Month: November 2007

http://www.rscshakespeare.co.uk/room.html I had not seen this list, but if you don’t see me in the near future you can I assume that I am tearing through the list :).  Is it cool for me to tell the family that there’s 100 books on my Christmas list, all about Shakespeare? 🙂

As part of my day job I have to write applications for Facebook.  They just released this whole new “products” section, where businesses and other offerings can have a page of their own.  So, of course, I created a Shakespeare Geek facebook page.  If you’ve got a Facebook account, come stop by and sign up!  I have no idea what we can make it do, but hey, it’s always nice to have friends and fans.  

So I got my hands on When Love Speaks this week.  For those that haven’t heard, this CD is a collection of 5o+ readings and interpretations of Shakespeare, mostly the sonnets with some other passages thrown in, primarily from The Tempest.  You’ve probably heard a recording of Alan Rickman (now most famous as Professor Snape) doing “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” I was finally motivated to buy this when I found an MP3 of Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes…”) by somebody named Rufus Wainright.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned a few million times I have Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee”) by David Gilmour, guitar god legend of Pink Floyd.  It is my ring tone, it is the song I sing my children to sleep with, it…is….awesome.  I don’t know anything about Sonnet 29, or who this Rufus Wainright guy is, but dang, I like it.  It made me run out and get the CD in the hopes that there’s more like this on there.  Unfortunately, there’s not. In 53 tracks, only 8 are put to music (the rest being dramatic readings, ala Rickman). Of those, only 4 are sonnets.   One is Rufus, one interestingly is Bryan Ferry doing Sonnet 18 to the exact same piano music as David Gilmour. I wonder what the story is with that? The other two sonnets are Sonnet 8 by Ladysmith Black Mambaso, and a funky Sonnet 35 by Keb’ Mo’.  I care for neither.  I’m sure that is at least in part because they are too over produced.  I can’t imagine singing them to myself or my children. Anybody else got some good sources for me to check out?  I’m specifically looking for sonnets, to music.  Ideally stuff that is not highly stylized (i.e. don’t screw with the words), just put it to music and sing it straight.  I’ve had good results so far with Gilmour and 18, and I would love to live in a world where I can come home to the sounds of Shakespeare like others listen to classical music.   

(It’s time once again for a story of Shakespeare and my kids.  If that bores you, now’s the time to bail out.) This morning it was my son’s turn to get into my Shakespeare stuff.  He’s 18months old, running around with my King Lear comic.  My 3yr old promptly wrestles it from him and says, “Daddy, I think we should see this movie.” Now, the vision of a 3yr old sitting to watch King Lear is enough to make me laugh out loud, but the two of them are the only ones in the room with me so no one will appreciate the joke.  “Oh that’s not really a movie story, sweetie,” I tell her, “That’s more a story for telling.” “Ok,” she tells me. So, while making the bed, I began to tell my daughter the story of King Lear in a way that would make sense to her: Once upon a time there was a king who had three daughters, whose names were Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril.  Cordelia was the nicest of them all, and she loved her father very very much.  Regan and Goneril said that they loved him, too, but they didn’t really love him as much as Cordelia did.  But the king became very angry with Cordelia, and he sent her to live far away.  The king wanted to go live with his daughter Goneril, who would take care of him as he grew old and tired.  But Goneril was very mean to her father.  She told him that he could not bring any of his toys with him, and that he had to be very quiet and to do everything that she said.  Well, the king her father did not think that this was how he should be treated at all, so he said “Fine, I will go and live with my other daughter, Regan.” Before he could get to Regan’s house, however, Goneril had sent a message to her sister telling her side of the story.  So when their father arrived at Regan’s house, she too said, “I think that Goneril had a good idea, and if you want to live at my house then you will have to be very quiet and not have so many toys and you will have to do everything that I say.” The king was very sad.  He realized that his daughters did not love him as much as they’d told him.  With no place to live he told them both that he would go and live in the dark and scary forest.  His friends, who were named Kent and Edgar, went with him and took care of him. And that’s when Cordelia came back, because she loved her father so much that she could not bear to be away from him.  She brought an army with her to defeat her evil sisters, and rescue her father from the forest.    And they all lived happily ever after. Pretty condensed, huh? 🙂  I don’t mind paraphrasing, I’d rather have them familiar with the guts of the story than not at all.  I’ve tried very hard, though, not to just flat out change the story.  That’s why I like The Tempest so much, it’s safe for kids.  But with Lear I had a choice, either tweak the ending or else not show it to them until they’re much much older.  I went with the fairy tale.  I hope I didn’t screw up any of the names, it was from memory and I’ve not studied Lear as much as I could. I’ll be very curious in the coming days if I hear her working elements of that story into her playing.  Sometimes she does that. 

I’m not sure I’ve seen any of Megan Fox‘s movies, but I can appreciate a hot girl with a King Lear tattoo!    Apparently she’s most recently seen in The Transformers, which I haven’t seen yet. Her tattoo (the link above is totally SFW, by the way) says “We will all laugh at gilded butterflies,” and comes from King Lear, Act V, scene 3. Nice.