When Dame Judi Dench reads Shakespeare, you want to curl up under a quilt near a fireplace, holding a nice cup of tea. I love her interviews, like this one, because she’s simultaneously a theatrical legend and also someone you want to be your grandmother. I want my parents to drop me off at her house for a sleepover where I can curl under a quilt on her couch near her fireplace with a cup of tea that she made, you know? I can listen to her recite sonnets endlessly (and I’m not kidding, I replayed that clip from the Graham Norton show for days). But then she says grandmother things like, “I can’t stand people who throw away food on the sell-by date. What’s wrong with eating bread a few days old?” Absolutely, Dame Judi. You are the essence of wisdom in all its forms.
It makes me sad that her eyesight is failing rapidly. Soon, we’ll have to be the ones to read Shakespeare to her. I would totally sign up for that. Can’t wait to get my hands on her book.
My wife and I took a little trip out of town recently to one of those towns where “Walk around the little shops” is the thing you do. One of those shops turns out to be one of those “All Things British” things, so we wander in to check it out. It’s a Wednesday, and it’s off-season. All the shops are empty of customers. So the store owner person, who’s literally sweeping when we come in, asks if there’s anything special he can help us with.
So I say something I’ve always felt like I should say in these situations. “Got any random stuff with Shakespeare on it?” I ask. “I collect random stuff with Shakespeare on it.”
He says, “Here.”
I don’t even know what it is. Stationery? I flip it over, and it’s four bucks, so I get it.
Apparently, it’s supposed to be a greeting card. When you take him out of the package, he folds open and is blank inside (oh, the irony). But he stands up on his own, so I think I like him as a little cutout that I can station on my desk and talk to.
It also comes with a sheet of stickers and something I find unexpectedly amusing. Check out the back of the package first:
At first glance, I was wondering who the face was, and thought, “Why would it be Will Ferrell?” But that’s Richard Burbage. What an odd choice for a sticker.
But! Here’s the funny part. Check out what happens when I unwrap it.
So our sheet of Shakespeare stickers includes “Happy Birthday,” “Good Luck,” “I Love You,” and “Congratulations.” Run out of Shakespeare, there, did ya? In the long history of deceiving the customers by hiding unexpected low-quality product behind the packaging so they only see it after they bought it, this is certainly one of the more trivial ones. But I got a kick out of it. Shakespeare geeks get to play in the disappointment, too! It’s Shakespeare knowledgeable enough to include a picture of Burbage, but they couldn’t throw in 2 more original quotes?
<shrug> For four bucks, I get some content out of it. I think that makes it tax deductible.
A funny thing happened recently when Bardfilm mentioned that he’d just seen Love At First Sight on Netflix and recommended it the next time my wife and I were looking for something to watch. We talk pretty often, but almost always about Shakespeare. So, it was a bit out of sync with the norm.
Well, my wife and I had a movie evening tonight and decided to watch it. In the first scene, our narrator character is reading from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. All right, Bardfilm, I see you 🙂
The film is a brand new 2023 release, based on the book “The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight,” authored by Jennifer E. Smith. It stars Haley Lu Richardson (The White Lotus) and Ben Hardy (Bohemian Rhapsody). So it’s not some “straight to DVD” anonymous release that would have collected dust on a Blockbuster shelf. It’s a legit project.
If not for one thing, we wouldn’t be talking about this movie. It is generic on top of generic—even the title. I searched IMDB and came back with nearly 100 exact matches. I understand that it’s cribbed from the original book title and probably plays better than “Statistical Probability” of anything, but this is what writers are for. Surely, somebody could have grabbed a different catchy line to use.
Then it does the “what are the odds?” thing to the extreme. Our male lead is obsessed with the probability of things, so he goes around quoting statistics. Did you know that 1 in 50 relationships begin in an airport? But 50% of marriages end in divorce? In fact that’s the entire structure of the movie, as Jameela Jamil plays an omnipresent narrator who keeps showing up in unusual places to let the audience know that there was only a 0.06% chance of a happy ending, unless X Y Z happens…
So why, then, are we talking about it? Because for some reason, there’s the promise of a lot of Shakespeare in this one. And I say it like that for a reason. As noted, we open with the narrator reading from Dream. I wonder if our story is going to parallel Shakespeare’s in some way. Or if perhaps our narrator is a cleverly disguised Puck, running around and messing with lovers for his/her own enjoyment? Nah.
Later, we glimpse the hero’s parents, a pair of thespians, banging out a bit of Dream for our amusement. Later, there’s an entire Shakespeare-themed party where everyone dresses up as Shakespeare characters and performs. Only we don’t get to see it. We see people in costume, and we’re given the numbers of how many of each character there are and what speeches were performed, but NOBODY ACTUALLY DOES ANY SHAKESPEARE ON SCREEN. Aw, come on! There’s a specific “Who are you supposed to be?” / “I’m Macbeth” moment … but at no point does this factor into the story. Nobody actually performs any Macbeth.
