I love it when you’re so deeply involved with something that you start dreaming it.  This often happens to people in my day job (writing software) where you spend so much of your waking time thinking in code that you dream in code.  It is amazing.  That reinforcement that you’re so intensely focused on a subject that even your subconscious has gone that way?  Great feeling.

Even more so when a Shakespeare dream shows up!

I’ve blogged about this phenomenon before (here in 2005, here in 2010 and here in 2012).  Here’s the latest installment in this series:

It’s late, it’s snowing, and I’m out on my back porch when I clearly hear what sounds like someone reciting Shakespeare.  I try to place the sound and I see my neighbor walking around his yard (his back to me), definitely speaking what, in my dream, I recognize as “the crowd scene from Romeo and Juliet.”  Suddenly my neighbor turns around and I realize that he appears to be snowblowing his front yard (yes, his front yard, not his driveway or something) and speaking on a bluetooth headset to someone at the same time (while it is snowing).  The snowblower is not making any noise, all I can hear is Shakespeare.  He then wraps up with some sort of professorial something or other and I realize that he’s been presenting on some sort of conference call.  Shortly after, I wake up.

Upon waking my first thought is to capture what scene that was, but it’s too late – it’s already gone.  This is one of the most fascinating aspects of dreaming to me, that I never dream in specifics.  If I’m reading a book in a dream?  I’ll have the knowledge that I’m reading a book, but I never get specifics about seeing the words on the page.  Same here.  I have a very strong memory still of hearing my neighbor reciting what I clearly recognized as Romeo and Juliet, but for me to say “It was probably the opening where the Prince disperses the crowd” would be me trying to fit the dream to what I know to be the text, rather than any direct evidence that this was the scene.

My second thought is to wonder, “Ok, did I somehow hear some Shakespeare in my sleep and my brain inserted that into a dream?”  I fall asleep with headphones (typically listening to the Pandora streaming service).  But that hasn’t happened — I put the phone in “airplane mode” during the middle of the night so I don’t stream music all night long that I can’t listen to.  My nightstand radio is not on, although it would be awesome if I had a device that randomly played Shakespeare without me telling it to.

So, I have no idea where this particular dream came from.  I was speaking to that neighbor yesterday so that probably explains his presence.  But everything else?  No idea.

I’m always on the lookout for “children’s” versions of the plays that don’t lose the essence of the original or dumb it down to the point that my kids will barely realize that it’s Shakespeare.  So I was more than pleasantly surprised when Bardfilm sent me a scanned page out of Tales from Shakespeare
by Marcia Williams.

Unfortunately I do not have pictures from inside the book (I don’t feel that I have permission to republish the single scanned page that I do have), but I can point you to this other blog that reviewed this series, with pictures.

Imagine a simple novelization of the play, first of all.  Maybe half a dozen small paragraphs per page.  Now, for each paragraph, you get an illustration of what’s going on.  But wait, it gets better!  Within the illustration, the characters are speaking lines from the original!  Very cool way to do the whole “original text side-by-side with modern translation” thing.

But then it gets better!  Decorating up and down the margins of each page are an audience, each sitting in their own box seat, shouting over the “performance”.  Sometimes it’s just random color (“This is too spooky, tell me when it’s over!” someone shouts from the side of Macbeth), or actual hints about context (“That’s not Aliena, that’s Celia in disguise!” is shouted at As You Like It).

When they arrived, my older geeklet jumped right in (to Antony and Cleopatra, no less!)  “How do I read this?” she asked, overwhelmed by the amount of text on the page.

“Read the paragraph parts,” I told her, “Like you’re reading a story.  The pictures will show you what’s going on.  Once you understand the story, you can see what they were saying to each other in the original Shakespeare.”

“What about the people up and down the side?” she asked.

“They’re there for hints,” I told her.  “As you read down the side, you may catch them asking the same questions that you’re asking yourself, like how come the Duke doesn’t recognize his own daughter, even if she is disguised, in As You Like It.  You can ignore them if they’re not helping.”

She read A&C in a matter of minutes.  I like that each book has seven plays, so there’s lots of opportunity to experience plays they might otherwise never get to enjoy.  Many times I’ll find a single play done like this, or a “great tragedies” edition.  In this volume alone we got Romeo and Juliet, Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.  When I write it out like that I realize that my kids know all of those stories, except Julius Caesar. 😉  More Tales provides us with As You Like It, King Lear, Much Ado about Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, Merchant, and Richard III.  More there to work with.

I’m very glad I found these.  The illustrations are nothing to write home about, but I’m very excited about the format.

This year’s Shakespeare Day Celebration is sponsored in part by Shakespeare Is Universal: Shakespeare truly is for everyone, and nothing demonstrates that sentiment better than his most famous quote of all, translated here into languages from around the world.   In celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, show that you believe his works are just as relevant, powerful and important as they’ve ever been!

Loyal readers may remember a post I made last summer called “Illustrating Shakespeare with Paper” about the new “Signature Shakespeare” series from Barnes and Noble.  Well the kind folks at Sterling Publishing (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes and Noble) were generous enough to send me all *4* different editions (Hamlet, Much Ado, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth) and I’M GIVING THEM AWAY!

I’ve got Romeo and Juliet here in front of me.  These are serious volumes, hardcover, weighing in at almost 400 pages.  These are the kind of books that make you think about the old days where you’d have an entire bookshelf with nothing but volumes of the encyclopedia.  How cool would that be, just a shelf consisting of beautiful hardcover illustrated editions of all the plays?  Want.

