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.”

My parents-in-law are going to the Greek Islands this fall.  Today my mother-in-law excitedly told me that they’d be going to Corfu!  When it did not register with me, she explained that this island was the setting for The Tempest.  I don’t want to say that I told her she was wrong, because I don’t know one way or the other, but I expect the claims were … dubious.  The island’s pretty safely a complete fiction, as far as I know.

But then I remembered that The Tempest is supposedly based on a true story, so I thought that maybe in the true story version, Corfu was the island in question. Thus somebody’s played connect the dots with the story and stuck Mr. Shakespeare’s name all over the tourist literature.

Googling around does indeed find me a bunch of references to the island of Corfu as the setting of The Tempest, but they are all “Greek tourist information” in nature, I can’t really find any Shakespeare references.

Getting home from the in-laws house, I consult Asimov.  If there was ever an encyclopedic tome of Shakespearean info to consult all between one set of covers, Mr. Asimov was it.  No help here.  All he tells us is that the island is not identifiable on any map, and at best it would be somewhere between Italy and Africa.  He does, by the way, go on to describe how and when all the moons of Uranus, so it’s safe to say that if he had the knowledge, he would have shared it.

Anybody got better research?  Does Corfu have any sort of meaningful claim to the title (such as a real-life backstory), or did maybe they say “Hey, we’re an island in between Italy and Africa, let’s brand ourselves as the Tempest island!”

(For the curious, what Asimov does say about the Tempest, without disclaimer, is that it is Shakespeare’s final work that he completed entirely by himself, unlike the Fletcher plays Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen that he merely contributed to.  Funny how times have changed, no?)

I love when I get questions like this. An unnamed reader (I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be asking this) has just been placed in charge with ordering copies of Shakespeare’s plays to be made available in the gift shop of the theatre company she works with.  So she’s asked me, and by extension us, for recommendations on which publisher’s editions to get.  In her own words she’s looking for something that, “stays true to the bard but would be readable for people new to Shakespeare.”

I know you’ll all have some great suggestions!  Earlier this year we had discussion of carrying around your own copy of the First Folio and people seemed to land on the Norton version – but would this satisfy our questioner’s requirements? Is it still approachable in the way she’s looking for?

UPDATE: My source says thank you for all the ideas!  We can keep discussing favorites, of course, but she’s thinking about going with Folger editions for her needs. 

On a different note does anybody know if any of these versions are available in an online / iPhone edition? That’s how I do all my reading these days.