There’s a moment when our hero is running around looking for our heroine. They’re at a fancy house. I have that moment where I scream, “OH IF SHE COMES OUT ON A BALCONY….:” but even that, the most obvious of obvious Shakespeare opportunities, doesn’t pan out.
Bardfilm and I were left pondering why the story would go there. There is so much Shakespeare and yet so little. Shakespeare for the masses is a tricky business. Drop in some Romeo and Juliet, and everybody’s right there with you. But push your luck and start bringing up stuff people didn’t study in high school, and you’ll lose them. This one misses obvious chances while leaving in the bizarre ones. There’s more Richard III than Romeo in this.
So, this weekend is Parents’ Weekend at my daughter’s college. “Want to go see a Shakespeare exhibit with me while you’re here?” she asks. I’m intrigued, but there are rules in this family, I’m not allowed to hijack the agenda for Shakespeare. “My teacher was one of the curators, and we all have to go check it out for my class and write a paper about it.” Oh, it’s for homework? I’m so in!
Off we head to the Pequot Library in Connecticut. Ready for what we saw?
We probably should have looked around before we said, “Can you point us to the Shakespeare?” when this was staring us in the face.Hello, Hamlet. Good to see you again, my friend. These are Fourth Folios.A Fourth Folio TempestI love when there’s handwrwiting. 1766?Wish I could tell what this one said.
The collection, like many this year, was a celebration of 400 years of the Folio. So there were many cards describing the difference between the editions and which plays were added as they came out. A pleasant surprise was the amount of space dedicated to Charles and Mary Lamb’s work, which is one of the ways I introduced my kids to Shakespeare. I’m not honestly sure of the connection between the Lambs and the Folio, but hey, I wasn’t part of the curating.
Two things I especially loved about this one. First, this small library really decorated with Shakespeare. While we were in the exhibit room, one of the ladies at the desk came to tell us that there was an additional room that we shouldn’t miss. This turned out to be mostly illustrations from later collections behind glass, so I didn’t get any good pictures. But I appreciate her making sure we didn’t miss it. There was also a Hamlet on display right by the entrance that she called out as well. I definitely hadn’t missed that one.
Also, check this out. As we walked in the door I saw a brochure for a local Shakes-Beer fest, which unfortunately I won’t be in town for. But then check this out!
They went ahead and gave him his own little display, shot glasses included!
Second, and I think I love this most of all … the exhibit blended seamlessly with the children’s section of the library.
On the wall is that very well-known “Phrases Today That We Owe To Shakespeare” poster, done up on a very nice and colorful canvas. The shelf is covered with children’s books about Shakespeare (some I have, many I don’t!) Across the top are paper dolls of Shakespeare’s characters. I imagine a family coming into the exhibit for the adults and older kids to see Shakespeare, and sometimes they’re going to have younger kids in tow. Those kids are going to be bored, right? It’s over their heads? It’s boring? Wrong! Genius idea. More exhibits should do this.
Very happy that we stopped by. There was definitely a lot of cool stuff to look at. There were some other patrons wandering around, so of course, my daughter and I had to have some fun. I mentioned that we were looking at a Fourth Folio, and she asked, “Which one did we see?”
“You guys have seen …” I paused to count … “I think 5 First Folios? I’m only now realizing that I should have kept a better count. That’s a fun bucket list item, to see as many as you can. You definitely saw Folio #1 when we were down in the Folger Vault.”
“I think I tried to touch it,” my son said.
“No, you tried to touch a different one that they had out on the counter,” I told him. “Folio #1 was special, we had to ask to see that.” Alas, none of the little old ladies seemed interested in our humble bragging. Honestly, I think they were annoyed that we were there and taking up space. They’re probably used to having the place 90% empty. I don’t care. If there’s an opportunity to talk about Shakespeare, I’m going to take it.
Though it’s not yet achieved the classic status of the knock-knock joke, the “I have a _____ joke but ______” has become an Internet favorite over the last few years. As is our wont, let’s add Shakespeare to that list, shall we?
I Have a Shakespeare Joke, But…
What is the deal with these fardels? Are we bearing them, are we not bearing them? Who are these people bearing all the fardels!
I have a Hamlet joke but can’t decide how to finish it.
I have a Romeo and Juliet joke but you probably heard it back in high school.
I have a Macbeth joke that always gets a good laugh, but it really kills in Scotland.
I have a Lavinia joke but can’t say it out loud.
I have a Midsummer Night’s Dream joke but it’s pretty asinine.
I have a joke about that silent bit during the play-within-a-play in Hamlet, but it’s dumb.
I have a Shakespeare joke but everybody else claims they wrote it.
