Presenting NotByShakespeare.com!

Regular readers will remember my ongoing quest to stop people from attributing things to Shakespeare that he didn’t say.  First came the blog post, then the e-book.  Well the hits (or should I say misses?) just kept on coming, far faster than I could keep the book updated.  So I thought it would make a neat blog of its own to track down these quotes and go into more detail about why they’re not accurate.  Plus, I was finding that a number of quotes I could not properly identify, so this gives more people a chance to comment and help track down the rightful authors.

Hope you like it!

Had an odd dream last night that I was hanging out at the bookstore, in the Shakespeare section of course, when two girls – maybe 6 years old? – started discussing Sonnet 18.  Specifically one of them, the smarty pants (and one of them is always the smarty pants) is trying to explain to her friend that you need to only read the first and last lines and you’ll know what it means.  So they read “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?  So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”  She then naturally decide that, because the person is like summer, she’ll live forever because summer always comes back.  Her friend does not seem convinced.

“You have to read the middle too,” I tell them.  Then, so I’m not the random stranger talking to little kids without permission, I explain to their mother that my own children started Shakespeare with this sonnet as well.  That gets us into a discussion about which plays to start with (Tempest and Midsummer, ‘natch) before I am awakened to reality, ironically, enough, by one of my own children.  She is having her own bad dream that the aliens have come to take her away.

http://www.rebelshakespeare.org/othello/

I’ve spoken of Rebel Shakespeare many times in the past (Rebel Romeo, Midsummer Review and visit with the Rebels to link just a few).  In short, Keri and Christine run a program where they teach Shakespeare to children (of varying ages), and then they take their show on the road performing free Shakespeare in and around Marblehead, Massachusetts. They’ve been doing it for, like, 20+ years and won awards for their work.  It really is quite the sight to behold, you’ve never quite gotten chills up your spine like you do when you watch children shouting “THANK YOU SHAKESPEARE!” to the heavens before every show. 

The current show is Othello, opening July 23.  The link above shows dates and locations, including several dates where they run workshops before the show so you can bring the kids and let them see what it’s all about.

I’ve been several times (seen their Midsummer and Hamlet, and a portion of Henry V) and go whenever I am able.  I even helped make arrangements to bring them to my own town so I’d be sure to get there!

Status: Half right.

First spotted: Twitter quote engine.

Shakespeare certainly said “Nothing will come of nothing.”  It’s from King Lear.  The old king is dividing up his kingdom among his three daughters, and has asked that they all compete to see who loves him more.  Cordelia, the youngest, loves her father the most – but does not know how to explain that.  So when Lear says “What have you got to say?” she replies, “Nothing.”

“Nothing will come of nothing,” says the king, which in this context means “I won’t give you any of the kingdom at all if you don’t come up with something nice to say to me, so try it again.”

When used by quote engines they like to treat it like it means, “You won’t ever get anywhere in life if you don’t try new things.”  Hence the second and incorrect part of the quote that gets sent around, “Dare for mighty things.” From my research it appears that this portion of the quote is actually from Teddy Roosevelt:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”