Month: January 2011

Your Vote Needed for Pepsi to Refresh Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 9 Comments
[ Spotted first on reddit.com, I don’t think they’ll mind the added publicity ]

These guys are in the running for $10,000 to bring Shakespeare to those who can’t physically attend the theatre.They need your votes to win. Please vote for them once per day Jan 4 – Feb 28. And if you REALLY want to help, please repost this. In your blog. Facebook. Wherever!

How To Vote

1) go to http://www.refresheverything.ca/shakespeareinhospitals

2) go to the bottom of the window and click “Join Refresh Everything”

3) Fill in the sign up info (name, age, valid email address, password, retyped password, prove you’re not a robot, click ‘done’)

4) Hit “vote for this idea”

5) Repeat each day

6)TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO DO THE SAME!

What is this, exactly? Looks like one of those “we’ll sponsor your idea to change the world” programs that’s becoming more and more popular. The site is a massive list of ideas, all vying for grants of different amounts of money. I love how, on the profile page, the user with the idea has to break down exactly how they’ll use the money, why their idea benefits the community, and so on. In other words, some actual thought has to go into this proposal.
This particular group (I know nothing about them personally, and they did not ask me to post this) has gone with the idea of bringing Shakespeare performances to hospitals and senior centers. How can we not love it? Go vote! Especially if you’re in Canada, as this is a Canadian operation and may more directly benefit your local community. I’m just supporting it because it’s right in line with that “Shakespeare for everyone” thing we always talk about.
I am not thrilled, nothing personal, that they’ve marked off half the money to pay the actors. Not that I’m against paying actors, I just think that this will turn some people off – it comes across like “we got to get paid, son” is the most important idea. If they were pitching VC for a startup idea and asking for a million dollars, you don’t start by saying “Yeah and the three founders will each pay themselves a salary of $250k.” On the contrary you say “I’ll work for the minimum possible – put every possible dollar into helping the idea succeed.”
Anyway. Fingers crossed that they get up into the running – as of this post they’re at position #32, and only the top 3 get some money, so they need a boost. Don’t know how much of a boost we can give them, but it can’t hurt!

Seventh Graders, on Shakespeare

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Once more unto the breach, dear Keri, once more! Keri Ellis Cahill, founder and guiding light of Rebel Shakespeare, is once again in front of a classroom bringing the good words to the children. She’s done this many, many times over her career, but this time she’s posting her experience on Facebook. With permission, I present her list of actual quotes overheard in her class:
Q: “Why did teen boys play all the roles in Shakespeare’s day?”

A: “Because the money was so good!”
Q: “Tell me something about Shakespeare’s family.”

A: “They’re all dead.”
Q: “Over the entrance to the Globe Theatre, a phrase in Latin says Totus Mondus Agit Histrionem. What does that mean?”

A: “Come on in!”
Q: (to Lysander) “When Hermia says Whither away? to Helena, what should be happening?”

A: “Ummmm….she should shrivel up. Or at least, fall down.”
Overheard: “OMG we’re getting casted today! I hope I get Hernia!”
More to come as soon as she stops laughing long enough to transcribe them :). I’ve seen the Rebels do their thing a number of times now, and plan to continue for a long time.
  

Shakespearean Pick-up Lines (Guest Post)

~ ~ 2 Comments
You all know that Shakespeare Geek has produced a great book (Hear My Soul Speak: Wedding Quotes from Shakespeare) on how and why to incorporate Shakespeare into a wedding. But how do you get to that point? Can Shakespeare help you get a date so that, sometime in the future, you can use Shakespeare (and Shakespeare Geek’s book) when you tie the knot?
You have to start somewhere, and Bardfilm has come up with a list of classy lines (with considerable additions and emendations by Shakespeare Geek himself) to enable you to introduce yourself to that special someone—just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Shakespearean Pick-up Lines
If I said you were the most beautified, would you say that beautified was a vile phrase?
Can I just tell you, your eyes are nothing like the sun. And what’s up with that wiry head of hair you got going on? Wait, where you going? Come back, it gets better! Your breath reeks! Call me!
You’re like a good production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  You both have a nice Bottom.
To be or not to be? With you, the former. Without you, the latter.
Hey, that guy de Vere wrote you this sonnet and told me to put my name on it. No, wait, no he didn’t, he’s dead. 
Now is the winter of my discontent. Won’t you make it glorious summer by going out with me?
I noticed you hitting it off with that fair youth. Care to make it a three-way?
You look like an angel. Or at least a minister of grace. 
You must know Shakespeare ’cause my heart just did a swan dive. Because he’s, like, called the Swan of Avon sometimes. Get it?
Ever seen a beast with two backs? Want to help me make one?
If you were a statue, I’d wish I were Leontes and you were Hermione, who was pretending to be dead for sixteen years. And not really a statue at all.
If I start behaving like an ass, will you start behaving like Titania?
I bet your phone number ends in 1599 because that’s the most probable date for the composition of As You Like It.
Hi. My name is Julius, and when I saw you, I said to myself, “Julius, seize her!”
God hath given you one face, but you made yourself another. You didn’t need to. I mean, the first one was fine.
Let’s go back to my place and tear some sheets, Doll!
O, somebody bring me a bucket of water ’cause I just found my muse of fire! Hey, baby, did you ever ascend the brightest heaven of invention?
You. Me. Dance floor. Now. Don’t give me no ado about nothing. 
The fault is not in our stars but in your eyes. I mean, the stars are in your eyes. Or something.
They must have left the gates of purgatory open—look who walked out! Besides Hamlet’s dad, I mean.
There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so – and I’m thinking you look good.
I’d LIKE for YOU to PLEASE go OUT with ME. Ever been picked up in iambic pentameter before?
I’d rather compare thee to a summer’s NIGHT, if you don’t mind and if you get my meaning.
I don’t want to brag, but I did once hear my last girlfriend referring to our sex life as the “sound and the fury.” I didn’t catch what she said after that. Or immediately before.
Our thanks for this guest post to kj, the author of Bardfilm. Bardfilm is a blog that comments on films, plays, and other matters related to Shakespeare.

