Who Wants Google Wave Invites?

Ok, I’ve only got a couple left (2, to be specific), but I’d like to make sure some Shakespeare geeks get a shot. I’m not going to bother explaining what Google Wave is, because either you saw “invite” in the title and jumped at the chance, or you have no idea. If you’re interested, send me an email telling me how you’d use this new collaboration tool for a Shakespeare-related project.  (Whether you follow through or not is up to you). I’m out of commission with the something strongly resembling the flu right now, but in a couple days I’ll pick some random responses and send out the invites. UPDATE Invites sent!  Enjoy, and invite more Shakespeare geeks! Pay it forward!

Shakespeare Had No Blackberry

I’m not going to bother linking the story that I saw, as I don’t think they care enough about Shakespeare to take their passing (albeit, titular) reference to Shakespeare any further (farther?) But you may see it floating around.  It’s from an environmental/green site arguing for the Luddite “tech is bad for us” point of view.   “Shakespeare had no Blackberry,” it argues, “And Aristotle managed without an iPhone”:

Shakespeare had no Blackberry; Aristotle managed without an i-Phone. Christianity spread round the globe without blogs. Christ preached his sermon on the mount without the need of a PA system and Powerpoint presentation. All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.

Does this ring stupid for anyone else?  Shakespeare also had no MODERN MEDICINE AND LIVED DURING THE PLAGUE, YOU MORONS.  IT IS ONLY THROUGH LUCK THAT WE HAVE HIM AT ALL.  I do not think, sitting at the deathbed of his only son, that Shakespeare was thinking about how happy his life was.  I think he would have been that much happier with penicillin. It is ludicrous to point to the “best” of past eras and say “See, they managed,” you mindless fools.  You should be asking who we *dont* have, who we *lost* because we failed to save them.  Don’t look at what Aristotle and others accomplished and say “See? They managed.”  Look at them and say “What else could they have achieved?”  How on the one hand can you hold up Shakespeare as one of the great geniuses of the last 500 years, but in the same breath argue for the conditions that allowed him to “manage”?  Wouldn’t you be better off looking for ways in which he could thrive?

1795 Book Value?

Got a request from a reader how she might go about finding the value of a very old book:

The book is "The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare" First American Edition Vol. III.
It is printed and sold by Bioren & Madan in MDCCXCV.
It appears it is from a set of 8 books. It is worn with yellowed mottled pages and has some writing in pencil on the inside front & back covers and on some pages. On the title page it has a signature that appears to have been written with a quill pen.

Anybody recognize the description and can offer a background?  Any book collectors got links to the good sites for doing research about such things? Post details here, and I’ll forward back to the original requestor, if she’s not already listening. Thanks!

McSweeney’s Is At It Again!

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/11/6hilsabeck.html McSweeney’s was all over the map a few months ago with their Hamlet on Facebook, and now they’re at it again.  This time it’s the Shakespeare Police Blotter, and covers a number of favorites:

John Macduff, 32, of Fife County, decapitated his long-time acquaintance and political rival, William Macbeth, of Cawdor County, last Sunday at the latter man’s home in Dunsinane. … At approximately 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, a Verona man ingested a fatal dose of arsenic inside his lover’s family’s mausoleum. He was later identified as Romeo Montague, 22. A second victim, later identified as Juliet Capulet, 17, also of Verona, was found dead next to him.

I just realized they made Juliet 17, I wonder why?  Seems odd that they’d miss such an obvious detail, they seem to know their stuff otherwise.

Hamlet is 16. Discuss.

In my head, the words and works of Shakespeare are … how can I explain this …. they exist outside of time.  They are timeless, and I mean that in all senses of the word.

I could not tell you off the top of my head whether Merchant of Venice is technically supposed to happen in 1275, 1623 or 1941.  It is part of what I love.  It is what enables people to go to the well over and over and over again, keeping the essence while simultaneously changing everything.  If you tried to tell me that there is something about Hamlet that *must* take place in 1601, you’d ruin it for me.

So it is something of an eye-opener for me to stumble across a book like Steve Roth’s “Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country” where he very literally maps the action of Hamlet to actual calendar days, in the process rebuilding many core beliefs about the play.

I am not in the least kidding when I say that he discusses which of the action, for example, happens on a Monday.  More so, *what* Monday and why that is important, why Shakespeare chose it.

I first stumbled across Steve’s work on the “Hamlet is 30” topic, which we’ve discussed twice before.  It is his position that the well known “I have been sexton here, man and boy 30 years” – the primary evidence that Hamlet is 30 – is actually a misinterpretation.  He feels that the line actually reads “I (the gravedigger) have been sixteen here (i.e., have been at this job 16 years)…”  It is a bold position to take.  The secondary bit of evidence, that Yorick – who Hamlet played with as a child – died 23 years ago, is harder to contradict.  But Roth finds Q1 evidence that the line was originally 12 years, which would fall right in line.

As I said above, and as my regular readers probably know, this is not how I do it.  There’s a world of difference between just assuming that “some time” elapsed before the nunnery confrontation, and mapping that time out to a number of days, a time of year, everything.  The flowers that Ophelia picked (if she didn’t imagine them), were they in bloom at that time of year? The old king was supposedly sleeping in his orchard… how cold was it?  There are folks that eat that stuff up.  I’m willing to bet that there’s a handful of regular readers of my blog, in fact, who are all over it.

It’s often hard to make the case, and Roth knows that.  When he’s got details he makes his case clear.  When the case is a little weaker on fact, he’s not afraid to say “That sounds about right.”  In particular, Hamlet’s time with the pirates is particularly tricky to nail down. There are also times where I just don’t plain understand what calendar we’re supposed to be using.  The anachronism of “going back to Wittenberg” is oft-cited – it wasn’t there in Hamlet’s time, but would have been in Shakespeare’s time.  Ok, fair enough.  But much of Roth’s calendar calculation is done against the 1601 calendar, when Hamlet would have been *performed*, not when it took place.  Is that too much a convenience?  Did Hamlet really write in-jokes and references that would have been out of date a year later, much less 400?

Within all the calendar counting, though, there are still opportunities to learn new things (again, this is part of what I love).  For instance, this book brings up the idea that Hamlet’s harping on Gertrude not going to bed with Claudius is not because he’s got some Oedipal issues, but because (if Hamlet is 16, mind you), Gertrude is clearly still young enough to bear a child by Claudius.  A child that would be next in line to the throne, bumping Hamlet out of the picture.  Maybe that’s common knowledge, but I’d never thought of it.  And if Hamlet is 30, it’s more far fetched.

Roth’s book is small, barely 150 pages, and has its fair share of tables taking up space.  So it’s a quick read.  You don’t have to buy the “Hamlet is 16” premise to enjoy it either, though Roth certainly makes a good showing for his case.  This book would be a fine addition to the collection of any Hamlet geeks out there.