Do you know what these are?  These are essentially textbooks you might carry around in support of your college class.  There’s a good 50 pages of introductory material to lead off, and then we dig patiently into the play itself, spread out with one page of notes/glossary for every page of text (where there’s not enough to note, you get illustrations ;))  The scenes themselves are presented patiently, with ample wide space for easy reading.  Act 3 Scene 1, as a random example, spreads itself out over 20 pages.

Over and above the ample notes distributed throughout the text, there’s an additional “Longer Notes” section in the appendix, as well as essays on how the text has been edited over the years.  (These are of course notes about a single edition, but I am assuming that the series all take a similar structure).

What catches everybody’s eye, however, is the illustrations.  It’s not even fair to call them mere illustrations, because what they’ve done here is to take the artwork of Kevin Stanton and produce laser-cut multicolor versions that really have to be seen to be appreciated (there are images at the above link to the artist’s web page).  Haven’t we all folded up a piece of paper, make a few cutouts, and produced snowflakes?  Now imagine that a snip here and a snip there and when you unfold it you’ve got the balcony scene, or the nightingale scene, or the swordfight.  Honestly I’m scared to keep these for myself, because I’d never let my children touch them.  I do wish that they’d come up some some tougher stock for the cutouts, they feel as if they could rip at the slightest page turn.

Which poses a dilemma, because earlier I said that these would make perfect college textbooks.  But the wear and tear that such use would put on them would almost certainly destroy the artwork.  I almost want a coffee table book that truly showcases Stanton’s work, something that I can put out for my guests to enjoy. That way I can feel comfortable about the textbook portion, flipping pages at will, making notes in the margins, without feeling like I’m destroying a piece of art.

HOW DO I WIN ONE?

As I said I have 4 books to giveaway.  Since it is Shakespeare’s Birthday today and I’m going to make several dozen posts, here’s the rules:

• Make a comment on any of today’s (April 23) posts.  The more comments you make, the more entries you can have into the contest (up to a max of 1 comment per post!) Since this contest no doubt will go up earlier in the day don’t forget to come back and make more comments as more posts go up!
• Email me with your username (so I can find your comments) and your preference for which book you’d like.  I make no promises that I’ll be able to satisfy first choices, so please provide your first and second choice.
• Entries must be in the continental US, I’m afraid. As always I’m shipping these out of my own pocket, and this time in particular it’s going to be a strain on  ye olde piggy bank. These things are heavy!
• Contest ends midnight eastern standard time on Sunday April 28 (which happens to be *my* birthday).
• I’ll choose 4 winners at random, and try my best to get everybody their first choice.

Any questions or clarifications please feel free to contact me! As always I must reserve the right to modify the contest in the event of any stupid mistakes, oversights or ambiguities on my part that require clarification.  That’s never been a problem in the past, though I feel obligated to say it each time.

Ok, we good?  Get commenting!

This year’s Shakespeare Day Celebration is sponsored in part by Shakespeare Is Universal: Shakespeare truly is for everyone, and nothing demonstrates that sentiment better than his most famous quote of all, translated here into languages from around the world.   In celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, show that you believe his works are just as relevant, powerful and important as they’ve ever been!

I tagged this blog post because I wanted to see how seriously the author took the question.  Is it one big self-fulfilling answer?  Plays are popular because we learned them all in school, but we learned them in school because they are more popular?  We recognize them because we’ve heard the quotes and seen the movies – but they’re quotable because they’re popular, not popular because they’re quotable.

There doesn’t seem to be a “right” answer.  There are certainly many contributing factors:

* Some plays, just like some books and movies, are better than others.  Everybody’s seen Star Wars, but only hardcore George Lucas fans have sought out THX-1138.  And before James Cameron had The Terminator, he had to deal with Piranha 2 : The Spawning.

* The reasons that some plays are taught more than others has nothing to do with their popularity. Julius Caesar, for instance, is often found in the school system primarily because there’s no sex humor in it for teachers to deal with (unlike Romeo and Juliet).

* Some plays are harder to produce (be it on stage, or screen).  Isn’t Antony and Cleopatra famous for having literally dozens of characters onstage at a time?

I know that there’s no single answer, but I wonder if one side contributes more to the equation than the other.  There are certainly practical issues that cause some plays to be more accessible than others, which in turn will result in more people knowing about those plays, which will result in stronger reinforcement of references from those plays.   That might be about 90% of the reason that we can all do large parts of Romeo and Juliet from memory. It’s because we’ve been beaten over the head with it since high school.

So then what about King Lear?  It’s not as frequently read in high schools.  You don’t see as many movie adaptations.  There is no balcony scene or dude dressed in black talking to a skull that stands out as the iconic scene from this one.  But if you know what the play is at all, you’re likely to agree that it’s the Mt. Everest of Shakespeare’s work.

I’ve always thought that (this will sound cheesy) Shakespeare comes to you when you’re ready for it.  Julius Caesar is an early starting point when students are already studying these real characters from ancient Rome.  And oh hey look at that, Romeo and Juliet pops up when you’re most likely to be your own lovestruck teenager.  Hamlet and his existential crisis hits around college age when you ask your own “Why am I here?” questions.  And Lear?  Lear takes a lifetime to understand.  I know that I couldn’t appreciate it 20 years ago.  Now, as a father (of daughters especially) I can begin to understand it.  Only much later in my life as I approach my retirement and ultimate death will I see it from an even deeper angle.  But there’s no way that your average high school student will *get* that.  Am I making sense?

This year’s Shakespeare Day Celebration is sponsored in part by Shakespeare Is Universal: Shakespeare truly is for everyone, and nothing demonstrates that sentiment better than his most famous quote of all, translated here into languages from around the world.   In celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, show that you believe his works are just as relevant, powerful and important as they’ve ever been!