My 5 Most Popular Posts (and Why)

~ duane ~ 7 Comments

First, let me show you my Top Five Most Popular Posts of the last 6 months or so, defined as follows : When these blog titles went up on Twitter, the most people clicked on them. They are:

  1. Shakespeare’s New Year’s Resolutions (Guest Post)
  2. Harry Potter is Shakespeare
  3. Shakespearean Collective Nouns (A Guest Post by Bardfilm)
  4. The Seven Least-Controversial Disclosures on WikiLeaks
  5. 10 Reasons We Love Sir Ian McKellen

(This is the order, by the way – top down. So the resolutions one is my most popular post in a long time.)

I like the “How many clicks did each tweeted link get” metric for a couple of reasons. Mostly because it tracks initial reaction – people see it, and then either they decide to click, or not. “Retweets”, where person A decides that the link is so good they want to share it with person B, would also show up in this list. However, if I tried to recycle it and post the same link under a few different headlines, it would not — the link would change and be counted separately.

This is very different from the organic/SEO world where how much Google traffic you get has less to do with what you wrote, and more to do with the particular keyword density that caused you to float up the page into the #1 spot. “How old is Romeo?” is not my #1 blog post because that’s what the most people are interested in, it’s the #1 post because I happen to have the best google spot for that, so it gets the most traffic.

So anyway, what patterns do you see in the above list?

First of all, 3 out of the 5 were written by my guest blogger Bardfilm. Thanks very much for the content, KJ! Looks like our partnership can be called a success, no?

Two of those are called out as guest posts, the third is not (the Wikileaks one is his, if you’re curious). So maybe there’s something to be said for the idea that guest posts bring traffic. Followers like to hear a fresh point of view now and then, it’s good variety.

But do you see the other, more obvious pattern? 4 out of 5 of those posts are very clearly lists. Seven of this, ten of that. Resolutions. Nouns. People like to click on lists. Lists promise a short, well organize burst of content.

The outlier is Mr. Harry Potter, and it’s probably obvious why he made the list – it’s Harry Potter. 🙂 Tweeting about celebrities will almost always get you some clicks, doubly so if you find a way to link that celebrity to your niche instead of just broadcasting generic news headlines about him. Being trendy is important – I was surprised that my Ian McKellen post did not get more traffic. But quality doesn’t really enter into it, in that particular battle – comparing a Harry Potter headline and an Ian McKellen headline is like comparing a Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones story to a Lady Gaga one. The audiences are just different.

Of course, timeliness is pretty important as well. The Resolutions one obviously wouldn’t work at any time other than maybe a week before and after the new year, when everybody’s in the mood for lists like that. Likewise with the Wikileaks one – if you tried to put out a Wikileaks story now I think you’ll find that most folks are bored of the topic. Even Harry Potter, I’m pretty sure I tried to put that post up right around the time of the last movie. I think that was one of the problems with poor Sir Ian – he’s always good. I didn’t have a current event to link him to. Maybe when The Hobbit comes out I’ll bring that post out of mothballs and try it again :).

Thought I'd Lost This! (Kids Reciting Shakespeare)

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Thanks to Martin Luther King, I stumbled across this long lost audio clip of my son – at 2 and a half years old – doing his best to recite a bit of Sonnet 18.
I have a similar clip of my daughters, at 3 and 5, doing the same bit. But every time I’ve needed to cite these, I could never remember where I’d put the clip of my son. Yay!
(* Thanks to MLK because, if you’ll follow the link, you’ll see that I’d tagged the post “The Dream Fulfilled” and then made an MLK reference. So today while looking to see if I’d used that MLK on Shakespeare quote previously, this turned up!)