365 Characters

http://www.365characters.net/ Somebody comes up to you and asks you to name a fictional character, for a project that they are doing.  Who do you pick?  Naturally I go skimming to see if anybody’s picked Shakespeare, and I see that the current entry (#255) is Ophelia. The project itself seems to be about artistic interpretation – a “portrait” a day. The concept of character is interesting, though.  At first I thought the artist wanted specific people (like, for example, Ophelia).  But paging through previous days I see generic ideas like “librarian” or “cook”. I flipped back to about 150 or so and did not see any other specific Shakespeare characters, but maybe somebody else in a different time zone (it’s late here and I’m sleepy!) can flip through the rest and see what other Shakespeare showed up.

Other People’s Favorite Quotes

How much of a Shakespeare geek am I? When I see a forum thread titled “Your favorite quote of all time?” I cruise through it looking for Shakespeare, even though in this particular case it’s very much a computer-geek board with little chance of Mr. Shakespeare showing up. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b3mo9/what_is_your_favorite_quote_of_all_time/ At the time, I count 3 Shakespeare – all from Hamlet, and yet all different quotes.  That’s kinda interesting.

Mistress Shakespeare

Did you know that there’s actually two documented references to William Shakespeare’s marriage … to two different people?  Days before his recorded marriage to Anne Hathaway is another line, referring to Anne Whateley. Most frequently this is written off as clerical error or simple misspelling in a time when Mr. Shakespeare himself seems to never really write his name the same way twice. But what if Anne Whateley was a real person, Shakespeare’s true first love, and his marriage to her was unable to happen because he went and knocked up Anne Hathaway?  Could you get a book out of that premise? http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/120268-mistress-shakespeare-by-karen-harper/ Karen Harper did.  Better than just a planned first marriage that did not occur, she goes all Romeo and Juliet and has Will and Anne#1 marry in secret, but then he has to go and do the shotgun wedding thing with that other hussy.  I’m not sure, reading this review, whether Anne#1 ever takes issue with her man knocking up some other broad, or if she’s cool like that. I suppose it’s a quaint idea, but as for the reviewer’s suggestion that “Shakespeare buffs need something new to mull over, and Harper provides it,” I dunno about that.  I’m sure it makes a nice story, and we do all love to map “real” stories onto Shakespeare’s archetypes for maximum effect, but how realistic would a “secret” wedding have been, really?  From everything I’ve understood about the time period, documentation and doing such things by letter of the law was very important.  Didn’t they even need special permission of some sort to waive some requirements in order to make the wedding happen in a hurry?  If it was at all as easy as grabbing a priest and saying I Do, I think they would have done that first and filled out the paperwork later. But then, I’m no expert in the historical side of things like Ms. Harper, so maybe this sort of thing happened all the time?

Ok, Who Needs A Reading Buddy?

http://www.shicho.net/38/ Just got an email from Ingrid, a fellow “tech geek with a love of literature” who wants to beef up her Shakespeare by doing a maddening one-play-a-day read through starting on March 1. She’s looking for folks who might be interested in reading along, in what I can only describe as something of a “speed book club”.  I can’t pull it off, I don’t have nearly the time or attention span to tackle such a thing, but I promised that I’d post her request. Anybody up for a month of Shakespeare?    She’s calling her project “38 Plays in 38 Days” and has a site up (linked) to track progress. Good luck!

Why No Love For Shakespeare In Love?

http://www.screenjunkies.com/movienews/10-worst-oscar-best-pictures-all-time It’s widely understood that Shakespeare In Love winning the Best Picture Oscar (over Saving Private Ryan and Life is Beautiful) is considered one of the top WTF? moments of Academy Award history (though in the above list it only makes #9). So, I have two questions.  First, do you think that’s valid?  I mean, we’re all Shakespeare geeks here, I’m sure we all have some amount of love for Tom Stoppard and the source material if nothing else.  Did you love the movie?  Do you think it deserved Best Picture? Second question, assuming I can count the above three as variations on a single question : If you agree that it did not deserve the award, why do you think it won?  Some sort of political wrangling going on that we’re not privy to?