At least four different Stratford-on-Avon churches claim to be the place where William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, but now we may finally know for sure. All Saints Church in Billesley has been awarded a grant to research the subject and try to determine the answer once and for all.
Although actually if we read a little more, I think that the writer of this article may have stretched it a bit:

No parish registers survive from that time to prove the theory one way or the other. There is, however, stronger evidence to suggest that Shakespeare’s granddaughter was married at Billesley.

Unless they’ve got some historical “Granddaughters always got married in the same church their grandfather got married in, don’t you know that?” argument, I think this is more a case of the church getting a boatload of money to become a better tourist attraction. There still won’t be any proof about which of the churches has the best claim, this one will just be able to make that claim in more ways because they’ve got more money.

Hamlet did, though. I’m not sure what Laertes was going back to France for, but it could have been school. And then there’s the three “scholars” in Love’s Labour’s Lost.
My question is this – how frequently did Shakespeare create characters who were students, and do we think that his depiction of those characters (or his failure to do so) had anything to do with his own experience or lack thereof?
This is indeed a variation on the “If Shakespeare never went to Venice how did he describe Venice so accurately?” question. I thought it might be a little change of pace.

So my girls are at dance class last night and I’m driving around doing errands with my son, who is 4. (Sorry I always feel the need to mention that but you never know when somebody’s reading for the first time ;)). Anyway, I’m waiting at a red light to take a left, when I see an ambulance coming in my rear view mirror. “Daddy has to get out of the way of the ambulance,” I say.
“Where is the ambulance going?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, “Maybe somebody is hurt.”
“Is it coming to me?” he asks.
“No,” I say, “You’re not hurt. It’s not coming to you.”
“Not to me,” he says. “Hey, to me or not to me!”
“That is the question,” I finish.
“No Daddy,” he corrects me, “I didn’t say to *be* or not to *be*, I’m saying to *me* or not to *me*. It only *sounds* like Shakespeare.”
I don’t want my children to grow up too fast, of course, but man I can’t wait until they actually get to study this stuff for real. I’m dying to see how it turns out.

Can we say I called this one? Back in August, on the subject of Taymor’s Tempest, I wrote in the comments: “I’m even more excited by that one, and hope that Russell Brand does not end up getting top billing. No matter how popular he may be with the MTV crowd, it is not the Trinculo show.”

So, here’s a link where Russell Brand tells us that Shakespeare is like Eminem, or Li’l Wayne, because he’s got “good flow”:

In the movie, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julie Taymor, Russell plays the jester Trinculo. “I love the humour, there are some funny bits in this movie I think,” he told reporters.

It’s the “I think” at the end that pains me the most, really. I know he’s just using it as verbal punctuation, like a “do you know what I’m saying?” sort of thing. But it’s funnier to read it my way where he pauses after “movie”. “There are some funny bits in this movie…..I think.”

For the morbidly curious, here’s a bit of the ol’ Slim Shady that Brand might be comparing our beloved Bard to:

“Slim Shady, I’m sick of him
Look at him, walkin around grabbin his you-know-what
Flippin the you-know-who,” “Yeah, but he’s so cute though!”
Yeah, I probably got a couple of screws up in my head loose
But no worse, than what’s goin on in your parents’ bedrooms
Sometimes, I wanna get on TV and just let loose, but can’t
but it’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose…

I’ll give him points for “hump a dead moose,” I’m sure that Shakespeare was just kicking himself that he didn’t think of that first. Although what Othello says to Brabantio about his daughter (“you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you’ll have your nephews neigh to you;”) is pretty close.

Don’t get me wrong, I happen to like Eminem in general, and have several of his songs in my regular playlist. He does indeed have “good flow”. But there comes a point where you’re basically comparing anybody that’s good at rhyming to Shakespeare, and it doesn’t always work. It’s like knowing how to bust out 5-7-5 patterns and saying you’re a haiku master. There’s more to it than that, damnit.

Ok, here’s an interesting question. I’ve mentioned that I hang out on Yahoo! Answers recently, answering many homework-like questions as they interest me. I ignore the blatant copy-and-paste ones and go after the more interesting ones like “Who is the more sympathetic character, Hermia or Helena?” or “Why does the messenger initially lie to Macduff about what’s happened to his family?”

So a question came up about Iago being the villain in Othello. That’s all fine and good, but check out the ranting answer somebody posted, which I thought would make for good discussion. I’m not plagiarizing here, I’m providing a link to the original – we just can’t have a discussion about his answer on that forum. Maybe he’ll see us and come visit 🙂

Shakespeare wrote some plays that rise to the level of great literature, such as “Hamlet” and “King Lear.” But “Othello” is not one of his “great literature” plays. It is melodrama, pure and simple.

That opening soliloquy of Iago makes that clear. It is also shown by how easily the supposed great general, Othello, is duped by Iago.

Why then do so many teachers and professors try to teach “Othello” as great literature? They are just following in what their teachers and professors did. They aren’t thinking for themselves. Like Othello, they have been duped.

There’s more to his answer, but I’ve snipped the Shakespeare-relevant bit. Thoughts?