, don’t forget about the current book giveaway : Harper Collins is offering free copies of Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare autobiography to 3 readers *and their friends*!  That’s the gimmick – just comment on that post telling us who you’d give the extra copy to, and why. For bonus points, introduce a friend to ShakespeareGeek.com and get them to comment, too – you’ll get extra entries in the contest! Contest ends January 31.  Let’s make this the biggest giveaway yet!  Don’t forget, publishers like exposure for their titles, so the more entries I get, the better the odds they’ll come back and give me more free stuff next time.  Help a geek out!

No, I’m not talking about Mr. Obama and Martin Luther King, I’m talking about hearing my 2.5yr old son quote Shakespeare :). As regular readers are bored of hearing, my 4 and 6 yr old girls are both familiar with “Shall I Compare Three” as a bedtime lullaby, and have been since they were 3 and 5. Now I can almost but not quite add the boy to my growing army of geeklets:  check it out .  He still needs a little coaxing, but give him time, the boy isn’t out of diapers yet. 🙂

Today, as you may have noticed, is a pretty big day here in the United States.  It’s a day that many people thought would never come, at least not in their lifetimes.  It’s a day that I remember hearing about in school as a sort of “Maybe one day…” thing, something in the future, not the present.  I’m speaking, of course, about the swearing in of our first Hawaiian president. As I tried to explain to my 6yr old this morning, “There are times in your life when people will ask ‘Where were you?’  Where were you when we landed on the moon, where were you when 9/11 happened?” “I wasn’t alive for either of those things, Daddy.” “I know, sweetie.  But you know what?  Years from now, when you’re Daddy’s age and you have kids your age, people are going to ask you Where were you when they swore in the first Hawaiian president.” So, I’m asking all my readers, on all my blogs:  Where were you? Me, personally, I’m at work.  My kids are at their grandmother’s house, because the power went out at about 6:30am.  Which stinks, because there’s pretty much no way I will be able to DVR the ceremonies on television if I have no television :).  But I will be watching on line as best I can. Where are you? Anybody got a good Shakespeare quote?  Did our boy write any actual good leaders, positive about the future, that people liked?  It doesn’t seem like the time for Henry V quotes.  Surely somebody’s gotta have one.