Month: September 2010

It’s a topic we speak of often, and everybody seems to love it, but nobody to my knowledge has ever made a definitive list of “songs inspired by Shakespeare” because, quite frankly, how do you define that? Do you need lyrics from the text? Character names? Plots?
365 Days of Shakespeare doesn’t attempt to answer these questions, she just offers her top 10. I link because there’s a couple in there I’d not heard of!
No Rufus Wainwright in the mix, by the way, but that may go back to “how are you defining this”. Putting an entire sonnet to music isn’t really the same thing as rewriting a Romeo and Juliet story. I have both the Dire Straits and Indigo Girls’ versions of Romeo and Juliet in my playlist, and she’s right, the Indigo Girls version is much better.

Stanley Wells was asked who, in his opinion, were The Ten Greatest Actors. I like how right off the bat he dismisses Burbage, not because he wasn’t any good but because frankly we simply have no evidence. He starts with David Garrick, for which there is plenty.
My title comes directly from Wells’ blog, because I have no idea what it means. Did Gielgud do a famously lousy Othello, or something?
The rest of our favorites – McKellen, Dench, Jacobi, Branagh, Scofield… all make the list. Who, in Wells’ opinion, is the greatest? He does say, but I won’t steal their thunder. You have to look for it though, because he drops an understated “for me he is the greatest” in the middle of the article and you’ll skim right by it if you’re in a hurry.

Disclaimer: Yes, JM, this post is inspired by you ;). But I hope that’s not a bad thing, and I hope what I’m about to say opens up some conversation. I am going with an idea, here, not trying to paint you into a corner and most certainly not trying to put words in your mouth. Fair enough?
I think that everybody here would like Shakespeare to have a larger presence in the world around us. What exactly that means will probably be different for everybody, but I hope that this is at least a fair statement. If there was more Shakespeare in the world, we’d be happier. True?
So, then, are you angry that we don’t have that? The current state of education, the movies, the pop culture references, the badly misquoted lines that become cliches … do those things bug the living daylights out of you, to the point where you can’t be happy until you live in a world where they’re fixed? What standard do you hope to achieve? Are we aiming to recreate Shakespeare’s world, or to integrate what he gave us into our own? What’s the difference between integrating and diluting?
For me, personally, I don’t get angry about it. Sometimes I get disappointed, sure. And I do throw a minor tantrum when people use “wherefore” to mean “where”, but only people who should know better. If a coworker pulled that nonsense I would correct the mistake, gently. If somebody puts up a television commercial where Juliet says “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” and Romeo says “I’m over here, yo!” then yes, I’ll get a little more upset about that because they should at least have some level of quality assurance.
But in general I’m happy to see Shakespeare in the world wherever I see him, and encourage more. Bring up Shakespeare around me and you will have to walk away, because I won’t stop talking. Seriously. I’m ok with that. I will go see Gnomeo and Juliet, and I will tell all my friends to go see it. Maybe here on the blog I’ll pick it apart, but I’d much rather see a bunch of my children’s friends all go to see it, than to keep it from them because of the aforementioned wherefore/why problem.
Very important to note, though, is that I’m not in the business. I don’t do Shakespeare for a living, and I think that could easily be the key difference. I don’t have to write grants to get my Shakespeare projects funded, only to see them turned down so the money can go toward other, lesser projects. I’m not out of a job if my kids’ school cuts the budget for the arts. As a parent I’d do what I could to complain, sure. But I’d also have the option of taking them to more theatre on my own, at least. I wouldn’t have to worry about where my next paycheck is coming from.

Ten years ago tomorrow, September 30, I won the game. I asked, she said yes, and now I get to be the happiest geek in the world because I get to say stuff like “That thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love!” to a real person, in real life, and really mean it. People wonder why I love Shakespeare and wish that everyone else did? Because Shakespeare knew, man. If you can feel it, Shakespeare can give you the words to express it. A heaven on earth I have won by wooing her.
Last year I introduced Kerry to the site and we showered her in quotes. This year I went a little mushier, and wrote her a sonnet. I was going to include it here, but I’ve taken it out. It’s a gift to her, and if she wants it shared then that will be her choice.

Whenever politicians talk about education, at least here in the US, they focus on Math and Science. We’re falling behind on math and science, we need innovation in math and science.
What if they said Shakespeare instead? Or, more generally we’ll say, “The Classics”. I’d say Literature in general, but I’m not really interested at the moment in promoting new literature, I want to talk about improving the standing of existing literature.
Imagine a world, hypothetical though it may be, where the president announces a couple hundred billion dollars to be allocated toward advancement of Education in Literature. I’ve grown up to be president, and I want to live in a country where any four year old who knows the plot to Cinderella also knows the plot to Midsummer, and every parent could answer questions about it.
The actual numbers don’t matter, just assume that there’ll be enough that programs could be implemented on a national scale. Ignore the politics of “it would never pass”, “it would take longer than my lifetime”, “all the money would be wasted” and so on. We all know the unfortunate reality. These thought experiments are supposed to be fun :).
How would spend it? What would the title of your grant request be? Would you spend it on elementary education, or high school? Would you fund more new theatres? If you suddenly got a green light to focus on making people appreciate and understand Shakespeare more, how would you break it down?
I’ll start with an easy one : seed money for people who make movie versions of Shakespeare’s works. We already have all the superhero, horror, sequels and animated 3D movies we need, why not a sudden surge of Shakespeare films? While it’s true that this would not do wonders toward advancing actual education of Shakespeare (i would expect most of the projects to be more “mass market” than academic), but it would get the brand recognition out there and get people more appreciative of the body of work they may not even realize exists.