So I’ve been sharing my writing lately with a friend.  He’s not the literature type, he’s more of a music geek.  Here’s what he wrote me back:

I kind of group Shakespeare with Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan has written some incredible songs, yet to listen to him sing them turns many people off, when other artists cover the material, you really get the depth of the lyrics  and  think of Shakespeare in that same realm, where because the language is so dense if you will, that people are turned off and don’t see the real beauty of the stories being told.

I can see his point. There are Dylan people who know every word the man ever spoke, who hunt down every scrap he may have written a note upon. Then there are those who know a couple of his tunes, and he doesn’t really do it for them.  But then there’s a huge group in the middle who’ve probably heard a Dylan-penned tune and loved it, without ever realizing it was Dylan. (I could probably take it farther and say, “If you told them it was Dylan before they listened to it, they wouldn’t like it….”) The television series “Band of Brothers” was quite popular.  Yet I’m continually surprised that people don’t know this is a Henry V reference.  I wonder if I started like that – “Hey, did you see that HBO war series that’s named for Shakespeare’s Henry V?” – if people would like it as much?

http://www.tonic.com/article/happy-birthday-sherlock-holmes/ I’ve read a few Sherlock Holmes stories, but they’re not really my thing.  I never got to the ending and thought, “Wow, that’s brilliant!” it was always more like “Oh, he strung together a random set of trivia in a way that happens to work in this particular instance.” But when I spot a Shakespeare reference I look closer.  Who knew that January 6 was Sherlock Holmes’ birthday, and that Shakespeare was responsible for it?

According to an article in the New York Times’ City Room blog last year, there are multiple theories as to why January 6 was chosen as his birthday, one that’s celebrated by his fans over at Sherlockian.net. Paul Singleton, a Sherlockian scholar, said that Christopher Morley (who helped found the Baker Street Irregulars, a group dedicated to the study of Doyle) came to his theory based on the fact that Holmes, who quotes Shakespeare often, only quoted one Shakespeare play twice — that being Twelfth Night, and therefore, Holmes was born on the 12th night of Christmas, i.e. January 6.

http://www.runleiarun.com/lebowski/ Pretty sure you need to be a fan of the movie to appreciate this one, but it’s really well done.  Check it out.

WALTER
In sooth, then, faithful friend, this was a rug of value? Thou wouldst call it not a rug among ordinary rugs, but a rug of purpose? A star in a firmament, in step with the fashion alike to the Whitsun morris-dance? A worthy rug, a rug of consequence, sir?

THE KNAVE
It was of consequence, I should think; verily, it tied the room together, gather’d its qualities as the sweet lovers’ spring grass doth the morning dew or the rough scythe the first of autumn harvests. It sat between the four sides of the room, making substance of a square, respecting each wall in equal harmony, in geometer’s cap; a great reckoning in a little room. Verily, it transform’d the room from the space between four walls presented, to the harbour of a man’s monarchy.

WALTER
Indeed, a rug of value; an estimable rug, an honour’d rug; O unhappy rug, that should live to cover such days!

DONALD
Of what dost thou speak, that tied the room together, Knave? Take pains, for I would well hear of that which tied the room together.

I never really got into the histories, during high school Shakespeare.  We read a selection of histories – I remember Richard II, and at least some of the Henry’s.  I don’t remember much about Falstaff.  I remember Richard II being a big deal because of the poetry. You know what I think the problem was?  Maybe it’s a high school curriculum thing, but we were taught the *history* first.  Like, “Here’s what was going on that Shakespeare was trying to write about … and here’s what Shakespeare wrote.” Snore. I know what I love about this stuff, and it’s the exact opposite of that.  Give me Prospero over Henry IV (that is, an entirely fictional construct over a historical one) any day.  I love talking about whether Gertrude had a thing going with Claudius before the play, and what Hamlet’s relationship was to his dad, and any other number of questions that Shakespeare never answered but yet go toward the bigger purpose of making the characters real.  Ironic, then, that I could care less if you start the lesson by saying, “Ok, this character here was actually a real person.” I will take the opportunity to note that “Julius Caesar” and “Anthony and Cleopatra” had a special place for me, because I was also a Latin geek.  I was all about the ancient history.  It was the history of England that I hated.   Anyway, here’s my big idea.  What if you took all that “here’s how the stories map to real history” stuff and just chucked it out the window?  Treat the histories like they’re entirely fiction, stuff that Shakespeare just made up out of his brilliant head.  A very large epic, like a Robert Jordan Wheel of Time sort of thing.  Just play after play that all sort of ties together, with a couple of overlapping characters. I know that there are history buffs that would *hate* that.  They’re the ones that are the exact opposite of me, they want to know every last detail about the political landscape when Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, where he snuck in the satirical bits and what he was trying to say.  That’s huge to them.  Heck, there’s an entire society out in the world dedicated to shedding the image of Richard III as a bad guy. But that’s not me.  I prefer fiction.  Let me read the story front to back, get into it, appreciate the characters for who they are, and *then* tell me, “This is based on true stories.”  Then you’ll have my attention.  But to do it the other way, and give me the boring *real* people first?  And then the Shakespeare creations?  Mistake.

Like many bloggers, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for me if I suddenly discovered I could make money from what I do.  I’m not ashamed of that.  If you told me I could write about Shakespeare all day and make a living at it, I think I’d take it. So I spend a good deal of time keeping an eye on “how to make money from your blog” stories.  They have a common theme, which I find funny.  Namely, they all assume that if you want to make money, you have to be talking about making money.  Everything is an industry. Take for example this list of blogging topics I found.  First one:

10 ways your industry will change next year

or

best industry resources

or

the invention that would rock your industry

So I’m sitting here thinking, “What exactly is the Shakespeare industry?” I think there’s two ways to answer that question.  One is the more obvious, “How can I make money?”  There’s lots of answers – t-shirts, books, teaching, and so on. The more interesting one, though, is more blog-centric.  And that’s, “Who is my audience?  Who is listening to me, and why, and what value do they hope to gain?”  In other words, I think what I’m saying is that there’s an industry of people out there who want more Shakespeare in their lives, and at least in theory are willing to pay for it.  The question then becomes how to connect those dots. Aren’t those two the same?  Not really.  In the first, it’s “Figure out what makes money, and then do that.”  In the second, it’s “Figure out why people value what you’re already doing, and then plot a course between what you would have done anyway, and a way to make money doing it.” (There is, by the way, a whole different answer to “Shakespeare industry” if we talk about the pop culture aspects – bumper stickers, bobble heads and such – that cater to anybody with disposal income.  I’d like to not be that, precisely because anybody could be that.  You don’t need to give a rat’s third left incisor about Shakespeare to sell stuff with Shakespeare quotes on it.  I’m far more committed to carving out my own path, and then figuring out whether anybody else is interested in being where I’m trying to get.)